Apple offers to help you choose the best Mac, with new online tool

Apple has added a new tool to its website, to help you choose the best Mac for your needs.

The tool asks you a number of questions – including your desired maximum spend – and then makes recommendations …

The questions are multi-choice, and allow you to select more than one answer. For example, I answered the first question below with Essentials and Creative Hobbies, then gave it a $1500 budget. Here are the questions it asked:

• Tell us, what will you use your Mac for?
• What are your day-to-day essentials? (Asking about the type of things you do daily)
• How do you get creative outside of work? (Photo editing, video creation, etc)
• And where will you use your Mac?
• Will you plug in any of the following? (Displays, external drives, etc)
• Lastly, do you have a budget in mind?

The budget question offered eight tiers:

• Up to $1000
• Up to $1250
• Up to $1500
• Up to $2000
• Up to $2500
• Up to $3000
• Up to $3500
• $3500 and over

With the $1500 target budget, it recommended 13-inch MacBook Air and 15-inch MacBook Air models which used the entire budget (via a 16GB memory upgrade on the cheaper model), and then said that if the budget is flexible it would also recommend the 14-inch MacBook Pro.

You’re offered the option to shop immediately for these machines, to have your results emailed to you, and to edit your answers.

Alternative paths linked are Shop with a Specialist, Compare Mac models, and Explore all models.

The tool is offered on the Mac page, and you can try it out here.