Hi Chantelle, as a graphic designer and long time happy Mac user (about 20 years) I thought I am too biased to put in my opinion here
… – very valid points made by all of you! … So just one thing that you might also put in consideration (and tell your husband
) is that Macs tend to "live" a long time. I bought my MacBookPro in 2006 and of course I'd LOVE to have a retina display and a faster machine, but it's still really ok to work with, no bugs, no viruses, no failures. I do professional image editing and design work on it, even on the relatively (15') small screen. Not suited for big brochure layouts (or posters etc.), where you really need to see a whole double page in detail, but for cards, small flyers etc. it works for me even without an additional monitor.
Just my personal experience of course!
Sometimes you can get "refurbished" machines directly from Apple that have little cosmetic flaws or are repaired machines, but for a much better price and with full guarantee etc. – at least they used to offer this when I bought my laptop. (It was a bit hidden on their shop site
)