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

$499
$599.00
+ Free Shipping
+251 Deal Score
280,552 Views
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
Good Deal?

Original Post

Written by
Edited January 17, 2023 at 11:19 AM by
Apple just released the new M2 Mac Mini for $599, however Education Users can get it for $499 which is $100 off the Regular price.

https://www.apple.com/us-edu/shop...c/mac-mini
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Created 01-17-2023 at 08:29 AM by Undisclosed
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Community Wiki

Last Edited by dclive February 20, 2023 at 03:08 PM
Anyone can purchase from the Apple Edu Store. One simply googles "Apple Edu Store", then purchases goods from the store and picks it up or has the goods shipped normally. There is no verification currently. Apple's stated qualifications are to be a teacher, a student in college, or a member of several other education-facing groups.

Apple's SSD "maximum" speeds on the new M2 Mini is as follows:

1500MB/s for 256GB mini; 3000MB/s for 512GB/1TB mini.
3000MB/s for 512GB mini Pro; 6000 MB/s for 1TB++ mini Pro.

And for the vast, vast majority, since random access speed is vastly more important than maximum transfer speeds, none of this matters at all; random access speeds are similar on all models, and are faster than the M1 models before these. If you have a day job where you copy data from the internal drive to an external Thunderbolt 4 high-speed SSD, and you do that 8x5 as part of a job, all day every day, look at the 1TB Pro models. Otherwise, ignore all of this; it simply doesn't matter.

Compared to the previous gen M1 mini, the M2 mini is perhaps 10-15% faster in single core operations and about the same in multicore operations. The graphics operations, for some things, can be up to 40% faster, a significant jump, which is useful in games and in some video and ML applications that use the GPU cores.

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Featured Comments

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
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. 😊
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.

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mrcloseupman
01-17-2023 at 02:13 PM.
01-17-2023 at 02:13 PM.
ugh...no sd card slot....
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spec2
01-17-2023 at 02:14 PM.
01-17-2023 at 02:14 PM.
Quote from pfukjobydn :
It's going to have the same issues as the entry level M2 air, they'll use a single 256 gb SSD and not two 128s, effectively limiting the SSD speed
Limiting the speed...as compared to a spinning platter 5200 RPM hard drive that use to go in the base models only a few years ago? Haha. You guys will always find something to complain about. At $500-600 this is a heck of an entry level computer let alone Mac. No one is buying this model to edit 4K RAW video or a stack of 45mp photos in Lightroom.
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mrcloseupman
01-17-2023 at 02:14 PM.
01-17-2023 at 02:14 PM.
Quote from TheNarratorr :
Nobody will be able to find an equivalent machine more capable than this for less than $1000 minimum

This edits Pro Res, 8K, dominates photo shop etc for $499. It's insane.
Yet has no sd card and can't upgrade ram...
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TheNarratorr
01-17-2023 at 02:15 PM.
01-17-2023 at 02:15 PM.
Quote from mrcloseupman :
Yet has no sd card and can't upgrade ram...

Most people editing videos use an external SSD and the TB 4 ports are more than fast enough for those transfer speeds.
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njoy2shop
01-17-2023 at 02:15 PM.
01-17-2023 at 02:15 PM.
Quote from hotgrease :
Ordered the base model for $499 and I'm sure it will be just fine for me. Thanks!

Awesome deal and I agree with you
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TheNarratorr
01-17-2023 at 02:16 PM.
01-17-2023 at 02:16 PM.
Quote from spec2 :
Limiting the speed...as compared to a spinning platter 5200 RPM hard drive that use to go in the base models only a few years ago? Haha. You guys will always find something to complain about. At $500-600 this is a heck of an entry level computer let alone Mac. No one is buying this model to edit 4K RAW video or a stack of 45mp photos in Lightroom.

But the thing is this M2/8GB model can do all of that and then some!

https://youtu.be/UliJxItLw3I
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mrcloseupman
01-17-2023 at 02:17 PM.
01-17-2023 at 02:17 PM.
Quote from TheNarratorr :
Most people editing videos use an external SSD and the TB 4 ports are more than fast enough for those transfer speeds.
most, is not all...I have a dslr, would love to be able to transfer from my sd card...there's NO reason Apple couldn't include in on a desktop...heck they put it back on their laptops!
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CleverMallard9525
01-17-2023 at 02:18 PM.
01-17-2023 at 02:18 PM.
I have a M1 mini with 8 ram, can't even edit raw photos with both Lightroom and photoshop opened at the same time. 20 chrome tabs is enough to slow it down, don't buy 8 ram version
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Frank8504
01-17-2023 at 02:18 PM.
01-17-2023 at 02:18 PM.
People, please get at least 16gb ram. Although my base m1 mac mini is a very good computer for its price, it constantly freezes when I open too many pages or videos. I'm going to upgrade now.
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mrcloseupman
01-17-2023 at 02:18 PM.
01-17-2023 at 02:18 PM.
Quote from clocks11 :
Surprised these still come base with only 8gb of ram.
how else will Apple keep stockholders happy? Stick Out Tongue
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spec2
01-17-2023 at 02:20 PM.
01-17-2023 at 02:20 PM.
Quote from SurgeArrest :
I Wish Apple was "green"- in deeds and not just words - and provided a retrofit for older retina 5k iMacs to be used as screens for these new Mac Minis...
Such a waste - an excellent 5K screen but a really slow computer by now and Apple quietly removed remote display capability in 2017 I guess to improve their future sales projections.
Yeah, I agree Apple is very inconsistent there, but I think they are making strides esp. with using recycled aluminum and rare earth minerals. FWIW there is a YouTube video of a guy that did a homemade retrofit to turn his 5K iMac into a regular monitor. If you need a project could be interesting. I ended up selling my 5K iMac for a decent price or I might have tried myself.
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gorillatechman
01-17-2023 at 02:25 PM.
01-17-2023 at 02:25 PM.
Quote from mrcloseupman :
most, is not all...I have a dslr, would love to be able to transfer from my sd card...there's NO reason Apple couldn't include in on a desktop...heck they put it back on their laptops!
If having a built in SD card reader is of prime importance to you, then Apple does have a desktop which has a built in SD card reader, the Mac Studio.

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mrcloseupman
01-17-2023 at 02:25 PM.
01-17-2023 at 02:25 PM.
Quote from drblofeld :
Can you add the ram yourself ?
Enough already. Have you not read this thread at all? Or never look at the apple website???
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