Word on the Macintosh is basically Word for Windows re-compiled to run on the Mac. It's not just 'compatible'. It's not just 'like' Word for the PC. It is Microsoft Word, the same one Microsoft makes for every platform. However:

1. Difference Mac Air And Pro
2. Difference Formative Summative

The $1,299 and $1,499 13-inch MacBook Pro models have two ports, while every other MacBook model has four. If you have a Thunderbolt 3 device, you can plug it directly into the laptop. See what makes each Mac notebook and desktop different. And find the one that’s perfect for your life, your work, and your budget. The operating system has been a long-standing difference between Mac and PC; currently, Mac computers are preinstalled with OS X Lion, while PCs come with Microsoft Windows 7. Between 2007 and 2009, when Windows Vista was Microsoft's operating system, OS X was widely regarded as the better of the two software packages. There was a solution: with the latest 16.x release of Microsoft Office for Mac (released on Jan 18, 2018), there are fewer differences between Excel Windows and Mac. Given that, it is important to know them, especially when you have Mac at home and PC at work (or vice versa).

• Not all of the modules of Word on the PC are included in Word for the Mac.
• Word for the iPhone and Word for the iPad are quite different.
• Word for the web browser (Office 365) is completely different: a very lite version.

The cost and number of person-hours spent developing Word is mind-boggling. It's well over a billion dollars, and there are well over ten thousand person-years of effort in it. Making a new one just for the Mac would have been so expensive that a copy of Word would cost several thousand dollars. You might buy two at that price, but the rest of us couldn't afford it!

Because it is the same software, and Microsoft has a policy of bringing the two versions closer together, the differences will become less over time. Essentially, each version on the PC is matched a year later by a version on the Mac (Microsoft is trying to reduce that gap, recently the Mac Business Unit became part of the main Office Business Unit that makes Office for every platform).

Same File Formats Used in Mac and PC

Mac Office MVP Jim Gordon writes: 'The Microsoft Office file format Open XML (OOXML) is for Word, Excel and PowerPoint files and used on both the Mac and the PC. The file format was accepted by an international standards body. Office 2010 for Windows with service pack 2 or later and Office 2011 for Mac comply strictly with the standard. Office 2008 for Mac and 2007 and 2010 for Windows prior to service pack 2 comply about 98% of the way to the standard (there's a very minor exception in Excel).

'Microsoft also ships a set of fonts with the same names on both Microsoft Office for Mac and PC. The fonts distributed with Mac Office have been very carefully adjusted ('hinted') so documents on the Mac will look and orint the same way as documents using the PC versions of those fonts on the PC. The differences are tiny, but they account for the differences in the way the Mac places pixels on the screen.

'As for having documents be identical when moving from one computer to another there are factors you must consider. This is true PC to PC, PC to Mac, Mac to Mac, and Mac to PC. Microsoft Word is a word processor that has text that flows, unlike a PDF or page layout program. Any difference in font or printer driver from one machine to another has the potential to affect spacing, breaks, window & orphans, paragraphs, etc. To repeat - these changes have nothing to do with Mac to PC, rather they are caused by computer to computer differences.

'Your documents should look the same on the Mac as long as ALL of these conditions are met:

• The documents on the PC originated in Microsoft Word 2010 with service pack 2
• The documents were saved in a current OOXML file format in Word 2010
• The documents used only fonts supplied with Microsoft Office 2010
• Old versions of the same fonts are not installed or active on either the Mac or the PC
• The documents are opened on the Mac in Microsoft Word 2011
• The current versions of the Microsoft Office fonts are active on the Mac
• The printer driver on the Mac behaves identically to the printer driver that was being used on the PC where the documents were saved.

The behavior of Word is identical on the two platforms, provided the above conditions are met, if you want your documents to look alike when moving from one computer to another - regardless of platform. It's the fonts, file formats and printer drivers that are the sticky points when moving a document from one computer to another regardless of platform.'

