I work with drones, which means I work with 4K video. I'm a photography writer, which means I work with photos. I'm just the kind of creative who ought to have a MacBook Pro.
Not really. This honestly isn't that complicated, and editing 4K video isn't particularly taxing by modern standards. They should get the 15" M2 MacBook Air. Probably spring for 512GB storage. It's $1,499 and it's a certain to be a big upgrade over their current Mac. Problem solved.