And, of course, it starts at 8GB of RAM to nudge you up from $1100 to $1300/$1500.
At which point you might as well spring for the Pro.
I can't fault the business logic but as someone who'd only use a Mac for occasional iOS development, this nudging upward dissuades me from pursuing that idea altogether.
I still want a MacBook Air with 32GB RAM or more. The Air is lighter and more compact than the Pro. (I currently use a MacBook Pro because of the memory limit on the Air.)
If you only use it for occasional ios dev, rather get a mac mini. As a bonus, when your done with it, put asahi linux on it and itd be a great home server.
I've considered that and might end up taking that route but the nice thing about a MacBook is I can take it with me on trips and learn iOS when I get bored.
There's a big server rack at home with multiple servers, so the Linux server part isn't a draw in my case.
At which point you might as well spring for the Pro.
I can't fault the business logic but as someone who'd only use a Mac for occasional iOS development, this nudging upward dissuades me from pursuing that idea altogether.