We are a Mac family, from phone to tablet and laptop. Everything is integrated and synced up. They almost act like one machine.
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Disabling iMessage on the Mac is really easy to do. I wouldn’t buy a different brand of product because of this. I use apple everything (2 phones - one personal one work issued, iPad, computer). You can pick and choose how they connect. I have disabled iMessage on my computer because it is too distracting. I also don’t have my phones sharing iMessage. I do have my personal phone and iPad sharing it. Bottom line, this is very controllable.
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Yes, the seamless integration between the iPhone and Mac is one of the best parts.
As others said, iMessage notifications on Mac can easily be disabled via notification preferences. Don’t let that be a reason to not get the Mac
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Thanks, everyone. We are looking into it. Appreciate all the insight. We are a mixed family - I’ve got a MacBook Air which I’ve had for years, everyone else has a windows-based PC.
If your kid plan on taking the laptop to classes (taking notes), get one that’s lighter. As a humanities major, he won’t need a lot of compute, but may need more storage for documents, pictures, etc.
We got D a MacBook Pro. She goes to school in a rural area but the bookstore is an authorized Apple retailer with certified technicians. If you buy from them and add AppleCare, they provide free loaners if you need service.
I think I would consider something basic and inexpensive for now since he needs something in the very short term. I would keep an eye on the future and seriously consider getting something that aligns with his future plans, once he knows where he is headed.
I strongly recommend using a cloud based storage service for all your documents and photos so that a) it doesn’t take up huge amounts of space on your laptop and b) you won’t lose it if your laptop crashes . We use Amazon and iCloud for photo storage (backsup directly from your phone) and Google Documents for your documents.
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All this is so helpful. I agree with using cloud storage - really cuts down on the potential for losing important info. Hope this thread is helpful for others as they contemplate buying for next year.
This may be totally off the table but if you are really set on wishing you could have the input of whatever college he lands at in the fall…any chance he could get by with a basic iPad for the last few months of high school? You can get one for $300-400 and then when you decide which computer someone in the household can take over the iPad.
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In the spirit of the above post, another option would be to see if the high school has laptops he can use through the end of the year, or at least until april ish when he has finalized his college decision.
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Agree. I would really try to hold off your doing something like this or getting something very inexpensive and temporary. . Colleges often have plans where you can buy through the college and while not any less expensive the benefit from my kids colleges is that you could get a 2 year warranty and most important give you an emergency loaner if yours needed to go in for repairs.
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We have 2 iphone users and 2 droid/google phones. The three who have laptops have Lenovos (including one iphone user). Other just uses an ipad. Oldest lenovo laptop is 8 years old. I just put a new SSD (ran out of space), additional memory (didn’t really need it but it was cheap and case was open to replace SSD anyway) and battery in it. I use it every day and its totally fine.
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Good to know. We’ve had bad luck with most windows PCs - they have lasted 2 years at most - including the Acer Swift 3 that just died (and it was, and continues to be, highly rated in a lot of publications that rate laptops). I’ve found it frustrating, to say the least, and try not to think of how much $$ I’ve put into these devices!
Yep, many units have questionable quality.
A MacBook might cost 2x as much but it’ll last 3x or 4x longer. You’ll save $$ in the long run (not to mention a ton of frustration).
My son that is graduating from college this May is still using the Dell XPS 15 we bought him, freshman year, through the campus bookstore. He hasn’t had a single issue.
We bought S’s laptop from Costco and D’s from Office Dept with a CCard that gave an extra year warranty. Both kids had their laptops die before the warranty expired.
We were instructed to have the laptops evaluated by the place directed by the CCards and then we got a full refund so we could purchase what we preferred. Both kids ended up buying desktops with monitors and also small netbooks that they used to carry around.
Laptops need to breath to survive. If students leave them on their bed, or couch, while they’re on it will shorten their lives.
This! My son’s campus only offers loaners IF the laptop is purchased through a link/partnered education store. They offer both PCs and Mac.
My kids all have MacBook Airs. My oldest graduated in 2021 and hers is till going strong (purchased summer 2017 before she entered college). We purchased them using Apple’s Education store to get the discounted pricing.
If there is anyway to hold off and somehow find a loaner until college decision is made, that might be beneficial later.
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Students can get discount not just from stores partnered with their colleges. Manufacturers periodically offer educational discounts directly to students (and other educators). My S just recently purchased a new laptop (he wanted a 2-in-1) directly from Samsung (Galaxy Pro 360 2-in-1 with Intel i7, 16GB RAM and 1TB SSD) for $779, which retails for $1,499.
Oh wow! That’s a great deal. Coincidentally, my wife just bought this exact laptop last month (but at full price 
). She loves it.