MacBook for my wife (first timer)

Edd

Edd

It’s all in the reflexes
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Looking for suggestions for my wife’s first Apple laptop. She’s had a Spectre 360 that lasted over a decade but can’t be updated anymore.

She’s (nor I) never owned an Apple MacBook or desktop but we’re still deeply embedded in the Apple ecosystem. I use an iPad for my second device. She prefers a laptop form factor.

She’s not a power user at all. Just web consumption primarily so we can obviously go cheaper here, but I do want to avoid it being obsolete early. I’m seeing a 13” MacBook M4 Air on Amazon for $799 which doesn’t offend me. I think we paid over $1k for her current laptop over a decade ago.

Any advice for what to pick?
 
I always recommend a MacBook Air for that use case, and so far everyone has thanked me. My own wife and daughter are still using M1 MacBook Airs and have no complaints. You may want to check B&H - I heard they may have some deals running (I didn’t check).
 
Edd said:
Looking for suggestions for my wife’s first Apple laptop. She’s had a Spectre 360 that lasted over a decade but can’t be updated anymore.

She’s (nor I) never owned an Apple MacBook or desktop but we’re still deeply embedded in the Apple ecosystem. I use an iPad for my second device. She prefers a laptop form factor.

She’s not a power user at all. Just web consumption primarily so we can obviously go cheaper here, but I do want to avoid it being obsolete early. I’m seeing a 13” MacBook M4 Air on Amazon for $799 which doesn’t offend me. I think we paid over $1k for her current laptop over a decade ago.

Any advice for what to pick?
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The MacBook Air is a great choice for your wife's use case. I agree with @Cmaier that the M1 Airs are still quite serviceable. My wife has one and it works fine, though an M4 may be good for a bit of future-proofing and longer macOS support. $799 is an excellent price for the M4 MBA, though you also need to decide if the 256 GB SSD will be sufficient.​
 
Roller said:
$799 is an excellent price for the M4 MBA, though you also need to decide if the 256 GB SSD will be sufficient.
Click to expand...
True - a month ago I recommended the 512GB version for a college student (who bought it as their first mac, and loves it).
 
A couple months ago I traded in my 16" M2 MacBook Pro for a new 13" M4 MBA. For me it's a *much* better choice for casual use while I'm sitting in our living room, or at a coffee shop catching up with what's happening in the world. It's a superb laptop.

Though it's probably not the best choice for discovering the next prime number, mining bit coin, or deciphering adversary encrypted communications. :)
 
I would also recommend the MacBook Air. It has more than enough power for a casual user and due to the passive cooling you can use it anywhere you want and not worry about vents being blocked. And it is completely silent.

I only bought the MacBook Air M1, because the first batch of Apple Silicon Macs didn‘t have the computer that I wanted. Instead I got one that I might have bought a few years ago if it didn‘t have an Intel processor. My thought was that I could continue using it as a portable computer, when I get the desktop one that I really want.
I assumed I might get the next Mac one or two years later. The MacBook Air M1 was four years old when I finally got my Mac mini M4, and I‘m not just a casual user.

Long story short, unless your wife should suddenly start rendering or similar tasks that need continuous performance, the MacBook Air will be just fine. I‘d still recommend 16GB of RAM, but the newer ones should no longer have the 8GB base RAM anyway.
 
Going low-spec is probably not wise, though. I would look at maxing out memory, so that she can casually leave 200 tabs open and end up spending an hour trying to find the one that is running that irritating video. And, you know, future-proofing.
 
I love my MBA. I can't imagine anything else, although I do often go to my iMac for heavy lifting.
 
Base model MBA is literally made for this purpose.

Anything M4 generation will all have the same support lifetime most likely, so whether its a base M4 Air or a fully loaded M4 Max you're good.
 
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