Hi Leon,
Like Greengolfer15 I am not with Laminar Research either; just a flight simmer from downunder.
Greengolfer has given you a large variety of units to chose from. What ever you purchase will depend on your budget.
After your purchase what you need to know is that the software that is provided with the unit will have to sit in the box. Don't touch it. Don't even attempt to configure the unit through your operating system because it won't work either
X-Plane is different to all other "shootem" up games and flight sim packages. Your stick has to be configured in X-Plane. No other way.
Connect your stick to your Mac, turn your Mac on and then bootup X-Plane. No other way at this stage. X-Plane should recognise your unit and show you a picture of that unit. From there you configure the purchased unit.
When configured give the unit a name. Why? You can configure the unit for several different aircraft. Tedious in the beginning but when you fly different aircraft you don't have to configure the stick each time. Just select the stick name for that aircraft in your preferences dropdown menu (top of the screen).
To make it easier to follow have a look at the following links from Michael Brown. Michael operates a business in the USA building PCs predominantly for X-Plane. His business is recognised by Laminar Research as the preferred PC supplier in the USA.
The links can be found at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hU_TuALAlJk and also at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ckGBpIA3lAc and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E2-PJxkYOSQ The second link should be special interest to you.
Watch the videos several times to understand the process. Disregard brand names.
Good luck and welcome to X-Plane.
Glenn