M4 MacBook Air after a month | developer's machine – YouTube Dictation Transcript & Vocabulary

1.by now you've probably already seen a bunch of M4 MacBook Air unboxings It looks almost the same as last year A 10 core M4 chip up to 32 GB of unified memory wafer thin body two lonely USBC ports and of course a slick new color But the real story this year is under the hood Proper Thunderbolt 4 lanes this time and a surprise ability to run two external 4K screens plus the built-in screen I've used every single Apple Silicon Air machine ever since Well Apple Silicon M1 And after a month with the M4 I'm here to show you the real dev results Docker code builds local LLM tests the stuff that matters to software developers And with Apple giving us more RAM options than actual ports which config should you get i got some suggestions as we go through the video The short version is that the M4 keeps boosting single core power while also speeding up multi-core tasks cuz each core is now faster So everything's going to be faster Geekbench single core reflects everyday snappiness JavaScript applications in your browser Multi-core measures how fast you can handle actual parallel jobs like Docker images or heavy code compiles We've come a long way since M1 to M2 was about a 15% jump M2 to M3 about 17% And now the M4 sees around 23% gains over the M3 That's pretty good news for your dev environment This means you can expect slightly shorter compile times smoother multi-container docker spins and fast hot reloads And remember all these MacBook Airs the Apple silicon varieties are fanless The Intel one had a fan and still has a it's pretty loud actually You've probably seen it in my videos Well that means that under really heavy marathon loads you can lose a bit of that top performance When the machine gets really hot it starts to throttle And that means about 5 to 10% less speed than the peak benchmarks would suggest All right let's get practical Real developer work is build run break rebuild And I did actually stress this M4 Air for the last month or so with every coding task that I could muster It's actually been more than a month but a month looks nicer in a title I've actually gone through some of these in more detail in some of the videos but here's the recap Even though I'm not a C++ developer I did some C++ tests Quick sort on 10 million integers took about 2 minutes 34 seconds and that's 26 seconds faster than the M3 Makes sense Single core but full core merge sort took about 2 minutes 31 seconds almost a minute faster than the M3 Huge gains there So obviously the more cores you use the better gains you're going to see Python matter test that I usually do It's an interpretive bit of code that uses all the CPU cores as well Finished in 34 seconds beating last year's time by 15 seconds That's crazy And of course speedometer 3.0 single core operations there Chrome hit 49.3 about four points higher than the M3 So pretty good Now that's not the only story here Since this comes with 16 GB to start and 32 at the maximum I tested those machines against each other in a video separate video with more details But just to give you a taste this is where more memory really counts I built a big NX monor repo in 3 minutes and 8 seconds on the 16 GB model but on the 32 it dipped to 2 minutes and 12 seconds And I did a huge.net project compilation with 100,000 name spaces and classes Compilation took 94 seconds on the 16 GB version and 69 seconds on the 32 GB version Pretty big difference there Finally Docker Compose spinning up 100 containers took about 20 seconds on the 16 GB machine and 19 on 32 Not that much of a difference in that case Big difference on local LLMs Pretty popular topic these days especially on this channel You all keep asking me about that all the time I ran Deep Sea Coder 1.5 billion Small model but gives us an idea of what happens It breezed at 55 tokens per second on the 16 GB model and 63 on the 32 Last year I showed how an 8 gigabyte machine runs pretty much everything There's a few things that didn't run very well I have a video on that but most of the time you're going to be okay with 8 gigabytes as long as you're not running too many things at the same time obviously But it's surprising what Mac OS can actually handle in those cases But 16 you've got a lot more room to move around But once you push bigger toNet builds for example with giant monor repos the extra RAM shaves off big chunks of time And of course the 32 GB machine which I nicknamed the MacBook Air Pro We're getting more and more Pro every year Actually that one's going to give you a lot more room to spread out You can have a lot more things running at the same time and not feel the effects of things slowing down For example in my normal dev day is four terminal panes open running git commands and npm scripts a couple of instances of VS Code I have Xcode with an iOS simulator running and occasionally I run the Android emulator which is a beast But this year actually they've done a good job with uh optimizing it a little bit more and it runs a little bit smoother than the previous years Docker desktop sleeps until I really need it But Chrome stays open with at least 25 taps And during this whole time the OS stays responsive even on a 16 GB machine App switching is instant except those times when I fire up Android Studio and Docker containers all at the same time That's when I feel a little