Sean Hollister, The Verge:

Apple’s new $999 and $1,299 laptops seem nearly identical if you look beyond the differently curved frames. They’ve got the same M1 processor, the same memory and storage options, the same ports, and very similar screens.

I’m not joking when I say: the biggest difference is a fan.

I actually prefer no fan, but there’s certainly value in a fan that lets a Mac run faster, longer:

A CPU’s thermal design power (TDP) in watts is a better predictor of performance than its gigahertz clock speed because some of the weakest laptop and phone chips can “boost” up to multiple gigahertz these days… until they heat up. In a small, fanless chassis, they have to throttle down quickly, but they can go for longer in a larger or better-cooled one.

Here’s a bullet list of the main differences between the M1 MacBook Air and M1 MacBook Pro:

• At $999, the MacBook Air comes with seven GPU cores instead of eight, because Apple is salvaging some weaker chips (a common process known as binning) by disabling one core.

• But at $1,249, the MacBook Air has the same eight CPU cores and eight GPU cores as the $1,299 13-inch MacBook Pro. The 13-inch MacBook Pro has a slightly larger battery (58.2Wh vs. 49.9Wh) and quotes two additional hours of battery life compared to the MacBook Air.

• The 13-inch MacBook Pro’s screen is slightly brighter at maximum (500 nits vs 400 nits).

• The 13-inch MacBook Pro comes with the Touch Bar instead of physical function keys, though both have a Touch ID fingerprint sensor.

Good info. I went fanless.