Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by webdever 474 days ago
As others have said, they do this on purpose. It's the same with memory. I'd probably switch from a Pro to an Air if I could get 64gig ram (for LLM work) but they'd rather charge me $4800 instead of ~$3200 (guessing the price given the top end 32gig Air is $2800)

It's frustrating because I'd prefer a lighter device. In fact, even the Air isn't that light compared to its competition.

I'd happily pay +$500 ($5300) for Macbook Air PRO if it was effectively the same specs as Macbook Pro but 1.5lbs lighter.
3 comments
electrograv 474 days ago
I have absolutely no problem paying a premium for an upgraded display. The problem is that Apple does not offer that option for the MacBook Air.

The MacBook Pro has an amazing screen, which is why I bought the MBP. But the MBP compromises increased weight (which I don’t want) in exchange for more performance (that I simply don’t need). And we know this compromise is not needed to host a better display, as evidenced by the existence of the iPad Pro.

Don’t get me wrong, the MacBook Pro is a fantastic product and I don’t regret buying it. It just feels like a huge missed opportunity on Apple’s part that their only ultra-lightweight laptop is so far behind in display tech vs their other non-laptop products (like the iPad Pro which is lighter still, just crippled due to iOS limitations).

I would gladly pay even more than the price of my MacBook Pro for a MacBook Air with a screen on par with the iPad Pro or MacBook Pro. Or even for an iPad Pro that runs OSX!

link
justincormack 473 days ago
With the iPads the Pro models are lighter than the Air. So maybe the laptops will end up like that eventually.
link
brandall10 474 days ago
A pro will still be a good 2.5x the speed compared to the Air due to memory bandwidth. It would be rather silly to spring for that amount of memory for that purpose, anything more than say a 14B param model will be painful.
link
seanmcdirmid 474 days ago
I'm not sure a Macbook Air with only passive cooling would be the best machine for running an LLM that would fit into ~40GB of GPU accessible memory.

> I'd happily pay +$500 ($5300) for Macbook Air PRO if it was effectively the same specs as Macbook Pro but 1.5lbs lighter.

You basically want a macbook pro. I don't think it could be that thin with active cooling that such a configuration would require.

link