bit of a half second hiccup It's kind of like cramming too many people into a small car Somebody's going to have to wait for a seat Come on let the old lady sit down you rude person you Now if you're expecting marathon loads or multiple virtual machines maybe even the MacBook Air is not enough for you if you're doing that kind of stuff In which case you're probably going to want to dive into a MacBook Pro And I actually tested the 32 GB MacBook Air versus the 16 GB MacBook Pro because they were the same price when they came out Same M4 chip The Pro of course has a few more features like it's a little thicker more heat is spreading around It has a fan so it's gonna suck that air out or blow whatever you want to call it So it's got more thermal headroom It also has a better screen of course with more hertz But here's a summary on how it did on some tests that I ran C++ quick sort single core The Pro finished in 2 minutes 33 seconds while the 32 GB Air took 2 minutes and 36 seconds Obviously they have the same cores same chip so very close But maybe that fan and the Pro helped the clock speeds just a little bit C++ merge sort all the cores all at once 2 minutes and 18 seconds on the Pro versus 2 minutes and 26 seconds on the Air Here we saw the Pro's cooling actually give an edge to a sustained load That huge net compilation with 100,000 classes 69 seconds on the 32 GB Air and 87 seconds on the 16 GB Pro Wow that extra RAM saves you from swapping So the Air crushed that test The Air beat the Pro The Manroad Python test 29 seconds on the Pro 34 on the Air Again this is using all the cores and it's pretty intense So I think the fan helped out here again So if your job is mostly huge CPU sprints the Pro's fans keeps higher speeds under load If you need more than 16 GB of memory and do mostly short builds the 32 GB Air can outrun a Pro on RAM heavy tasks and it stays silent Okay real talk Dropping 2 grand on a MacBook up front that's a whole car repair or a vacation or half a Thunderbolt dock So here's a smarter move upgraded They let you pick the exact MacBook you want Custom specs more RAM extra storage and instead of paying everything up front you spread it out over 36 months Interest starts from 0% depending on your eligibility Even better after 24 months you just send the MacBook back in the box that they give you and boom new MacBook time No sketchy marketplace listings No is this still available messages at 2 a.m They work with Apple Premiere Partners They have a 4.8 in a trust pilot rating and yeah even folks from OpenAI back then The best part is you can keep the cash you didn't drop up front earning 4% interest in a savings account So go to getupgraded.com link in the description Use code alex40 and get 40 bucks off your next MacBook That's getupgraded.com Code alex40 There was a few days when I went on a trip and I spent full work days relying only on the 16 GB M4 Air Even with VS Code Xcode Chrome Notion Docker Compose running I saw no real lag At worst Mac OS swapped out about 1 GB That's when it's using the SSD instead of the RAM when everything doesn't fit into RAM Not a good thing to have happen So keep an eye on that if you have a low memory machine and you're using a lot of applications at the same time But nonetheless Windows switching felt smooth Programs pop back in pretty easily Now I did notice that after 10-minute full core compile the palm rest warmed up to around 46° Not painful but definitely toasty compared to older models In fact coming back to the M4 Air and putting your palms on it it's always a little bit surprising because the palm rests are warm Whereas in the previous models they're kind of cool So you expect that So that's something new Not great but it's new As far as battery goes it seems like I could leave this thing on for days and it'll just keep working and not running out of battery But I wanted to be a little bit more scientific about it So I said a little bit more scientific not a lot Okay just calm down calm down I did my developer loop which I call it now It's a dev test that I run that simulates what a dev would do what I would do actually Not all devs do the same stuff but it has a bunch of programs open like things that I use notion It's got a little bit of music playing The screen is set to full brightness to-do list uh 15 browser tabs I have a couple of instances of terminal open and VS code and it runs through a loop A half an hour loop of things that we do like coding building code running interpreted code Basically things that I covered already but in a loop And of course watching videos is one of the things that we do I know you do that I just know it I I have a feeling How do I know this i don't know You tell me I actually ran this one twice and it got about the same results on both the uh 32 GB version and the 16 GB version Now the M4 MacBook Air actually has a slightly bigger battery 53.8 watt hours as opposed to 52.6 from last year the M3 And look at these two The M3 MacBook Air and the M4 MacBook Air are very close to the number of minutes that they lasted under my test About 330 minutes for the M3 The M4 lasted just a little bit less 315 maybe If you interpolate that line down it's going to be like 328 or something like that but very close How does this compare with some of these other machines that I tested there's the Galaxy Book with the X Elite The MacBook Pro 14 the M4 version lasted a little