MAC Laptop Purchase specs

If your son is going to get into photography and working with graphics and photos on his computer it is a near universal feeling of those that also do so that he is best off with the MacBook Pro. The 2 links provided by Judy and Everton are great links and he'll find quite helpful... I purchased a 13" MacBook Pro for my daughter several years ago when she was changing schools that she was teaching in and it was the best for her drama classes and English classes and has faithfully performed for her for 5+ years. The schools provide laptops, often Apple, for teachers but her preference was using her own as much as possible... In late 2017 I purchased a 17" MacBook Pro for Christmas, and likewise it has performed flawlessly for me every day since then for 3 1/2 years. The newest laptops come with Apple's own M1 chip as they venture away from using the Intell i3/i5 or i7 chipsets and if it is affordable for your son I would recommend going the M1 chip performance if possible as Apple will be focusing attentions on Apps and programs that function well with the M1 chipset, but it is certainly not mandatory to do so. And yup, they are more expensive than buying other laptops but he likely will still be using it 5 to 10 years down the road, so in that respect, a MacBook is a good value.

That said, if this is going to be his first MacBook and he doesn't really need the latest and greatest he can get great deals on recent MacBook Pros that were produced in the last few years, support tends to be 7 years for Apple... He could save himself quite a bit, know that he can get Apple system updates for many years with Apple support. The refurbished laptops from Apple stores have excellent guarantees and saves him quite a bit of money, are assured to be like new in most cases, and tend to be systems that were little used by folks that couldn't get with the change from Microsoft Windows to the Apple OS and returned them to the stores. Best Buy is an Apple recognized support store for them, so if there is not an Apple Store within a reasonable distance, he could go to Best Buy (I bought mine there, but ordered the one for my daughter from Apple) since likely a Best Buy is nearby. I did not purchase the additional Apple support product, but that is an additional cost he could consider if he might be a bit rough in handling his laptop or lugging it about to many places in a back pack. There are many different sites that he could view like this tech assist site to get assistance with the adjustment to the new operating system, if it is new to him (many school systems use Apple so he may already be comfortable with the Apple Mac OS or iPhone or iPad OS and Safari browsers that are standard).... I was 70 and wanting to exercise the cranium and keep the cobwebs down so the change likely will be minimal for him.... Hoping he has fun, that is the critical part of a change, and I'm sure he will thoroughly love working with graphics on his Mac ....