Rules of Thumb

Having said all this:

• It’s a totally moving target. Every patch Tuesday, something changes.
• Network Templates 'Don’t' work in Mac Word. Due to multiple bugs in the file path resolving and handling mechanism, templates in network directories should not be shared between PC Word and Mac Word. For a long and happy life, copy the templates locally to the user's My Templates folder on the Mac.
• Ribbon Customizations are not available in Mac Word. They will be silently ignored, unless done in code, where they will blow up.
• Mac Word can use ONLY TrueType fonts and OpenType fonts with TrueType outlines. Other fonts will not appear/work or occasionally, crash.
• The color table is markedly different between Mac and PC (and even between PowerPoint and Word/Excel on the Mac). Generally Mac Office has a wider gamut, but Mac monitors have a very different gamma. Unless you are prepared to create color profiles and carefully color-match every device in the chain on both the PC and the Mac, just accept that colors are going to look quite different. It is expensive and time-consuming to fix this, and you will never get it perfect.
• Various commands in Mac Word exist only in the menu bar, which Mac Word still has, or on the toolbars that Mac Word still has. Toolbars remain customizable in Mac Word.
• The same physical printer will often produce different results from the same document depending on whether the printer driver is on a Mac or a PC. If the printer driver is running on a Print Server, results will be closer (but remember: the fonts are different!).
• Design for the Difference, Design for Re-Flow. Do not use hard page breaks anywhere. Minimize section breaks. Use paragraph properties to manage pagination. Assume your user is going to throw an A4 document onto a US Letter paperstock, or vice versa. Assume that a Mac will reflow text by about half a per cent. The people who have real trouble are the ones that have used floating text boxes and spaces to try to line things up: that will produce word-salad. Tossed word-salad…

• Jim says 'The text-flow problem is the same as you will find moving from one PC to another where font versions and default printer driver are different. The fonts provided by Microsoft should provide smooth cross-platform sailing provided the same version of each is the active version on all machines involved.'

Differences in Appearance

On each platform, Word adopts the default appearance of the Operating System. There is almost nothing that you see on the screen that is drawn by Word: on the Mac, the display is created by Mac OS; on the PC, by Windows. It saves money and it saves vast amounts of disk space and processor power.

The only difference you are likely to notice is that if you are in OS X, the window controls are on the opposite side to Windows.

Different Keystrokes

On the Mac the Command (Apple) key is the Control Key in Windows, whereas the Control Key from the Mac is the Right-Click in Windows.

On a Windows keyboard, the Control key is always labeled Ctrl. On a Mac keyboard, expect to find the ⌘ or ? symbol on the Command key. (These characters will not display on the PC; they should look like this:.) This paragraph is a classic example of the cross-platform font difficulties you will experience. There is no default font common to the PC and the Mac that contains both of those characters (in case you are interested, that's 'Lucida Grande', the most wide-ranging of the Mac OS X Unicode fonts).

Word is very right-click-centric. If you do not have a two-button mouse, you will find it is a very worthwhile investment if you are going to spend much time in Word.

The Control-Click (or Right-Click) brings up the 'context menu' wherever you happen to be. In Word almost everything you want to do, or everything you want to know, will appear on the right-click. The menus that appear vary dramatically depending on where your mouse-pointer is.

Word also responds to the scroll-wheel if you have one. (Not all windows; for example preferences and options dialogs do not...). Mouse scroll wheel support in Word pre-X depends totally on the mouse drivers. Microsoft drivers for the Microsoft Mouse generally work (and will often drive other companies' mice!).

In Windows, the keyboard shortcuts are listed in the Help, in a topic surprisingly enough called 'keyword shortcuts'. On the Mac, only some of the keystrokes are listed, in various topics such as 'About using shortcut keys' and 'Select text and graphics'. To find the list on either platform, use Search from the Microsoft Office Help to look for the word 'keyboard'.

You can look at the Key Assignments by using Tools>Customize>Keyboard on either platform. If you select a command, and it has a key assignment, the Customize dialog will tell you what it is. This is a better place to look than the Help, because users can (and should) change their keystrokes to suit themselves on either platform. The Customize dialog also includes a handy Reset button if you decide you do not like the keystrokes you inherited from the previous user on that computer.

Finally, each version of Word enables you to print a list of the currently-assigned keystrokes so you can stick them on the wall. To print them on the Mac:

1. Go to Tools>Macro>Macros
2. In the Macros In pop-up menu, click Word Commands
3. In the Macro name box click ListCommands
4. Click Run
5. In the List Commands dialog, click Current Menu and Keyboard settings and OK
6. On the File menu, click Print.

You do it exactly the same way in Windows, or see here for a more extensive pre-built list.

One keystroke that will catch you out a few times is Command + h. Ctrl + h in Windows is the shortcut for the Replace dialog. On Mac OS X, Command + h hides the application! Use Command + Shift + H for the Replace dialog on OS X.

With OS X, Apple changed some of the keystrokes reserved for the operating system and added some new ones. On each version of Mac OS, Word follows system convention.

