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 think the 16GB/256GB SSD is the sweet spot at $740 taxed to CA
In short, if you NEED more than 8GB, you already KNOW that you need it, because your apps won't run well in 8. If you aren't sure, you'll find that most people get by fine with just 8GB.
This was more true with the m1 macs than the m2s. The m2 256GB drive uses a single flash module instead of the 2 modules in the m1's 256GB, so it reads and writes at about half the speed. That'll have an effect on performance, as you page.
Mine had 8gb. It was fine for everyday use. Faster than most other $500 computers. I wouldn't run Windows in 8GB, but I'd run linux or mac os in it, and chrome os is fine in 4GB.
Don't @ me with an argument. I don't care what sort of computer that you buy. Also, listen to the video posted above, where the intent was to "prove" you need 16GB, but the video concludes that 16GB is best, but 8GB is just fine.
It would have been a total waste of money had I gotten the 16 GB.
Having said that, I might be getting the 32 GB Mac Mini Pro for myself, since I could make use of the RAM, since I like to make music sometimes and run some intensive plugins.
I'm waiting for reviews and tests and comparisons before I make up my mind, because the price is getting into Mac Studio territory and there will be a new model of that coming eventually.
But I realize that my needs are not the same as other people's needs and too many people are projecting their own needs onto others when they make their blanket statements, IMO.
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I guess the question one should ask is, is it worth double the price? For me it isn't and I am a crazy power user (but I don't do media except Camtasia)
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You can use the iMac as an external display GRANTED you have the thunderbolt cable and adapter and running High Sierra or earlier on the iMac.
https://support.apple.c
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