Anybody using macbook air m3 for vscode/pycharm and python development for pandas/polars. Should I use macbook instead?

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Anybody using macbook air m3 for vscode/pycharm and python development for pandas/polars. Should I use macbook instead?

Hi,

I briefly bought a new macbook air M3(16GB) and found it extremely fast and competent. The only thing I realized was I could use more memory and traded in for 24 GB.

My day to day work is to use python with data science libraries like polars,duckdb and pandas. I even was able to fire up ollama with 8B parameters without any problems. Wondering how much improvement I can get or expect going to pro.

Is anybody using their air in similar fashion?

MacBook Air 13″, macOS 14.3

Posted on Jul 30, 2024 8:53 AM

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Answer 1

Top-ranking reply

Grant Bennet-Alder

Level 10

140,867 points

Jul 30, 2024 9:58 AM in response to varun91

The main difference for what you are doing is that if your computer routinely overheats doing what you are doing, it will throttle itself down. if you have not encountered that already, it is not likely to be an issue.

The big difference for users who are NOT editing videos is the addition of the cooling fan in the MacBook Pro, and the potential to support one more external display. [In my opinion] the slight increment in compute and graphics power and memory bandwidth of having a Pro processor over a plain processor do not make a discernible difference for your type of work.

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Answer 2

varun91 Author

Level 1

4 points

Jul 31, 2024 9:39 AM in response to Grant Bennet-Alder

Thanks Grant, wondering what kind of work you do?

I hear all youtube reviews and frankly feel that some reviews don't do justice to how people can and should use these machines before moving up the ladder.

Just 3 years ago, I was using the most modest intel processor and even with the throttled performance, it will be ages better.

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Anybody using macbook air m3 for vscode/pycharm and python development for pandas/polars. Should I use macbook instead?

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