Not sure if this is appropriate to ask on HN, but I'll try (I couldn't find anything meaninful on the internet). I have been trying to decide whether I should buy a macbook pro 14 m2/m3 or macbook air m3/m3. MBA is very lighweight for travels but it can't withstand heavy computing for very long periods of time, it starts trottling and heating oscillation damages soldering of a soc over time. MBP can compute anything anytime however i want but it is very bulky and heavy to carry in a backpack for me as i have backache.
SO i stuck in between both worlds, and I was wondering, maybe i can use MPA as a travel computer and when i need more power when i come home, i just attach macmini pro or macstudio to a macbook air and use macmini's compute power instead of a mba?
Back in 2011, I was doing the inverse where I connected my MBA in Target Disk Mode for my iMac to boot from. It was like a fancy external display that also provided excellent performance. Rather exotic, but no headaches of maintaining two installs, synchronizing files, and so on. A fun anecdote from the same line of thinking. Nowadays there is no reason to overcomplicate things. To use the MBA as a screen, you'd need a capture card. Hard to recommend that.<p>If you're really worried about throttling, at home you could put the MBA on a cooling pad. Naturally that only makes sense if otherwise it's fast enough for you. Perhaps just get the MBP, based on your reply to another commenter. In any case, a couple of pounds are not worth the hassle of having two machines. Do consider offloading some work to the cloud.
> MBP can compute anything anytime however i want<p>I wouldn't set your hopes <i>that</i> high. It won't manifest CUDA or Vulkan drivers for you magically, nor extend your battery life by having more cores and a larger screen.<p>You're ultimately looking at a set of tradeoffs. There are a lot of options, but none of them are really perfect. If Macbooks are my only option, I would probably be content with a Macbook Air with a high enough memory config. If you <i>really</i> need that much more power, you could purchase a separate Mac for home and VNC/SSH into it when you need the extra power.<p>There is no silver bullet here. I would reconsider how much power you <i>actually</i> need though; even the most intensive programming jobs can fit comfortably on a regular multi-core processor.
There is a 13" MacBook pro nearly identical in size and weight to the 13" MacBook Air but it has active cooling so you can run it at 100% all day long without throttling.
First, You need to investigate whether MBA can be used as an external display for another Mac. Not all combination of Apple devices can be used in target display mode.<p>I also have spinal issues and can’t carry too much weight. I find only a 14” MBP + iPad, even without chargers and accessories, in my backpack to be heavier than what I can handle.<p>Just buy an MBA for the road, and another computer (Mac/PC) and a proper display for home/office use.
I've got an M2 MacBook Air<p>Per the Advanced... screen under Displays in System Settings, you can link to a Mac or iPad to control it <i>a la</i> Synergy[0]<p>I have not done it myself, but I do not see why you could not do it with a current-gen Mac Mini<p>---------<p>[0] <a href="https://symless.com/synergy" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://symless.com/synergy</a>
This is some weird post trying to find confirmation to buy as much Apple stuff as possible.<p>Firstly, in no way and hell 2 lb difference between MBA and MPB is going to matter for comfort when carrying in a backpack.<p>Secondly, MBP is decent in processing for a laptop, but it absolutely is shit compared to what even a mid grade desktop with desktop cards can put out.<p>If you actually want to have processing power on tap (for ML I assume) you need to build a desktop with a few gfx cards and a good desktop chip, and then set up ssh to it. Then you can use literally any computer or even your phone to run models.<p>On the flip side, if you are trying to find reasons to get a Mac, just get whatever Mac looks the best to you and stop pretending you need processing power.