All you need to know about Macs
More people than ever before are looking at Apple’s computers and laptops to complement their iPhones and iPads, but which one should you buy? Here’s our overview of the current range.
MacBook Air is improbably thin – barely a centimetre in depth with the lid down. The all-aluminium design means that it’s far from fragile, though – this is one of the toughest latops in town.
Historically, ultra-thin meant sacrificing computing power, but not so with the latest Airs. Because these sport second-generation Corei processors from Intel, you can use one as a day-to-day machine, especially if you hook it up to an external keyboard and monitor when at home.
MacBook Pro For all the charms of the MacBook Air, it only comes in 11 or 13inch sizes. If you want a larger laptop, you’ll need a Mac Book Pro. These are slightly more powerful than the Air, and come with larger hard drives, better graphics processors and higher resolution screens. You also get a bigger battery, capable of more than ten hours of life.
iMac This is Apple’s biggest selling desktop, and also one of the best looking computers around. It’s an all-in-one, which means the motherboard, processor and hard drive are sited behind the monitor. That in turn makes it ludicrously easy to set up – with Bluetooth peripherals there’s only one cable to attach for mains power. Everything else, including a decent set of speakers, is built in.
Mac Mini is almost as powerful as the iMac, but takes a more traditional form in that it’s a separate unit from the screen. As the name suggests, it’s absolutely tiny – slightly larger than a DVD case, but not by much. There’s no optical drive, but it is the best value way to get an OSX desktop.
Thunderbolt Not a computer but a new type of port, which has been pioneered by Apple and is slowly appearing in other machines. Thunderbolt is an upgrade to USB for peripherals, except that not only is it quicker than USB, it’s also capable of carrying HD video too. So you can plug a hard drive and a monitor into one tiny port. Very neat and tidy.
Consider buying
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MacBook Air
With a solid state hard drive and fast Core i5 processor, there’s nothing lightweight about the wafer thin Air. It’s the attention to detail that really stands out, though: like the seamless case and large glass mousepad which make it a pleasure to use.
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Apple iMac
The secret of the iMac’s success isn’t in its incredibly modern design or small desktop footprint, it’s the quality of the screen. Every iMac has a professional quality IPS display, which means things look as good as they possibly can.
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MacBook Pro
The 13inch MacBook Pro has all the power of a full desktop PC but in a beautifully stylish all-aluminium portable. It really is elegant – once you’ve used a MacBook Pro it’s hard to go back to a lesser laptop.