- The process to buy a Mac at the Apple Store has changed
- No more preconfigured Mac or MacBook options
- The site takes you step by step through choosing your specifications.
For several years now, if you were looking for one of the best Macs or the best MacBooks available, you would go to Apple’s official website and start with one of the pre-configured options, but that is now changing significantly.
As MacRumors and others discovered, you can no longer start the purchasing process by choosing a preconfigured Mac or MacBook. Instead, start from scratch and choose components one by one, starting with screen size and color.
In other words, buying an Apple computer is now much more like buying one of the best iPhones or the best iPads. It gives you a little more control over your new Mac or MacBook, but requires a little more knowledge about exactly what you want.
There has always been the option to tweak your Mac’s specs, RAM, and storage after choosing a preconfigured computer, but that initial stage has now been abandoned, perhaps for better consistency across Apple’s various product lines.
All options
There has been no official word from Apple as to why this change was implemented, so we don’t know for sure what the idea is here. Another possibility is that people will be more tempted to upgrade to a higher specification if they can see all the available options.
It looks like all the options that were previously available are still here: you can, for example, still choose to have certain professional apps like Final Cut Pro pre-installed on your Mac (although there’s no mention of Apple Creator Studio so far).
All of this is happening as we anxiously await some new MacBook Pros to appear in the very near future, most likely with M5 Pro and M5 Max chips inside. Perhaps the new online ordering system will help users evaluate the different options available.
Head over to the Mac page on Apple’s official website to check out the new process for yourself (you don’t actually have to buy anything to try it out). Is this a good move for the Apple Store or one that really wasn’t necessary? Let us know in the comments.
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