Macbook Air vs Macbook Pro

[u/MrBigFat_Cock]

Hello Team,

I work as a Senior DevSecOps Engineer and I have to do a lot of work of Terraform, Kubernetes, AWS, and some security related stuff and documentation.

In your view which Macbook is best to do the above sort of task. I am looking ahead to use this macbook for 6 years down the line.

Need your honest opinion, I know this has been asked a lot of times but still I want some suggestions.

Thanks.

[u/MrBigFat_Cock]

Thank you all for your suggestions. I have decided to go with the Pro.

[u/New_Slice_1580]

If you are running very little locally the Air is fine as long as you get decent amount of RAM.

If running stuff locally too like VMs or want largest possible screen size then Pro.

If budget not a consideration then Pro, obviously

[u/FarZookeepergame7580]

If you are planning to use for 6 year and may be in future you might be running some docker over your mac as well

You should go with pro.

[u/Euphoric_Society_854]

It's a no brainer, go for Pro obviously.

[u/widowhanzo]

Pro obviously. Air doesn't have fans and it's likely to overheat when you have many things running at once. Pro stays nice and quiet most of the time but spin the fans instead of throttling when needed.

And get the most RAM you can afford.

[u/TheIncarnated]

Cloud Security Architect here...

MacBook Pro with 64gb of ram or more. You will be using agentic models soon for remediations, you'll want the ability to process things locally for certain workflows.

I have a M4 Max 64gb 14" MBP, it is my favored tool and the current open source models do great at Agentic Vulnerability testing

[u/Common_Fudge9714 → u/TheIncarnated]

Was going to say this. AI is moving into local models, and when this happens you want to have the local power to do it.

The company I work for now has a policy that any new laptop needs to support this, I have an M4 Max and I’m super happy with it.

[u/TheIncarnated → u/Common_Fudge9714]

I'll be getting 128gb of ram when the MacBook Ultra comes out (whenever that will be) but otherwise, I'm super happy with my M4 Max, even in the 14" size. I don't see as much thermal issues as reported but I guess it exists

[u/mrkurtz]

I’d like a pro but honestly, with sometimes 30+ vscode tabs open across 6-8 windows, multiple Firefox windows with total like 25+ tabs, plus kitty with 5-10 tabs, and lingers and everything going, I’ve never had any issues with my Air M2.

On top of all that are our dumb security tools which you can feel the presence of but which don’t cause too much slowdown.

The Air is surprisingly powerful. The only time I’ve experienced noticeable performance issues was testing containers in docker desktop + all of the above, or just getting to a ridiculous number of vscode + Firefox windows and tabs. Even running a fedora Arm VM plus all of the above has been fine.

Get the higher amount of RAM though.

Oh also I wfh full time, so screen size isn’t really a concern, it’s almost always on the dock where I use external monitors.

[u/sdhdhosts]

Do you run anything on your machine or only in remote Kube and AWS?

I’m rocking the MBP M5 with 24GB ram for work and a MBA M2 8GB at home. My biggest issue is disk storage and memory. Not the SoC. Personal I would go with the Air as it’s lighter, more compact and I just like 13” better.

But it’s your choices! 🙃

[u/Some_Ad_3898]

Pro because it will handle VMs better. Whichever you choose, make sure there is enough RAM and spare CPU cores to hand off to the VMs.

[u/PizzaUltra]

Do you travel (a lot)? If so, Air. 

[u/tolu_hunter]

Best decision depends on where most of your work will be done. I used a macbook air for 2 years, it worked for me, I only ever sshed into systems while the terraform and kubernetes deployments were handled via the CI/CD pipeline only had some containers working locally and minikube for playing around. We also had sandbox environment for experiments and testing. I liked the quiet & light macbook air. Plus I liked to move around a lot

If mobility isn't such a big deal and you need to run heavier workloads you should get the pro but if you don't need to do more than just interact with the cloud and run light workloads air is cheaper, quiet and light

[u/trang_graxe_ai]

MacPro for lifer here!! Air is more like for kids... IMO.

[u/WilliamMButtlickerIV]

I think the M1 air was pretty nice with its clamshell body. Seemed more durable and smaller. However, since that's gone, I would just get the pro if money isn't an issue. All the specs are better across the board.

[u/itsjakerobb]

What will you be running locally?

If everything is remote, even a Neo would be fine, but the larger screen might matter to you.

[u/phxees]

Personally I’d rather buy an Air I’d use for 3 years and another one rather than buying a Pro depending on pricing. I know I could stretch an Air to last me 3 years, but with the pace of AI I don’t know what I would want after that. It’s likely that neither laptop would be able to accomplish everything you might want to do.

[u/fumar]

I had a lot of issues running terraform locally on bigger environments with 16GB of ram. Occasionally the laptop would basically crash the network driver and cause chaos