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Comment by radiKal07 | Hacker News Reader

Why not the MacBook Pro with M1 Pro/Max

It's so heavy! I love the laptop but it is a little bit heavier than ideal for me. I think a MacBook Air works for me too! I don't need much computing power. I wish they had a larger screen version of it

I used an M1 Air since late 2020 and loved it, but it was falling over on certain workloads - mainly because I hadn’t specced enough memory.

So I recently bought a 14” Pro with 32gb RAM, which is amazing - it makes mincemeat of all my workloads.

BUT… it is noticeably heavier and more unwieldy! So much so that I decided to keep the Air as a second computer for the couch or the coffee shop.

Two laptop life is good. But now I wish I’d gone for the 16” Pro …

carrying around 16" is no fun. There were countless times I can recall where I dropped the plan to work out of coffee shop because I felt dreadful putting that bag pack on my shoulder with laptop and other accessories.

I got a 17" Windows laptop at one point for games to replace various old semi-functional Windows DIYs I had lying around. I never really used it a lot but I wouldn't have wanted to carry it around with me in any case.

Yeah the 14” doesn’t move further than home office -> living room and back again, and with me on the occasional biz trip. So, all scenarios where I would benefit from the extra screen size of the 16” and not really care about the extra weight and heft. Everything else - couch, coffee shop, standing desk, etc, I use the Air.

Forgot to mention another bonus: the continuity features in MacOS are good enough to use the Air as a second screen for certain activities. You think you won’t use it, but it turns out to be surprisingly useful.

I have a similar philosophy, inspired by Elliot J. Stocks [0]

I want the beefiest small computer for out of office use while at the same time the beefiest computer for in office use. So for the past decade, I've been using the 11" MBA -> 12" rMB for my mobile computer, while my office machines have been the 2012 Mac Mini -> 2018 Mac Mini -> Mac Studio Max. The rMB has definitely been getting long in the tooth and I've been waiting for the M2 MBA.

[0]: https://elliotjaystocks.com/blog/a-cloud-centric-mac-set-up

My guess is cost. Why pay for performance you don’t need? Or portability? Weight is weight.

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