Some Mac keyboards do not have a Forward Delete key. Word needs one: there is a difference in Word between Forward Delete and Back Delete. You will strike it most often in tables: in a Table, Delete becomes 'Clear' which removes the cell contents without removing the cells. Use Cut to delete the cells themselves. Back Delete will remove text within a cell but has no effect if more than one cell is selected. If you are on a Mac laptop, the Forward Delete key is probably Function + Delete.

The Mac has an Option Key, Windows does not have an equivalent. Generally what you expect from the Option key will be on the Control Key in Windows.

Three very commonly-used shortcuts are Command + c (Copy), Command + v (Paste), and Command + s (Save). On Windows these are Ctrl + v, Ctrl + c, and Ctrl + s.

A keystroke that may catch you out a few times is Clear Formatting: on the PC it's Ctrl + q to restore paragraph formatting to that of the underlying style, and Ctrl + Space Bar to restore character (font) formatting. On Mac OS 9, they are the same. On Mac OS X, these are Command + Option + q and Ctrl + Space Bar.

Later versions of Word have an Edit>Clear>Formats command on the Menu bar, which will save you trying to remember the other two. However, note that Clear>Formats resets the formatting back to the formatting of Normal Style (it applies Normal Style) whereas the individual commands simply reset a paragraph to the formatting of the current style.

Different Menus

One thing that will catch you out all the time is that on the Mac, Word adopts the Mac convention of having a Preferences command. In OS X it's on the Application (Word) menu, in OS 9 it's on the Edit menu, again, following the OS convention. On the PC, this is Tools>Options on the Tools menu. It's the same thing, the tabs are exactly the same inside.

Word on the Mac still has a Work menu you can put on your menu bar; this has been replaced by the Task Pane (which is nowhere near as convenient) in later versions of PC Word.

Mac Word also has a Font menu which the PC lacks.

Different Print Mechanism

In order to display a document in WYSIWYG mode, Word needs to know a lot about the capabilities of the printer the document will eventually be sent to.

In Windows this is very simple: Word reads all the information it needs from the printer driver for the printer set as the Windows default. On the Mac, it attempts to do the same thing, but the mechanism is vastly more complex. Look here for more detail.

Some Features Didn't Make it

Making software is a depressingly manual activity. Every line of code has to be planned, typed, and checked. There are more than 30 million of them in Microsoft Office. There simply was not enough time and money to bring all the features of PC Word across to the Mac. And some of them we wouldn't want, anyway! Most of the omissions are of interest only to solution developers:

• Font embedding is not supported on the Mac.
• Customized toolbar buttons are supported on the Mac, but the Icon Editor is missing.
• Speech recognition is not available.
• HTML support in Word for the Mac is not at the same level as it is in Word on the PC: many web pages load as a shattered mess. The code stripping utility HTMLFilter2 available for the PC is not available for the Mac.
• Word on the PC has a menu item enabling you to Export to Compact HTML. On the Mac, this is an option on the File>Save As Web Page menu option named Save only display information into HTML. The other option, Save entire file into HTML is the equivalent of the Word PC's Save As Web Page; it saves a Word document expressed in XML. Note: if you 'Save only display information', the file looks the same, but the structural information and content that enable Word to reconstruct a Word document from the XML file has been removed.

Fonts Can be a Problem

On the PC, you can use characters with impunity: if the PC does not have the font, it will find the closest font that contains the character. On the Mac, in Word 2004 and above, you can use the exact same range of characters because Word 2004 is running in Unicode; however, because you cannot embed the font in the document, you need to make sure that each character that you use exists in one or more of the Unicode fonts your recipient has. If in doubt, for PC compatibility, use only the fonts that Microsoft supplies.

Microsoft includes a pack of fonts with Mac Office that have been very carefully hinted to display and print the same on the Mac as the same-named fonts do on the PC. Although the Mac can happily use PC fonts, the rendering of those may be subtly different, particularly on the high-res Mac displays.

Jim Gordon reports that he has no problems at all with the following list of fonts:

Arial

Calibri

Cambria

Candara

Consolas

Constantia

Corbel

Times New Roman

Verdana

Meiryo

Jim says 'Office for Mac has a very nice feature to make font compatibility a cinch. When you choose a font using the Home tab of the Ribbon, the first item in the list is Font Collections. The easy way to ensure compatibility is to choose fonts from the Windows Office Compatible font collection submenu.

