Before you buy a new Mac: what actually matters
On modern Macs the memory and storage are soldered in and can never be changed. That makes two of the choices permanent and most of the others reversible. Here is how to spend your money in the right place.
People often ring me a week after buying a Mac, and occasionally I have to tell them the machine they bought will be frustrating in two years and there is nothing anyone can do about it.
That is a new thing. It used to be that you bought a computer, and if you got it slightly wrong you added memory later. On any Mac made in the last several years you cannot. The memory and the storage are part of the chip package, soldered down, sealed in.
So the buying decision has changed shape. Some choices are now permanent, and almost everything else can be fixed later or does not matter much. Knowing which is which is most of the job.
The two decisions you cannot undo
Memory. Whatever you buy is what that machine has for the rest of its life. There is no upgrade, no aftermarket, no clever workaround. Apple still sells configurations at the bottom of the range that are adequate on the day you buy them and tight by the time the machine is three or four years old.
My general advice for a household machine that needs to last: step up one level from the base memory. It is not a large sum at the counter and it is the difference between a machine you replace in four years and one you replace in seven.
Storage. Same situation, same reasoning, one extra wrinkle: running near-full makes a Mac genuinely slow, not just inconvenient. If your photo library lives on the machine — and for most people it does, whatever they assume about iCloud — the base storage tier fills faster than you expect.
You can hang an external drive off it later, and that is a real option. But an external drive is a thing to remember, plug in, and carry, and most people eventually stop.
What matters much less than the marketing suggests
The chip tier. The Pro and Max versions are real and they are genuinely faster, at video editing, 3D work, and large software builds. For email, documents, photographs, the web, video calls, and everything else a household does, the base chip in the cheapest current Mac is far more computer than the task requires. Most people who pay for the Pro chip will never once put it under enough load to notice.
The model year. Apple's chips have been fast enough for ordinary work for several generations. A machine one or two years old, bought well, is not a compromise.
Screen size, past what you can read. Buy the size you can comfortably see and comfortably carry. Those are the only two considerations and neither of them is about specifications.
Where the actual savings are
Apple's own refurbished store. This is the most under-used thing in the entire purchase. Machines are tested, get a new outer shell and battery where applicable, come with the same one-year warranty as new, and are eligible for AppleCare. The discount is real and the risk is essentially the same as buying new. It is also frequently the only way to get a higher memory configuration for the price of a base new one — which, given everything above, is the whole game.
The catch is stock: you take the configuration that is there this week. If you are not in a hurry, check it repeatedly for a fortnight before buying new.
Education pricing, if anyone in the household qualifies. It is not much, but it is free.
AppleCare, honestly
Not a blanket yes or no.
For a laptop that leaves the house — commutes, travels, sits on café tables near drinks — it is reasonable insurance, because the failures that happen to laptops are drops and spills, and those are expensive out of warranty.
For a desktop that will sit in one room forever, it is much harder to justify. Desktops that survive their first year tend to keep going, and the failure modes are less dramatic.
Either way, you can decide later — there is a window after purchase — so do not let a salesperson make it a same-day decision.
Two practical things at the end
Keep the old machine until the new one is fully working. Not until it starts. Until you have opened every application you actually use, printed something, found your photos, and sent an email from your own address. Migration is usually smooth and occasionally is not, and the old machine is the only insurance policy that costs nothing.
Do not wipe the old one the same day. Give it a fortnight. Something always turns out to have been left behind — a licence key, a saved password, a folder nobody thought about.
When you are genuinely done with it, wipe it properly and recycle it properly. That is its own subject — where to recycle an old computer in Portland, and what "wiped" actually means.
If you want a second opinion before you spend
I am happy to look at what you are considering and tell you whether the configuration makes sense for what you actually do. I do not sell hardware, I have no relationship with any retailer, and I have no reason to talk you into a larger machine than you need. Usually that conversation ends with me suggesting something cheaper than the one you were looking at.
And when the new one arrives, setting it up — moving everything across, getting the printer and the mail and the backups working, and showing you what changed — is a normal visit.
Call (503) 567-5975 or email support@ironwood.help.