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frontpageUndisclosed posted Jan 17, 2023 04:29 PM
frontpageUndisclosed posted Jan 17, 2023 04:29 PM

Apple Education Discount: Apple Mac Mini w/ M2 Chip Pre-Order: 8GB RAM, 256GB SSD

+ Free Shipping

$499

$599

16% off
Apple Store
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Deal Details
Apple via Apple Education Store is offering eligible Students/Educators: Apple Mac Mini Pre-Order w/ M2 Chip for $499. Shipping is free.

Thanks to community member Undisclosed for sharing this deal.

Note, this item will be available starting 1/24/23. You must qualify for the education discount (more information) to get this price.

Specs
  • Apple M2 Octa-Core Processor (4x high-performance + 4x high-efficiency)
  • 10-Core Integrated GPU
  • 8GB Unified Memory
  • 256GB Integrated NVMe PCIe Solid State Drive
  • 802.11ax WiFi 6E / Bluetooth 5.3
  • Ports:
    • 2x USB Type-A
    • 2x Thunderbolt 4
    • 1x HDMI
    • 1x Headphone Jack
    • 1x Gigabit Ethernet

Editor's Notes

Written by qwikwit | Staff
  • About this deal:
    • This offer is $100 lower (16.69% savings) than the $599 list price.
    • See forum thread for additional discussion.
  • About this product:
    • Mac mini with M2 supports up to two displays.
  • About this store:
    • You have 14 calendar days to return an item from the date you received it. See the return policy details here.

Original Post

Written by Undisclosed
Community Notes
About the Poster
Deal Details
Community Notes
About the Poster
Apple via Apple Education Store is offering eligible Students/Educators: Apple Mac Mini Pre-Order w/ M2 Chip for $499. Shipping is free.

Thanks to community member Undisclosed for sharing this deal.

Note, this item will be available starting 1/24/23. You must qualify for the education discount (more information) to get this price.

Specs
  • Apple M2 Octa-Core Processor (4x high-performance + 4x high-efficiency)
  • 10-Core Integrated GPU
  • 8GB Unified Memory
  • 256GB Integrated NVMe PCIe Solid State Drive
  • 802.11ax WiFi 6E / Bluetooth 5.3
  • Ports:
    • 2x USB Type-A
    • 2x Thunderbolt 4
    • 1x HDMI
    • 1x Headphone Jack
    • 1x Gigabit Ethernet

Editor's Notes

Written by qwikwit | Staff
  • About this deal:
    • This offer is $100 lower (16.69% savings) than the $599 list price.
    • See forum thread for additional discussion.
  • About this product:
    • Mac mini with M2 supports up to two displays.
  • About this store:
    • You have 14 calendar days to return an item from the date you received it. See the return policy details here.

Original Post

Written by Undisclosed

Community Voting

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Top Comments

Fortnite
282 Posts
66 Reputation
After reading all the discussions about ram amount, I'm just curious how many browser tabs people keep open at a time during a typical day.

POLL
How many browser tabs do you keep open?

"Like" for 10 or less
"Funny" for 11 to 20
"Helpful" for 21 and above
StrongCaption2242
51 Posts
34 Reputation
I have a M1 Mac Mini with 16GB Ram, I'm a photographer and I've been running out of system Memory fairly often recently due to working between several applications. I'll have Adobe Bridge open with a session open, will open the a few raw files in Photoshop. I might be doing a head swap so there's 3 files open, in Photoshop, then I want to do a few face edits in Portrait Pro Studio Max, so I open that and I get an error that I've run out of application memory (RAM) oh and I have FIrefox open with 56 tabs open as well. So I usually either close Bridge until I'm done working in Portrait Pro, and then after I've saved the file I'll close Portrait Pro and re-open Bridge, and that works, but it's mostly just due to my messy multitasking workflow running multiple RAM intensive programs while shooting RAW files with a 50MP sensor.

So, as for me, I just ordered a Mac Mini M2 pro with the RAM upgraded to 32GB.

So if you run programs like I do, and you have Illustrator, InDesign, and Premiere or Final Cut Pro all running simultaneously with chrome or firefox and perhaps a music streaming service open too, then you might want to go for the 32GB option. If however, you work in a only 2 or maybe 3 programs simultaneously you should be fine, the most bang for your buck is gonna be the M2 with the 16GB RAM option, and just close the extra programs you're not working if you should ever run out of RAM. The Video programs can be kind of RAM heavy so if you or your church has the budget I'd go with the M2 pro with the 32GB of RAM, but you could probably do what you want to with the M2 with 16GB so long as you only work in Premiere and and After Effects and don't have Photoshop and InDesign also running, because I think each of those programs requires about 4GB of RAM when you have a project open in them.

Okay so I just checked my activity monitory and with Photoshop minimized and running in the background with no open projects it's using 1.35GB of RAM. I opened one 13MB (yes megabyte) JPEG file and the RAM use for Photoshop jumped to 4.24GB. I've closed that 13MB file and Photoshop is still using 4.14GB of RAM. I also have a session open in Bridge, and just looking through the photos in the session it's using up 3.45GB of RAM. Now I like to open a Raw image in Camera Raw before opening it in Photoshop. So if I open up one of my RAW files in Camera RAW (which is still a subprogram of Bridge) Bridge's RAM jumps to 6GB, if I pull a few sliders and do a single subject selection Adobe Bridge then takes up 8.94GB of RAM So you see where I can quickly run out of RAM.

My guess is you'll want the 32GB option, but you could make do with 16GB if you have to.

