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10% off is fine. Obviously more is better, but that's not on offer.

I would've bought one new but the ship time is late-August for my model, so I've ordered a refurb and it's arriving tomorrow. I have access to the education discount of 10%, but again, ship times are late-August.

I'm going from an M1 Mac mini, 8c CPU, 8c GPU, 16GB RAM, 1TB SSD to an M1 Max, 10c CPU, 24c GPU, 64GB RAM, 4TB SSD.

I've been buying refurb Apple gear for years and only ever had one issue with my M1 MacBook Air - the battery died after only 9 cycles, but was replaced within a week.

Will update on the 'whine' some people have experienced.
 
The problem is IF you are in a room that is generally quieter than ~30 dB AND have your Mac Studio on your desk in front of you AND your ears are capable of hearing the kind of sound the Mac Studio makes you will always hear it and at the moment there is no nice way around it.
My Studio makes a faint "rushing" sound that is audible - but inoffensive - in a quiet room. So the Studio certainly isn't silent but the offensive "whine" that some people are reporting seems like a separate fault only affecting some units.

My 2017 iMac is completely silent at idle - but as soon as it has to do any work (like, say, running a lot of virtual instruments or effects in Logic) the fans would really spin up and get distractingly loud - whereas I've never heard the Studio get louder, even when doing things like running Cinebench or (more practically) bouncing projects in Logic, that always ramp up the fans in an iMac or MacBook Pro. So, in practical terms, it is a vast improvement.
 
Exactly. I don’t recommend buying refurbished now. It used to be at least 15% off.
Apple has historically offered 15% off on Refurbished and quite often rounding down on the price to get to the magic 69, 29 or 39 at the end of the price. This changed with the 2021 14” and 16” MacBook Pro and it looks like Apple is pulling back to only 10% off. Why they’re doing that could be any number of reasons, most likely supply and demand, which I am sure will be interpreted as “greedy Apple” on these forums. Furthermore, Apple has been pulling back a little on discounting the prior generation equivalent when the new model releases. For instance, the 13” 8GB/512GB MacBook Pro was $1269 ($1499 x .85=$1274.15–>$1269) and it now sits at $1229, using Apple’s math of 15% off of a price of $1449, which makes zero sense as to why they relabel the price to $50 off. They had been knocking an additional 5% off of the Refurbished price, which would have made it $1199 ($1269 x .95=$1205.55), but that seems to be going away. Currently there are no discounts on the M1 MacBook Air, but those should trigger once the M2 MBA goes on sales. Given supply constraints, the Refurbished store is still a decent value, but generally not now on the newest of Apple’s “hot” products. If I pick up an M1 anything (I’d like more DRAM and storage than my 8GB/512GB), I’ll keep an eye out for closeouts, but it looks like there is no excess supply on the open market to wait for now. One more thing COVID-19 may have changed permanently.
 
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My Studio makes a faint "rushing" sound that is audible - but inoffensive - in a quiet room. So the Studio certainly isn't silent but the offensive "whine" that some people are reporting seems like a separate fault only affecting some units.

My 2017 iMac is completely silent at idle - but as soon as it has to do any work (like, say, running a lot of virtual instruments or effects in Logic) the fans would really spin up and get distractingly loud - whereas I've never heard the Studio get louder, even when doing things like running Cinebench or (more practically) bouncing projects in Logic, that always ramp up the fans in an iMac or MacBook Pro. So, in practical terms, it is a vast improvement.
Yeah, fan noise and the whine are two separate things.

I also have an 2017 iMac and I like its behaviour much more than that of the Mac Studio. 🙂 I would rather have a computer that stays 80% of the time completely silent with occasional fan noise than having slight fan noise all the time.
 
10% off is fine. Obviously more is better, but that's not on offer.

I would've bought one new but the ship time is late-August for my model, so I've ordered a refurb and it's arriving tomorrow. I have access to the education discount of 10%, but again, ship times are late-August.

I'm going from an M1 Mac mini, 8c CPU, 8c GPU, 16GB RAM, 1TB SSD to an M1 Max, 10c CPU, 24c GPU, 64GB RAM, 4TB SSD.

I've been buying refurb Apple gear for years and only ever had one issue with my M1 MacBook Air - the battery died after only 9 cycles, but was replaced within a week.

Will update on the 'whine' some people have experienced.
Please definitely update us on the fan whine.
 
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Tempting but I don't want a whiny box on my desk, will wait to hear from others. I'd like to think Apple is stealth fixing these fans but I also thought they would "fix" butterfly keyboards.
 
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But it is the exact same price as the education store for a brand new one. I guess this makes sense for someone who isn't eligible for that discount though.

Yup. Pretty much. Most people aren't eligible for that.
Does Apple check? Personally, I don't see why students are special and get a discount, so I wouldn't feel guilty buying it through their Edu discount store.
 
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