When shopping for a new computer recently, prices were the same across the board for the most part. If you qualify for the educational discount, Apple was significantly cheaper. If you didn't there were some sites that tended to have credit card portals or gift card reseller sites that offered more of a discount. Even when a portal says certain products are excluded they tend to still come through with the automated discount.

Also depending on your credit card you could get a better deal through buying your own gift cards. I currently have five percent off on grocery store purchases, so effectively any gift cards the grocery store sells are five percent discounts to the merchant. Best buy, target, Amazon are nearly always there. ITunes usually is but I don't ever recall seeing apple.

Here in Australia, for example, you can buy grey imports (i.e. not imported by Apple, Samsung etc) for much cheaper.

With some brands you only get a store warranty, but sometimes you might even get full manufacturer international warranty.

Target, B&H, and BestBuy routinely discount Apple stuff.

If you have insight into Apple’s product cycle, they usually discount the price to resellers a few weeks before they release a product and they are motivated to clear stuff out. I used to pay for college by taking advantage of that in the 90s!

Microcenter on most items.