I replaced my i9 16” MBP with a 13” Air. Performance with Xcode is either the same or better on the Air.
Battery life is the true game changer though. When I went out with the 16” I had to make sure I had 100% charge, if I wanted to use it for ~3-4 hours while out. With the Air I can grab it with 25% battery left and be fine for the same amount of time.
The “actual” pro machines with M1 derivatives are going to be incredible…so long as apple doesn’t make another Touchbar/butterfly keyboard-esq mistake.
I also replaced a 16" (although i7) with a 13" Air. Best computing purchase I've ever made.
I was lucky if I could even make it to 4 hours battery on the 16", but the real killer for me was heat and noise. It was like sitting in front of a little aeroplane all day long, and because the video out is wired up through the dedicated GPU, just plugging it into an external monitor added an extra 20W to dissipate. It also had weird sleep issues the entire time, if I left it connected to a monitor overnight I'd often sit down at my desk the next morning to find it burning hot, fans blasting, with the lid closed.
So happy to see the back of that piece of crap. It got reasonable reviews at the time, I can only imagine that either no-one tested it with external monitors, or because it was the first model to drop the butterfly keyboard people just gave it a pass on everything else.
Battery life is the true game changer though. When I went out with the 16” I had to make sure I had 100% charge, if I wanted to use it for ~3-4 hours while out. With the Air I can grab it with 25% battery left and be fine for the same amount of time.
The “actual” pro machines with M1 derivatives are going to be incredible…so long as apple doesn’t make another Touchbar/butterfly keyboard-esq mistake.