'If you have company specific fonts they must be installed onto each Mac in order for Mac Word to use them. There is no work-around to the restrictions John mentioned. Fonts embedded by Windows Word are ignored.

'I haven't had problems with cross-platform differences with our HP, Epson, and Lanier printer drivers, but we do test for differences before purchasing so that we don't run into such problems.

While there's no interface on Mac Word to make Font Themes and Color Themes (you can do it in PowerPoint, or with VBA), Themes made on PCs will work on a Mac.

The Advanced Typography settings you can apply in Mac Word will display in Windows Word, but there's no Advanced Typography interface in Word for Windows, so you have to use Mac Word for this feature.

VBA a Level Behind

The VBA level in Mac Word is markedly less capable than in PC Word: around the level of Word 2003 but with missing bits.

Visual Basic for Applications on the Mac is at version 6 (on the PC, this is Word 2000 level of VBA); Word 2013 on the PC is at version 7. Code you write on the Mac will run on the PC if you are careful. Expect code you write on the PC in Word 2000 or above to generate compile- or run-time errors on the Mac.

Active-X controls will not work on Macs. 'Legacy' controls will work. Some of the latest controls from 2103 won't work on a Mac.

Developers should read George Clark's article for more detail.

ActiveX is not supported on the Mac at all. If you create userforms, use only the controls provided in the Forms Toolbar on the Mac, anything else you bring from the PC will generate an error when the user opens the document.

Digital Signatures are not supported on the Mac, and neither is code signing. You will not be able to open a signed project in Mac Word. If the signature prevents you from changing a macro, the code will be execute-only on the Mac.

AppleScript is not available on the PC. VBA is very powerful: investigate scripting your application from AppleScript with VBA, using the 'Do Visual Basic' command.

The VBA Integrated Development Environment is severely cut back on the Mac. If you plan to develop much VBA, invest in a copy of Virtual PC: the productivity you gain is enormous. Hint: Use Windows 7 and NTFS disk format.

With both the MacBook Air and MacBook Pro having been refreshed in 2020, it's a tempting time to buy – but which is the best balance for your needs?

We'll help you work out which is the better buy for an Apple laptop: the cheaper, lighter option or the more expensive, powerhouse option? We'll explain everything you need to know.

• Read our full Apple MacBook Air 2020 review

Of course what's right for one laptop buyer isn't necessarily right for another, and so we'll break down the differences between these two ranges so you know exactly what you're looking at. You'll also need to decide how you're going to be using your new computer, so you can make the best decision based on the information we'll give you.

• Best Apple MacBook Air deals – find the cheapest price
• Best Apple MacBook Pro deals – the latest offers
• Best monitors for MacBook Pro – extend your working space

MacBook Air vs MacBook Pro: Design & usability

The MacBook Air is the smaller and lighter laptop of the two... hence the name. When closed, at its thinnest point it's 0.41 cm thick, compared with 1.49cm (0.59 inches) for the 13-inch MacBook Pro and 1.62 cm (0.64 inches) for the 16-inch MacBook Pro. However, it's worth noting that the MacBook Air is actually 1.61cm (0.63 inches) at its thickest point, so it's actually slight thicker than the 13-inch MacBook Pro. But its tapered design leaves it feeling slimmer and more handle-able overall.

The MacBook Air weighs in at 1.29kg (2.8 pounds), compared with 1.37 g (3.02 pounds) for the 13-inch Pro and 2kg (4.3 pounds) for the 16-inch Pro. Again, note that the difference between the MacBook Air and 13-inch MacBook Pro isn't huge.

All three models use Apple's latest generation of keyboard, which is a crucial improvement over previous models. You may have heard of reliability concerns around Apple's keyboards over the last few years, but now 100% of its laptops use a new design for the mechanics of the keys, and it's both more comfortable and (based on use so far) less likely to break than previous models.

The keys have a fairly short travel, but you can feel the movement, and there's great feedback, so accuracy is no problem.

All the models have excellent trackpads, too – this is one area Apple nailed a long time ago, and never missteps on.

The 16-inch MacBook Pro finds room for noticeably bigger and more impressive speakers than you get on either the MacBook Air or the 13-inch MacBook Pro… or almost any laptop we've tried, really. They're genuinely impressive, and not in a mealy-mouthed 'well, they're good for laptop speakers' way. They use an advanced design with two opposing drivers in each side, one facing up, one facing down, so that the vibrations from each will cancel each other out, so you get big noise levels without feeling any shake in the frame. Some high-end speakers use this setup, including the Bang & Olufsen Beosound Balance.

