So, I’m the OP and I guess I should comment. 😂
In my particular case there’s been a plot twist. Every year, usually in May and/or November, Chase Bank (USA) has a month-long promotion where you can use Chase Rewards Points to buy Apple stuff at a higher exchange rate (1.5¢/point instead of the usual 1¢). I’ve been saving up my points for awhile and have enough to get US$1,000 off on anything. That’s a far better deal than I could get any other way, e.g. Microcenter discount, Apple Education Store Refurbished, Amazon sales, etc.
The catch? The SKUs are limited; only current product and only base models are available. For example, they have 3 M4-based Mac minis listed, but all have 512GB which is too small. Another example, they have M4-based MacBook Pros with 1TB SSDs but no nano-texture screen models.
Also, I have an LG 34” 5K2K Ultrawide monitor which is subject to the dreaded no-default-3840x1620-scaled-HiDPI issue if paired with any M4-based Mac. (Sigh.)
I could solve both issues with an M3 Ultra Mac Studio, but that’s paying double for complete overkill and the total opposite of my use case (I don’t edit videos or do much of anything that needs multi-core performance).
In my particular case there’s been a plot twist. Every year, usually in May and/or November, Chase Bank (USA) has a month-long promotion where you can use Chase Rewards Points to buy Apple stuff at a higher exchange rate (1.5¢/point instead of the usual 1¢). I’ve been saving up my points for awhile and have enough to get US$1,000 off on anything. That’s a far better deal than I could get any other way, e.g. Microcenter discount, Apple Education Store Refurbished, Amazon sales, etc.
The catch? The SKUs are limited; only current product and only base models are available. For example, they have 3 M4-based Mac minis listed, but all have 512GB which is too small. Another example, they have M4-based MacBook Pros with 1TB SSDs but no nano-texture screen models.
Also, I have an LG 34” 5K2K Ultrawide monitor which is subject to the dreaded no-default-3840x1620-scaled-HiDPI issue if paired with any M4-based Mac. (Sigh.)
I could solve both issues with an M3 Ultra Mac Studio, but that’s paying double for complete overkill and the total opposite of my use case (I don’t edit videos or do much of anything that needs multi-core performance).