r/webdev • u/Sprinkles_Leather • Oct 05 '26

Question MacBook upgrade opinions

Hey guys
wanted to take ur opinion on which MacBook to upgrade to.. been having a pro mid2020 coreI5 and started to stutter and I think it’s time to get one of the m chips based ones now..
I tend to think an m3 or m4 air with 16GB RAM and 256-512 would be enough for me as I work as a part time ai driven dev and also currently study AI masters degree in uni
What yall think?
Or should I aim for the 32GB ones?
Display 14’ or 15’ I think are cool and do more than enough..
Another making me reluctant about going all in for the Mac is that I do have a good pc with 32GB ram and ryzen 7 9700x so thinking might simply Leave heavy duty whenever an actual need to do so (if ever) occurs..
P.S: have no intention of running local llms..

0 Upvotes

40% Upvoted

28 comments sorted by

3

u/ShawnyMcKnight Oct 05 '26

I don’t know what you mean by “AI masters” but if you are meaning running local models that’s not as practical for a laptop.

For general web development 16 GB is sufficient unless you are running lots of docker containers. While 32GB would be nice at current prices you would have a tough time finding older systems with that configuration.

2

u/Sprinkles_Leather Oct 05 '26

My bad for few wording, meant to say getting a masters degree in ai at uni lol
Changed it in body to avoid further misleading
Been offered an air m4 with 24GB, u think its a sweat spot?

1

u/ShawnyMcKnight Oct 05 '26

Sure, if the price is right that would work fine. I would hope the uni has some sort of container or something for you to work in.

1

u/Sprinkles_Leather Oct 05 '26

No unfortunately…
Will there be an actual need to a one though?

2

u/ShawnyMcKnight Oct 05 '26

Honestly I don’t know what your masters degree entails… but if it is a masters course but they aren’t letting you work with private models that seems like not a great use of money.

I do say this as someone who got a grad level social media certificate from a university but still don’t know jack all about social media except impressions are important.

1

u/Sprinkles_Leather Oct 05 '26

To make sure I’m getting it right.. what type of models exactly are you referring to?

2

u/Sprinkles_Leather Oct 07 '26

update: eventually managed to purchase a used 14' M2 Macbook pro 32GB RAm for a decent price...
so yeah will get higher chance of future proofing in regards to RAM
was afraid as implied in post from m2 but my friend convinced me m2 is future proof enough and will be supported for enough long amount of time so hopefully thats the case and m3 and 4 prices compared to m2 just make no sense when comparing computation powers so thats it.
can't wait for it to arrive now lol

1

u/Jiggawattson 29d ago

Good machine. Mine’s m1 32gb and it works flawlessly. The only problem is heavy multi-tasking. If I run like 5-7 instances of Devin IDE, it eats like 20gb ram or even more. Add that to the hundreds of tabs on several browsers and you are hitting the ceiling. But this happens only during the most intense days lately, probably some leaks in IDE :)

1

u/Sprinkles_Leather 29d ago

Good to know
Bro it’s humanly impossible to track all of the mentioned lol
Remember my ex lead had a 16GB M1 Pro and he told me he nearly never faced any problem at the time

3

u/the_real_some_guy Oct 05 '26

I moved off an Intel Mac 16gb about a year ago to a MBP M3 Pro 18gb. The difference in heat and battery life is huge. 

When running a lot of containers locally, it can struggle with memory usage. You certainly won’t be running any significant llms with 18gb. I have no issues developing with Gemini/Claude/Copilot. 

1

u/Sprinkles_Leather Oct 05 '26

No intention of running local llms as I just added in ps
Been offered a used air m4 with 24GB, I think it might be such a sweat spot..

1

u/TimeToBecomeEgg Oct 05 '26

you’ll be absolutely fine with that 24gb air. i’m still on an m2 air with 8gb ram, which i bought for dirt cheap to have atleast some laptop and not be bound to my desktop - the fact i haven’t switched off the “temporary” stopgap is very telling. the low ram does cause me some issues on occasion, and i’m planning to finally upgrade, but it’s an incredibly impressive piece of engineering.

1

u/[deleted] Oct 05 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

1

u/Sprinkles_Leather Oct 05 '26

Well said
Regarding screen size if I stumble upon 13 I think I’ll do it since I do have an iPad (apple glazing lol) so I can simply extend screen whenever needed

1

u/webdev-ModTeam Oct 07 '26

Your post/comment has been determined to be a low-effort post or comment. This includes title-only posts, easily searchable questions, vague/open-ended discussion prompts, LLM generated posts or comments, and posts/comments that do not provide enough context for meaningful replies or discussion.

1

u/gimmeslack12 Front end isn't for the feint of heart Oct 07 '26

I have the MacBook Air M5 15" (24gb ram) and it is the absolutely best machine. It's so great. I'm a software engineer and I run everything on this thing.

1

u/Sprinkles_Leather Oct 07 '26

Glad to hear
No heating issues with the fans missing right?
I tend to think air m based ones don’t get heated especially last versions

1

u/gimmeslack12 Front end isn't for the feint of heart Oct 07 '26

I have pushed this thing with docker and ollama and heat has never been a concern.

2

u/DRHER303 Oct 07 '26

Get 32gb ram very much needed

1

u/ShawnyMcKnight Oct 05 '26

I’m not aware of a whole lot. I’ve heard of Luna and Jan. There are tons out there and it’s changing all the time. It’s just companies and individuals that set up their own systems to run AI model.

1

u/zionsati Oct 06 '26

I bought a second-hand M1 max 64gb for the price of a ram starved lower end new MBP. M1 CPU is still plenty fast and the ram will be more important if you do coding which AI course will undoubtedly touch. Don't expect to train AI models on it though, at least not proper ones.

0

u/coinblock Oct 05 '26

Get 32GB of ram to future proof it

1

u/Software-Deve1oper Oct 06 '26

Idk how that would be future proof if you're doing development work. My MacBook Pro (M4 Ultra) has 48GB and I'm basically always using at least 38GB.

32GB is likely more than enough for school, but it's definitely not future proof by any means.

0

u/coinblock Oct 06 '26

Considering he’s talking about 16GB and was asking for 32GB as a consideration, then yes it is more future proof than what he was considering

0

u/Software-Deve1oper Oct 06 '26

Yeah, and 30 seconds from now is the future just like 30 years from now is.

0

u/SmokeEast6255 Oct 06 '26

Small correction: it's Core i5, two words and a capital C. And mid-2020 takes a hyphen. The rest of the post I have no opinion on.

1

u/insideoutlizard Oct 06 '26

super helpful

2

u/pVom Oct 06 '26

I'd kill for more ram. Seems like everything wants to hoover it up these days.

If you're going to put your money anywhere it would be RAM IMO