The MacBook Air and smaller MacBook Pro also have good speakers, but now we're back into for laptops territory. The stereo separation is impressive, though, and you certainly won't feel like you're missing out when it comes to sounds.

The MacBook Pro models also have new microphone arrays that Apple's calls 'studio quality', though we'd still probably suggest a real microphone for your hit podcast. However, in our new world of video-conferencing all the time, they're a big improvement over most built-in mics.

There are also some differences in terms of the ports you've got available, which will get on to shortly. Finally, while all these laptops come in either silver or space grey, only the MacBook Air offers a gold option – and it's a really nice colour.

MacBook Air vs MacBook Pro: display

The comparison is really close when it comes to the display. Both the MacBook Air and the smaller MacBook Pro have a 13.3-inch screen running at a 2560x1600 resolution – though the Pro does use a wider P3 colour gamut, and is slightly brighter (500 nits versus 400 nits).

The difference doesn't matter much if you're just doing document work (though the extra brightness makes the Pro easier to see in bright light conditions, such as sunlight), but the broader colours and boosted brightness matter for creative work.

The larger MacBook Pro sports a 16-inch screen running at a 3072x1920 resolution (with the wider colour gamut and extra brightness), which gives a lot more room to work.

The single most important thing (in our opinion) is that all three models support True Tone, which changes the colour balance of the screen to match the lighting of the room you're in, so you don't get that off-putting thing of a screen appearing blue when the light around you is yellow. This is kinder on the eyes in the evening – we wouldn't want to live without it.

MacBook Air vs MacBook Pro: specs and options

Apple gives you a plethora of options when it comes to kitting out the latest MacBook Airs and MacBook Pros. The MacBook Air first: you start off with a 1.1GHz dual-core 10th-gen Intel Core i3 processor (Turbo Boost up to 3.2GHz), 8GB of RAM, and 256GB of storage. That's for the base version, which costs £999/$999/AUS$1,599.

There is a model that's a step up, though, giving you a quad-core 1.1GHz 10th-gen Intel Core i5 processor (Turbo Boost to 3.5GHz), 8GB of RAM and 512GB of storage. That costs £1,299/$1,299/AUS$1,599 and we think it's a good option if you want a bit more head-room for your tasks. The base version is good for web browsing, document work and basic photo and video editing, for example, but if you wanted to get fancier with Photoshop, 4K video or programming then we'd suggest the quad-core version. Getting the extra power plus double the storage for that upgrade fee seems like a good deal to us.

You can configure your MacBook Air further – you can go up to 16GB of RAM and a maximum of 2TB of storage. Graphics are provided by integrated Intel Plus chips on all 2020 MacBook Air models, which is a significant step up over previous versions of the Air.

• Browse all MacBook Air options at the Apple Store UK

• Browse all MacBook Air options at the Apple Store US

• Browse all MacBook Air options at the Apple Store Australia

The 13-inch MacBook Pro is the next step up in power. At its cheapest, you get a 1.4GHz quad-core 8th-gen Intel Core i5 processor (Turbo Boost up to 3.9GHz), 8GB of RAM, 256GB or 512GB of storage, and integrated Intel Iris Plus Graphics 645, all from £1,299/£1,299/AUS$1,999. These lower-end versions of the MacBook Pro 13-inch haven't had a spec upgrade this year – only the keyboard was improved.

However, at the higher end, the MacBook Pro 13-inch has had a very nice upgrade in 2020. Starting from £1,799/$1,799/AUS$2,999, you get a 2.0GHz Intel 10th-gen Core i5 quad-core processor, the latest Intel Iris Plus graphics, 16GB of faster RAM, and 512GB or 1TB of storage.

Difference Mac Air And Pro

• Browse all 13-inch MacBook Pro models at the Apple Store UK

• Browse all 13-inch MacBook Pro models at the Apple Store US

• Browse all 13-inch MacBook Pro models at the Apple Store Australia

The top-end 16-inch MacBook Pro configurations start out at a 2.6GHz 6-core 9th-gen Intel Core i7 processor (Turbo Boost up to 4.5GHz), 16GB of RAM, 512GB of storage, and Radeon Pro 5300M 4GB graphics. That'll cost you £2,399/$2,399/AUS$3,799.

The next model up gets you a 2.3GHz 8-core 9th-gen Intel Core i9 (Turbo Boost up to 4.8GHz), 16GB of RAM, 1TB of SSD and Radeon Pro 5500M 4GB graphics. This version costs £2,799/$2,799/AUS$4,399.

