Maybe I'm naive, but I really haven't seen a reason to jump off my core i7 6600 lenovo laptop or 4770k desktop, neither of which spin fans or kill batteries. I can run xilinx vivado, kicad, and gcc just as fine as a newer 18 core i9 I have for work. Having used a mac air with an intel chip which is incredibly slow in comparison I have to wonder if the issue isn't mac os x itself rather than the hardware involved.