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you have the same problem with new Mac minis - some companies offering "discounted" M2s at a higher price point than new M4s with at least equivalent specs
 
No reason to get an M2 version. Wonder who will buy this. Not expecting Apple to change the prices on the M2 models.
Apple disagreed with you, as the linked model now shows a $459 price (and probably already did before you posted, based on the post immediately prior to yours).

The refurb mini M2 8GB is now $319, which is low enough to be tempting as an impulse buy just to mess around with if I was in the USA.
 
Very odd indeed

Nobody should be buying those base M2's at those prices

Apple maybe needs a non first party channel to offload those at lower prices

(see: eBay)
They'd never do that. Key rule of profit is keep all the sales in-house. Their warehouses are already there and are massive. Until they full up it's not an issue and costs them nothing to have a listing on the refurbs.
 
They'd never do that. Key rule of profit is keep all the sales in-house. Their warehouses are already there and are massive. Until they full up it's not an issue and costs them nothing to have a listing on the refurbs.

Ahh! Not so fast my friend!
:cool:
 
On the other hand, the M4 prices are in some cases, ridiculously good.
MBP with 24 GB of RAM and 1 TB of storage for only $100 more than the retail price of the base model? That’s pretty good.
Considering the recent upgrade to the base model specs, we've honestly only been conditioned to think they're good prices after years of overpriced RAM/SSD upgrade pricing to achieve that level (24gb/1tb). Meanwhile the true cost of such an __upgrade__ from the (new) base configuration, let alone the starting cost of the base configuration itself, isn't even close to $100.

This is especially true if you consider the market price the of SoC and the SSD. Namely the way SoCs are binned and then sold (24gb is an otherwise rejected 32 with any functioning RAM/GPU/CPU that would render it a higher-end model disabled). This binning is industry standard practice for all chip manufacturing to keep costs relatively low - especially SoCs given the risk of bundling everything on a single chip. Base specs go up when average chip yields improve to the point where risk is mitigated to make the jump. Most manufacturers are willing to take the risk to profits and bump specs to boost sales. Apple is more protective of that margin of rush to the bottom line. To be fair to Apple though, as noted, SoCs cram all your eggs (RAM, CPU, GPU) in one basket so the risk of failure ruining a chip or entire wafer of chips is much higher.
 
Ahh! Not so fast my friend!
:cool:
I think you misunderstood my point. The issue wasn't with eBay as a third party but the seller. In this case Apple is believed to be the seller. Since Apple sells at scale they can negotiate much better commission prices with eBay vs a standard seller that are likely the same or better sorts of commission they would pay to Costco or B&H.

As the article states it was widely believed to be run by Apple and eBay not commenting only adds to the speculation. At that point the vast majority of profits continue to stay in house. If you think about it, it's a good idea. What is effectively internal competition is pushing sales to the secret store :)

To boot, it's probably a good way to clear out a lot of the surplus lower tier refurbs to make room for new stock.
 
We knew it was bad when the M4 hit the iPad Pro first, a device that clearly didn't need it first.

iPad Pros should have the option to "boot camp" into macOS. Give it something special for the $1000+ they cost. It's a niche device intended for Pros. Let the Airs/base iPads not run macOS -- nobody expects it for $299 but for $1299? I sure do.
I agree about being able to run full Mac OS on the iPad pros. They make the peripherals for iPad that effectively turn it into a laptop. Meanwhile Microsoft has been very successful with the Surface family. I actually bought one in 2017 (wife prefers Windows, :/ ) and they're extremely nice and flexible in terms of usage. I just upgraded her to the latest model. It's nice having a touchscreen on a laptop. Granted these days it seems that most PC laptops have touch screen... I can't tell you how often I try to touch the screen on my MBA/MBPs... Lol.
 
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They'd never do that.

It actually would make sense for them to do just that especially as image brands (like Apple) don't want to be seen deep discounting their products in their own stores/website. Apple primarily relies on third party resellers for even modest discounting.

However, I believe Apple does have pretty good/efficient supply chain and inventory management systems in place which help minimize the need for too much discounting and liquidating.
 
I noticed that too. I've always been a big fan of the Air because I travel a lot, but some of these M4 MBP prices are really tempting me to just carry around the extra weight.
Don't do it. I did and didn't benefit the way I thought I would and returned it to Costco within the return window. Especially now that 16 GB is the base, it's more than enough to do pretty much everything. RAM was the only thing holding me back previously. And then only in very specific instances of having Adobe Lightroom open all afternoon...

I'm not saying not to buy one if you need the specs, but the processors are so fast now that it's just a matter of getting a good deal on a decent amount of RAM. IMHO that's 16gb minimum.

Storage can be alleviated with external storage but in my experience also comes at a risk, care of a 10ish or so year old bug that may or may not have been recently fixed. Read below for more details.

External storage bug in Mac OS:

I find that Macs, at least laptops that obviously have different default power/sleep and hibernation settings, don't play well with external drives. Notably, if your laptop goes to sleep with an external drive mounted you could have problems. To be clear, this is the sort of sleep that occurs after maybe 15 min after the screen turns off. I've not noticed it on desktops but that might be because of the different hibernation and sleep mechanics or that's longer to manifest.

