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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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. 😊
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I use rtx2070 for the tensor cores for AI, and there's no way that this apple toy can match it.
One of the reasons I got a 9900K and RTX 2070 a few years ago was precisely because I wanted a CPU with quicksync. Totally underrated part of Intel chips.
Last year I got a used 8GB M1 Mac mini off eBay just for toying around with. I hadn't owned a Mac for close to a decade. When I took one of my projects and rendered it on the Mac just as a test, I was blown away that it was practically (technically a little slower) as fast as my main machine.
But as a little tip if it's relevant for your workflow, the new Mac mini has ProRes hardware acceleration. That's a real nice feature for editing and can be directly uploaded to YouTube.
I have a 4k 120hz OLED display. What's the best I can do out of this thing?
Trust me, I'm just as bummed as you are…
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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. 😊
If you're running just a bit over 16GB, I think 24GB is enough. M2 is already a good 50% upgrade over M1 in the GPU department, so if you're generally happy with the M1, then you can save a few bucks with the 24GB M2 rather than the 32GB M2 Pro. (But if you're making a fair amount of money from your job, then it wouldn't hurt to do things faster to save you time over the long run, I guess)
Up until 1/23/2023: Costco 2 year warranty + All State 3 year warranty + 2 year Costco Citi Visa warranty = 7 years.
After 1/23/2023: Costco 2 year warranty + All State 3 year warranty = 5 years.
With that being said, I bought the base M1 for $550 (no taxes, thanks DE!) last March after they announced the Studio and not a Mini with M1 Pro. It's worked perfectly fine aside from all Apple OS' being pretty buggy the last year or two. I have a PC that I switch to since Rosetta gaming isn't great, but for basic day to day stuff, 8GB is fine.
I've adopted a philosophy to always get the cheapest thing from Apple that'll get me where I need to be in order to be productive for 3-5 years. They're really good at price creep, and before you know it, you're spending several hundred more than what you originally wanted to. 8GB/256GB is pathetic in 2022, but it works just fine for my limited computer use these days, and Mac resale value is so good that I'll just buy the next cheapest mini in 2-3 years (hopefully with 16/500) for the same or less than I would've spent on upgrades or a pro processor (and all the benefits of getting a new processor/maybe design and not being stuck with a 3 years old desktop).
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So, again: does anyone know if this price is special for pre-orders? Or is it the normal student discount price for after launch as well?
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