bit longer than both of those It's got a slightly bigger battery Here's the M4 Pro lasted quite a bit longer The M2 Max is over here a 2-year-old machine that I've been daily driving So yeah the battery is going to go down a little bit And here's the MacBook Pro 16 M4 Max That's my current daily driver Just about the same as the M3 MacBook Air If there's anything that lasted a significant amount longer here's a Surface Laptop 7 with the X Elite chip inside of it That one lasted the longest But we're all in a territory now where we don't really need to care about charging our laptop throughout the day If you're working normal days and you're not Elon Musk who works 18our days then you may be okay That's what he said Anyway I I don't know Maybe that he said that Don't quote me on that So let's talk about who benefits from this upgrade The M4 Air is still a paper thin laptop that slips into a backpack easily With Apple's latest chip it can handle serious deaf tasks on the go no problem So for students and general developers if you're in class or meetings all day coding note-taking or Zoom calling you last 8 to 10 hours on battery no problem You also won't distract the room with fan noise A second benefit people that are traveling this is really nice I've been really enjoying carrying something like this as opposed to the large MacBook Pro especially when I'm walking around with my backpack It really makes a big difference It also will fit on cramped airplane trays I brought a prop This is the size of a typical airplane tray Here's the MacBook Pro 16in Where do you put your mouse where do you put your food where do you put your coffee and here is the MacBook Air M4 M2 M3 Same size you have a little bit more room to work with Candy bar goes here I don't know your chicken nuggets go here You can also charge it with a smaller USBC adapter a power brick that perhaps you're borrowing because you forgot [Music] yours If you crave more ports built-in HDMI or need that 120 Hz display the MacBook Pro is the one to go with of course But I'm going to tell you this If you're used to 60 Hz don't spoil yourself Don't try the 120 Hz MacBook Pro display It's going to ruin you It's going to spoil your day cuz you're going to want it However after working on the MacBook Air for that trip that I did for a while you kind of get used to 60 Hz Again there is a little bit of a difference You notice it but it's something you get used to especially if all you're doing is just looking at code That's not all we're doing is it we're watching YouTube too Also the MacBook Pro the fan gives you better sustained speeds So if you got large compilations to do it's going to be a little faster If your tasks are small and fit inside two-minute bursts the Air can match or beat the Pro especially with that 32 GB version So if you are going with the Air here are some recommended builds for everyday work 16 GB of RAM 1 TB SSD that's fine Apple charges a lot for those upgrades of the storage and it just h you can get something like this easy It's another thing to carry around I know but if you want to just throw it in your backpack and if you already have a backpack then it's not such a big deal to carry extra stuff with you But data only not programs of course So if you have a lot of programs like Xcode is a honker right android Studio is big Docker all those programs are going to add up 256 GB that I have on the base model here it's a headache After Xcode Android SDKs Docker images node modules you're already almost out of space after installing all that stuff Forget virtual machines 512 GB works if you move large assets to an external drive but you'll also be worried about constant space management 1 TB right now is pretty good Gives you enough room to breathe You can stash multiple virtual machines plus local git clones maybe a couple of small LLMs For heavy multitasking 32 gigs of RAM is a really good option this year especially on a MacBook Air It's pretty amazing that Apple added that option There's also the 24 GB option and I'm not too sure about that one I don't know Yeah it's there but if you need RAM get 32 If you don't need that much RAM go for 16 24 is like it's like you can't decide But if you get more RAM you're not going to be sorry If you get less RAM you might be sorry So the M4 Air keeps its single core supremacy If your compiles stay under 2 minutes it actually rivals a 16 GB MacBook Pro It runs warm enough to notice but not too hot enough to harm performance It will throttle if you go push it too hard But also in the winter time you can think of it as a built-in hand warmer The thing has silence and stamina Eight coding hours still near half the battery and no fan noise is a beautiful thing to see at the end of the day So the sweet spot is 16 GB of RAM 1 TB of storage Go 32 if you can You won't be sorry if you do and avoid the 256 GB storage tier if you value your sanity If that profile matches your workflow the M4 Air might be the most portable dev laptop you can buy Also don't forget if you do need more ports you can always get a little gadget like this I have a couple of other docks This one is easy cuz it doesn't have a power plug It's not Thunderbolt but it just gives you more stuff even an HDMI port I'll leave a link to that one down below It's pretty nice I think that's going to wrap it up folks Thanks for watching and I will see you in the next video [Applause] [Music]