I hope this long winded comment can help you (and other creatives) in your decision making process. 😊
santy83
2389 Posts
572 Reputation
FYI..Base model M2 still supports only 2 monitors , which still should be good enough for most users .Also HDMI 2.1 not supported on base M2.

875 Comments

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Jan 17, 2023 08:49 PM
2,326 Posts
Joined May 2015
mischlepJan 17, 2023 08:49 PM
2,326 Posts

Our community has rated this post as helpful. If you agree, why not thank mischlep

Quote from nba2k18 :
can MacOS split 4 open windows into quadrants like Windows 11?

or is that a 2029 year slated release?
It's called Spaces [apple.com]
1
Jan 17, 2023 08:49 PM
408 Posts
Joined Sep 2011
coldfusionJan 17, 2023 08:49 PM
408 Posts
Quote from nba2k18 :
can MacOS split 4 open windows into quadrants like Windows 11?

or is that a 2029 year slated release?
You can do that (and much more) with an app called Magnet.
Jan 17, 2023 08:50 PM
410 Posts
Joined Nov 2011

This comment has been rated as unhelpful by Slickdeals users.

Jan 17, 2023 08:50 PM
948 Posts
Joined Jul 2007
phatparentsJan 17, 2023 08:50 PM
948 Posts
Quote from raspino :
Bought one with upgraded memory to 16gb. Used $600 gift cards from my citi rewards card. Thanks OP!
How did u apply the Apple gift cards to your purchase? Add them to your Apple wallet and use Apple Pay on checkout?
1
Jan 17, 2023 08:51 PM
83 Posts
Joined May 2017
SDUser2020Jan 17, 2023 08:51 PM
83 Posts
Quote from rocketman80 :
This seems like an amazing deal
this seems like a paid response :-)
7
Jan 17, 2023 08:51 PM
823 Posts
Joined Jul 2021
YouDontNeedItJan 17, 2023 08:51 PM
823 Posts
Quote from 404user :
Not that it makes this at all a bad deal, but do keep in mind that this is limited to 1 monitor
Wrong. M1 and M2 both support 2 monitors. In a MacBook, the built-in monitor counts against that limit of 2 leaving just 1 external. The Mac Mini has no built-in monitor and can therefore drive 2 external monitors.
Jan 17, 2023 08:52 PM
823 Posts
Joined Jul 2021
YouDontNeedItJan 17, 2023 08:52 PM
823 Posts
Quote from coldfusion :
You can do that (and much more) with an app called Magnet.
So, "no" then.
8

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Jan 17, 2023 08:54 PM
948 Posts
Joined Jul 2007
phatparentsJan 17, 2023 08:54 PM
948 Posts
To those who are adding more RAM… is it also worth it to increase the size of the SSD to 512 Gb? Or is RAM the only upgrade worth getting?
Jan 17, 2023 08:55 PM
286 Posts
Joined Feb 2018
HfzsdlsJan 17, 2023 08:55 PM
286 Posts
What do you suggest ram for davinci resolve? My base m1 ipad pro 11 actually running davinci without issues but just wanted to see if i need 16gb ram?
Jan 17, 2023 08:56 PM
823 Posts
Joined Jul 2021
YouDontNeedItJan 17, 2023 08:56 PM
823 Posts
Quote from Tacosaurus_Rex :
If I'm just using this for casual browsing with the occasional huge excel files, am I good without the RAM upgrade?
Does that workload occupy 8 or more GB in memory at any given time? If "no" then sure.

"Unified Memory" is just Apple's way of saying "shared memory". Access is fast but Apple hasn't done any magic which allows a byte in memory to hold more than 8 bits.
1
Jan 17, 2023 08:56 PM
408 Posts
Joined Sep 2011
coldfusionJan 17, 2023 08:56 PM
408 Posts
Quote from YouDontNeedIt :
So, "no" then.
Sure if solving the problem for $2 is an insurmountable hurdle for you?
1
Jan 17, 2023 08:56 PM
888 Posts
Joined Jun 2011
davin900Jan 17, 2023 08:56 PM
888 Posts
Quote from TVM925 :
Just web surfing that it do i need 8gb more?
You'll be fine just web surfing. Most reviews I've seen of Apple Silicon have said that 8GB is fine for most people. M1 and M2 are very powerful and make up for it in most cases.
Original Poster
Pro
Jan 17, 2023 08:58 PM
5,376 Posts
Joined Aug 2009
UndisclosedJan 17, 2023 08:58 PM
Original Poster
Pro
5,376 Posts
I might end up getting a base one with 8gb ram for the office as I just built a new computer with i7-13700k thinking that this wouldn't come out for a while but it did, too late to return all the parts or else I would have gotten the M2 Pro one with 32GB ram…

Too many options to choose from, i'm getting hung up mostly about 8gb vs upgrading the ram…

Time to revive the 8gb ram discussion..
1
Jan 17, 2023 09:01 PM
823 Posts
Joined Jul 2021
YouDontNeedItJan 17, 2023 09:01 PM
823 Posts
Quote from mischlep :
It's called Spaces [apple.com]
No, it's not. "Spaces" is just what Apple calls their virtual desktops implementation which isn't at all what they asked about.

They want to know if MacOS can fill the screen with 4 windows simultaneously by precisely and dynamically resizing the windows like the Windows 11 OS can. The answer to that question is "no".
4

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Jan 17, 2023 09:02 PM
139 Posts
Joined Nov 2014
insp1reJan 17, 2023 09:02 PM
139 Posts
Quote from giantbruin :
$270 trade in value for M1 Mac Mini. $230+tax worth it to upgrade?
Not bad, for sure. Depends on if you want to bypass the sometimes-hassle of selling on marketplace for $340-475 depending on where you are

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