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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
280,334 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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Deal
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+251
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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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Joined Jun 2017
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> bubble2 249 Posts
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stan1337
02-10-2023 at 09:53 PM.
02-10-2023 at 09:53 PM.
How to prove ur a student or teacher
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SmilingClover2913
02-11-2023 at 01:13 AM.
02-11-2023 at 01:13 AM.
I don't get any of these comments. I program on Xcode that's preview and sim at the same time. I also have a 20k row long excel sheet open while surfing the web. That's video, searching and all that jazz. Never have I ran into memory problems and thats with a measly 8gb 256gb m1 air.

If you're building an app while 4k h.265 encoding AND editing multi thousand line long excel sheet. This will get SLOW. Think about it. If you're boomer'ing you know facebook/cnbc/a bit of fox/cnn while snooping on your grandson tiktok… this is fine. 🤨
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Last edited by SmilingClover2913 February 11, 2023 at 01:15 AM.
Joined Mar 2008
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dclive
02-11-2023 at 07:57 PM.
02-11-2023 at 07:57 PM.
Quote from stan1337 :
How to prove ur a student or teacher
How to show you've not been reading the comments posted here

Once again: No check at Apple Store.
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eko427
02-12-2023 at 06:11 PM.
02-12-2023 at 06:11 PM.
Dumb question - can I use both an Apple gift card and a credit card to make up the difference or does the gift card have to cover the whole amount? I'm guessing the former but this part when I check out is a little confusing:

Quote :
You can use up to 8 Apple Gift Cards. Apple Gift Cards can't be used with PayPal or split credit card payments.
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leo0791
02-15-2023 at 09:06 PM.
02-15-2023 at 09:06 PM.
Quote from eko427 :
Dumb question - can I use both an Apple gift card and a credit card to make up the difference or does the gift card have to cover the whole amount? I'm guessing the former but this part when I check out is a little confusing:
You can choose as you like the portion that you want for giftcard or credit card
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Nattefrost
02-17-2023 at 06:07 PM.
02-17-2023 at 06:07 PM.
Quote from TidalWaveOne :
Yes, I agree 16GB will probably be more than enough. I was just saying it was something to consider.

And if they ever need more, selling a 16GB Mac Mini probably won't be too hard (like you said), or they can keep it as a backup or side machine while they get something else, or hand it down to a family member. When I upgrade my main computer, I keep my previous one and still use it for other things.

Oh, I have 32GB in my last 2 machines which is more than enough but those are Windoze PCs and it seems they are much less efficient with RAM than M1/M2 Macs. I would want at least 16GB in any Windoze machine I use regularly for work... 8GB might cut it doing light work on Windoze but I strongly prefer at least 16GB.

I guess 16GB on Windoze is like 8GB on a M1/M2 Mac Mini.

So yeah, the 16GB is probably the better option but one should keep in mind that RAM cannot be upgraded later but storage can... and some (but not most) people could actually use that additional RAM.
Who is using 16gb in windows? Min is 32gb and I've been using 64gb for awhile.
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Joined Aug 2015
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dealstern
02-17-2023 at 06:08 PM.
02-17-2023 at 06:08 PM.
slow 256GB SSD as seen in Macbook air and pro M2 models?
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tenderidol
02-17-2023 at 06:23 PM.
02-17-2023 at 06:23 PM.
Quote from dealstern :
slow 256GB SSD as seen in Macbook air and pro M2 models?
Oh brother! Enough with this "slow SSD" bullshit. Read a couple of pages back about what it really is and if you belong to the tiny percentage of people who may experience that, before just repeating click-bate YouTube titles and "reviews".
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BlackFire
02-17-2023 at 06:41 PM.
02-17-2023 at 06:41 PM.
Would this $499 model be good for acting as an Emby server including transcoding 4k for watching on a Roku? (would have external disk as HDD)
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ZForce915
02-19-2023 at 08:18 AM.
02-19-2023 at 08:18 AM.
For anyone still lingering around this thread…

Can anyone use the Apple Education site? I can't check out or sign into the site, I get a page cannot be found error.
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dclive
02-19-2023 at 09:04 AM.
02-19-2023 at 09:04 AM.
Quote from ZForce915 :
For anyone still lingering around this thread…

Can anyone use the Apple Education site? I can't check out or sign into the site, I get a page cannot be found error.
Google "Apple Edu Store"
Go there.
Buy.
Done.

Anyone can, as has been said here repeatedly.
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ZForce915
02-19-2023 at 02:07 PM.
02-19-2023 at 02:07 PM.
Quote from dclive :
Google "Apple Edu Store"
Go there.
Buy.
Done.

Anyone can, as has been said here repeatedly.

I'm aware of the process, I'm suggesting it's not working. Try getting to the payment page right now, can you?
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dclive
02-19-2023 at 02:57 PM.
02-19-2023 at 02:57 PM.
Quote from ZForce915 :
I'm aware of the process, I'm suggesting it's not working. Try getting to the payment page right now, can you?
Works perfectly. With a $499 mini in the bag, I can select a store then put in my info then get to a point where I need to key in the CC#.

Stopped there....seems to work.
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dclive
02-19-2023 at 03:01 PM.
02-19-2023 at 03:01 PM.
Quote from tenderidol :
Oh brother! Enough with this "slow SSD" bullshit. Read a couple of pages back about what it really is and if you belong to the tiny percentage of people who may experience that, before just repeating click-bate YouTube titles and "reviews".
Wiki updated.
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Jimmdean
02-20-2023 at 03:07 PM.
02-20-2023 at 03:07 PM.
Quote from dclive :
Wiki updated.
256GB mini pro?
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