Mac Recommendations

“Which Mac should I buy?” comes up fairly often in communities I’m in. There are a lot of options – especially as Apple haven’t completed their transition from Intel to the M-series chips yet – but here are some general recommendations.

All the usual caveats apply to this: your mileage may very, question all advice (even this), etc...

Don’t buy an Intel

Only buy a MacBook with an M1 or M2 chip. Support for Intels will decrease significantly over the next year or two and the M1/M2’s wipe the floor with the previous chips from a performance POV – a different ballpark altogether.

Avoid the 13” base model MacBook Pro

If you buy an M1 or M2, don’t buy the 13” base model MacBook Pro – these are the worst machines in the M1 and M2 line-ups (a spec-matched MacBook Air is usually a better choice despite the ‘Pro’ name).

Airs and Minis

Related to the 13” MacBook Pro advice above, M1/2 MacBook Airs and Mac Minis are excellent computers for most people. With upgraded space and RAM they’ll suffice for most use cases.

If you’re coming from an Intel, an M1/M1 Pro will likely be a huge upgrade from what you’re used to and it may not be worth spending more on a Max or Ultra. If you need that extra power, you’ll probably know.

Upgrade the M2 disk space

If you buy an M2 MacBook Air, be sure to upgrade the disk space to at least 512GB – there’s a bit of a performance dip on the base storage model (256GB).

Processor upgrades are optional

The old advice for Intels was “max out the processor”, but this is much less important than it used to be due to the way to M1/M2 series chips work. In lots of testing, the upgraded chips offer little-to-no real-world improvements.

If you can afford it, do it – if it’s a choice between that and extra storage or something else, the processor is probably less important.

RAM

Similarly, your RAM needs on an M-series chip may be lower than previous Macs. I’d still recommend buying the maximum you can afford, probably a minimum of 16GB unless your laptop use is incredibly light and/or not business critical.

Any 14”/16” M1 MacBook Pro should be good!

The choice mostly comes down to screen size.

Laptop or desktop?

With Apple’s transition to M-series chips, there is no real performance difference between a desktop and laptop machine equipped with the same chip (i.e. an M1 Max Mac Studio vs an M1 Max MacBook Pro). So if you’ve previously had a desktop and laptop, you might be able to consolidate the machines.

Apple Studio Display

The main reason to buy an Apple Studio Display over other options is that it’s one of the only displays on the market that offer a 5K resolution at a native size. That means that the pixels aren’t scaled up like they are on 5K displays at bigger display sizes.

The build quality is excellent and, despite the poor reviews, I regularly get comments on the quality of the camera – despite previously using a front-facing iPhone 7 camera.

Last updated: 26th August, 2022