How to know which Macbook to get?

The latest macbook Air is great for all of those things but they are very small and delicate. If you want the HD retina display (a must-have for a macbook) you will need to find a 2016 model or newer. The Pro's are awesome and are slightly more powerful. The 2013 - 2015 models are great and have a lot of ports (SD card slot for editing photos), two USB ports, a thunderbolt for fast file transfer, and some display ports. Any late 2015 or 2016 model macbooks have a slightly brighter screen but has almost no ports. They only have 1 or 2 USB type-c ports for charging, data transfer, displays, etc. If you plan on using a flash drive, charging your phone, uploading pics, etc you will need to buy a 'anything' to USB type-C adapter.. LAME

For what you want to do with it (which is just basic stuff) the normal/basic one will work fine for you.

I'd only recommend the others if you were making graphic designs, video editing or doing photography as a profession.

Try to get one with an i5 processor though, that will cost a little more but it's a faster processor so it will work better.

However, a basic windows based laptop will give you everything you want to do with it and it will be a lot cheaper. A decent macbook will cost about $1100 (some you can find as an open box or return for $800 or so) but a windows based laptop that has what you need/want it for will run $500 or so. You can find windows based laptops for lower than that but the processors in them won't be as good.

If you don't know, then don't buy any of them! Buy the Surface Book instead.