Q: Which Apple MacBook should I buy in December 2024?
A: At least a 16GB MacBook Air (13-inch, M3, 2024). There are lots of 8GB machines around but they won't do for development work or other heavy workloads. The pick of the bunch is at Amazon UK
TL:DR – £1,129 gets you an Apple 2024 MacBook Air 13-inch Laptop with M3 chip from Amazon UK! This is an amazing specification although more storage would be useful. It has a 13.6-inch Liquid Retina Display, 16GB Unified Memory, 512GB SSD Storage, Backlit Keyboard, 1080p FaceTime HD Camera, Touch ID; Space Grey
This note is based on prices in December 2024. Originally released in July 2022 with the M2 Chip and then updated with the M3 Chip the MagSafe 3 equipped MacBook Air is almost a MacBook Pro now with a flat design Liquid Retina display, and an 1080p webcam behind the notch. It sports two Thunderbolt 3/USB 4 ports. This is a great computer and an absolute bargain at the moment. The M3 model is about 20% faster all round than the M2 - the M3 model is what tends to be called a speedbump release - not too different, but a few key changes.
According to Apple "With M4, MacBook Pro is up to 1.8x faster than the 13-inch MacBook Pro with M1 for tasks like editing gigapixel photos, and even more demanding workloads like rendering complex scenes in Blender are up to 3.4x faster".
if you must have the M4 then £1834 gets you an Apple 2024 MacBook Pro Laptop with M4 Pro chip with 12-core CPU and 16-core GPU: Built for Apple Intelligence, with a 14.2-inch Liquid Retina XDR Display, 24GB Unified Memory; 512GB SSD Storage; Space Black.