If you really want to trick the laptop out, you can go all the way up to a 2.4GHz 8-core 9th-gen Intel Core i9 processor (Turbo Boost up to 5.0GHz), 64GB of RAM, a massive 8TB of storage, and Radeon Pro 5600M 8GB graphics.

• Browse all 16-inch MacBook Pro models at the Apple Store UK

Difference Formative Summative

• Browse all 16-inch MacBook Pro models at the Apple Store US

• Browse all 16-inch MacBook Pro models at the Apple Store Australia

We should note that 16-inch MacBook Pro hasn't received a full upgrade in 2020, and is rumoured to get one in towards the end of the year.

That top-end 16-inch MacBook Pro is an absolute beast, but overkill unless you're rendering video or doing something equally demanding – for most casual computing use, the lower specs on the MacBook Air and 13-inch MacBook Pro will do you just fine.

• Here's our definitive list of the best laptops of the moment

MacBook Air vs MacBook Pro: features and ports

All these MacBooks are going to come running the latest versions of macOS, Catalina. They'll also get all free updates for the foreseeable future, including the new OS, Big Sur, that we expect to land in October 2020 most likely. From a software point of view, they all have the same features and capabilities, and access to the same applications.

The less powerful components of the MacBook Air equal longer battery life: Apple quotes 12 hours of wireless web use and 13 hours of iTunes video watching. That beats out the quoted 10 hours of wireless web use and 10 hours of iTunes video watching for the MacBook Pro models.

In practice, it's common for people to see lower battery life than that from the MacBook Pros, but not because of any deception with Apple's figures – it's just that those are the machines people use for more demanding software, and the more hardcore an app is, the more quickly it drains your power.

The MacBook Air features two Thunderbolt 3 (USB‑C) ports, plus a 3.5mm headphone jack. That matches the cheaper versions of the 13-inch MacBook Pro, but if you buy the more powerful versions of the 13-inch MacBook Pro (with the 10th-gen processors) you instead get four Thunderbolt 3 (USB-C) ports and a headphone jack.

With the 16-inch MacBook Pro, all models come with four Thunderbolt 3 (USB-C) ports, plus a headphone jack. You might need a dongle or a hub (or two) whichever model you opt for.

It's worth noting that all of the MacBook Pros include the Touch Bar, and the MacBook Air doesn't. The Touch Bar is a touchscreen that runs across the top of the keyboard in place of the function keys, and it can display custom controls depending on the app you're in – or it can display a set of standard controls of your choosing.

These can be quite handy when they're shortcuts or give you access to fine-grained sliders or other options that would normally be buried a couple of clicks deep. But we wouldn't call the Touch Bar essential by any means – a lot of people just don't use it.

Both the MacBook Air and MacBook Pro models include Touch ID fingerprint security. That makes life much easier for logging in, and for verifying your identity for online security.

MacBook Air vs MacBook Pro: pricing and verdict

Both the MacBook Air and the MacBook Pro will give you a top Apple laptop experience – it's just a question of how much power you're going to need (and how light you want your laptop to be while you're lugging it around).

At the top end, the 16-inch MacBook Pro can be kitted out with ludicrous amounts of power, memory and storage, and it gives you that extra screen real estate to work with as well.

The 13-inch model offers an impressive level of performance from its upper-tier models too, though you don't get the discrete graphics options that you do with the bigger laptop. The cheaper 13-inch models are certainly capable, but it's a shame that internals haven't been upgraded to newer options.

On the other hand, the MacBook Air is lightweight and a little bit cheaper too (check out the widgets on this page for the latest prices). If you're more of a casual computer user then you can save yourself some money with a cheaper option – remember the macOS software is the same on all these models.

The scale of price and performance is clear to see as you move up from the MacBook Air to the MacBook Pro, despite there being some potential crossover where the higher-tier MacBook Air has a quad-core processor that appears not far off the power of the base level 13-inch MacBook Pro's processor.

But the more constrained chassis of the new Air means that processor will hit its heat limits fairly quickly when taxed hard, while the MacBook Pro has more room to manoeuvre. And if you step up the higher-tier 13-inch MacBook Pro, you get a major boost in speed even while staying at quad-core.

But the good news is that there are plenty of configuration options along the way, so you should be able to find an Apple laptop that meets your needs.

You can find the lowest prices on any given model of MacBook Pro or MacBook Air using our price finders below – you can use the Filters to specify the specs you want.