On a Linux/Windows machine the OS unmounts the drive before it goes to sleep. I suspect something else was happening on Mac. It didn't happen every time but when it did the drive would not be detected by any Mac (IE no option to repair). The first time I thought the drive was fried. Thankfully, plugging it into a Windows machine fixed it within a few seconds as Windows detected it had been unmounted improperly. For the life of me I don't know why Mac OS wouldn't.

I read of literally hundreds of people having the same issue going back to 2016. Many didn't realize the workaround option (Windows) and walked away believing they'd lost all of their data. I would have been gutted, especially if years later I read of the possible solution...

It's been a well complained about bug for a very long time (10 years). I'd been very vocal about it the last couple of years - to the point of being a bit ugly about it (hinting that Apple might be keeping the bug in place to keep people motivated to maximize onboard storage). I'm not alone in that regard. I say that because it seems like something has changed in the last 6 months or so and I haven't noticed the problem. A few times it even happened because I plugged in my drive before I logged into my Mac after first turning it on (when a password is required). I don't know if that was related. If they fixed it, it took them the better part of nearly 10 years to do so...


Once it nearly ruined a 6 week trip Greece because this issue occurred on the drive I used to store my photos on, a 4 TB drive. We nearly left my wife's Windows laptop at home but she decided to bring it last minute and it's the only thing that fixed the drive. One of the few times I said thank God for Windows. Lol.

Anyway I stated all this because I really did become paranoid and told myself that the next time I upgraded I will get at least a terabyte so that I can store my Lightroom catalog and most files.

If they've truly fixed the problem then there's no reason to splurge on internal storage. The only reason that I'm a bit skeptical is because I changed my workflow because of the problem. I'm still using external drives but I adjusted things so that I'm not having to use them as much. So it's possible that I'm not seeing it because of this. To be clear I forgot the drive plugged in a few times but each time it's recovered just fine... Either they fixed it or...
 
I'm surprised they're releasing refurbed Mini M4s so soon. There are a lot on the UK store too, both M4 and M4 pro, as well as M2s. They must have had a lot of people trying and returning them.
I'm not so sure. There have been reports of a lot of m4 Mac minis having an issue with the usb-c ports on the front of the device. At least I think it's the front of the device. Either way one set of the usb-c ports has an issue.

I'm sure some people are just trying them out. Anyway I've been thinking about it and this USB-C issue has been holding me off.
 
Considering the recent upgrade to the base model specs, we've honestly only been conditioned to think they're good prices after years of overpriced RAM/SSD upgrade pricing to achieve that level (24gb/1tb). Meanwhile the true cost of such an __upgrade__ from the (new) base configuration, let alone the starting cost of the base configuration itself, isn't even close to $100.

This is especially true if you consider the market price the of SoC and the SSD. Namely the way SoCs are binned and then sold (24gb is an otherwise rejected 32 with any functioning RAM/GPU/CPU that would render it a higher-end model disabled). This binning is industry standard practice for all chip manufacturing to keep costs relatively low - especially SoCs given the risk of bundling everything on a single chip. Base specs go up when average chip yields improve to the point where risk is mitigated to make the jump. Most manufacturers are willing to take the risk to profits and bump specs to boost sales. Apple is more protective of that margin of rush to the bottom line. To be fair to Apple though, as noted, SoCs cram all your eggs (RAM, CPU, GPU) in one basket so the risk of failure ruining a chip or entire wafer of chips is much higher.
Yes, company likes profits.
The sky is blue.
 
That's a red flag to me. That tells me they have either a design flaw or quality issue with the early production Mini M4.
Or it could just be that the sales volume is much, much larger than usual because they are the first mini models that has seemed like a really good value in years. I haven't had any issue with mine, which was the first Mac I've bought as an impulse buy when I didn't actually need a newer one. The kid at the Staples where I picked it up was talking about trying one, so there could also be some Windows users dipping their toes, and then taking advantage of Apple's return policy when they don't enjoy the change as much as they hoped.

But sure, there could be issues. It isn't like we would hear any complaints online if lots of users were unhappy, as no one ever does that for Apple products.
 
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$499 ($100 off).
I would expect he meant what's the point of having an education store which doesn't require that you are actually getting an education, as that does seem ridiculous. I wish it had been that easy years ago when I was in university and actually eligible.
 
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I would expect he meant what's the point of having an education store which doesn't require that you are actually getting an education, as that does seem ridiculous. I wish it had been that easy years ago when I was in university and actually eligible.

Gotcha. It has been this way for at least a decade from what I remember.
 
That's ridiculous.
What's the point?

Anyway, lucky you.
I would expect he meant what's the point of having an education store which doesn't require that you are actually getting an education, as that does seem ridiculous. I wish it had been that easy years ago when I was in university and actually eligible.

I guess Apple operates on the "honor system", at least in the U.S., and trusts that most people buying from the education store actually qualify. They may also feel that their costs and the inconvenience or potential issues customers have using a verification system aren't worth it for the relatively minor, certainly compared to the 1980s and 1990s, education discounts being offered. Third party retailers (Apple Authorized Resellers) sometimes have as good or better prices than the education store anyway.
 
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