As I wrote in Am I a PC or a Mac?, I had become quite fond of my base model MacBook M4 Air. It was fast, very portable, and more capable than I expected. For normal day-to-day computing, it was a very nice machine.
But, the base model that I bought only had 256GB of SSD space. That is just not enough space. I knew this going in, so I bought a 2TB external SSD and a little magnetic mount for it so that it stayed more-or-less permanently attached to the back cover of my MacBook. It connected to one of my two Thunderbolt ports with a short cable. At first I was pretty proud of myself for saving several hundred dollars by buying the external SSD drive (back when they were cheap) instead of paying Apple’s exorbitant prices for a larger internal SSD. But honestly, while the external SSD mostly solved the storage space problem, it was inconvenient. When I used the MacBook sitting in my comfy chair, the cable plugged in to the Thunderbolt port on the side going to the external drive seemed to constantly be in the way. I was always paranoid about accidentally bending or breaking the connector. And, some macOS software insists on taking up space on the internal drive, no matter how much you want it to use an external drive instead. And for reasons I never really figured out, macOS would occasionally decide to unmount the external drive when the machine went to sleep, as if the drive were physically disconnected. The disconnects always came with the little lecture from macOS about how I should have ejected the volume before disconnecting it, or I risked losing data. Understood, except I never disconnected it. I never lost data because of the disconnects, but it was still upsetting when it happened. (I know, definitely first-world problems…)
The base model that I bought also had only 16GB of RAM, which honestly never really limited me for what I tried to do on the machine. Even my music production software (Cubase) ran well in only 16GB of RAM. But it did preclude me from even trying to run some things that I knew would require more RAM, like local AI models.
So I started thinking about upgrading the machine. But the Great Memory Shortage of 2026 (read about it here and in many other places) caused RAM and SSD prices to skyrocket, everywhere except at Apple, who had maintained their usual prices even as other computer makers raised theirs. The exorbitant prices that Apple always charged for RAM and SSD upgrades on new MacBooks started to look much more reasonable compared to the rest of the industry.
As mentioned in Back to Work, I was working part-time again, so I could justify spending some of that income on new, better computing equipment. When I saw on the news that the CEO of Apple warned that they were going to have to increase their prices in response to the RAM shortage, I figured it was time to act.
So I plunked down for a new MacBook M5 Pro, with 2TB of internal SSD and a whopping 64GB of RAM. I probably overspent on it and got more storage space and RAM than I really needed, but I wanted to future-proof the machine a bit. And I wanted to experiment with running local AI on it, for which 64GB of RAM is barely adequate.
I got the order in just before Apple increased their prices. That was just one of those happy timing accidents that make you feel unusually clever after the fact. And Apple gave me a pretty reasonable trade-in value for my MacBook M4 Air.
The MacBook Pro is bigger, heavier, and not nearly as cute as the Air. Running local AI on it quickly turns it into a space heater. However, that is the only thing I’ve tried on it so far that causes its cooling fans to turn on - usually it is completely silent like the fanless Air was.
Summary
I liked the MacBook M4 Air a lot, and I still think it is a very impressive machine. It ended up being a gateway drug that caused me to throw more money at Apple for a bigger/better MacBook, which is perhaps what Apple had in mind all along with how they positioned the MacBook M4 Air.
So far I am impressed with the new MacBook M5 Pro, though I don’t like how much heavier it is. But it sure is nice having enough SSD space that I don’t have to worry about filling it up with every new thing that I install on it. The only thing I’ve done with it so far that begins to take advantage of the upgraded hardware is running local AI with LM Studio, which is quite impressive. Perhaps I will write a post on that later.
