AI kills Apple’s $599 Mac mini
Apple has stopped selling its $599 Mac mini with 256GB of storage. If you want to get your hands on the company’s most affordable desktop you can, but the product now starts at $799 and ships with 512GB storage.
The move is likely a response to the huge surge in demand for the product Apple is experiencing, which means if you try to purchase one of these Macs you may end up waiting until June to receive your product.
Big demand for Apple’s silver box
Apple CEO Tim Cook confirmed the extent of demand during Apple’s Q2 earnings call when he said demand for the Mac mini, Mac Studio, and MacBook Neo had exceeded internal expectations.
He explained that the craze for agentic AI set-ups generated the demand in the first two cases, particularly in China. Tempted by the idea of personal AI, people have been racing to run headless Claw deployments on Mac mini, making use of the power and performance Apple Silicon provides.
Just like the Mac Studio, these systems are “amazing platforms for AI and agentic tools, and the customer recognition of that is happening faster than what we had predicted,” he said.
The big attraction is the Unified Memory architecture Apple’s tech provides, which delivers ample bandwidth for many on-device AI deployments and LLM models.
It’s not just that demand for these Macs is high, he confirmed, as it’s also the case that the company isn’t able to procure enough high-end nodes for the SOCs, and observed continued pressure on memory supply. Some Mac mini manufacturing has also shifted to the US, which may also contribute to the higher cost.
But perhaps it’s a good thing
That said, I don’t think it’s a disaster. While cheaper, I’d argue that the 256GB models aren’t always the best choice for users, particularly if you’re handling vast email accounts or very large files, you’ll soon find those plus system cruft will populate your drive. This will leave you in a regular loop of file deletion as you attempt to keep your Mac going.
None of this takes away the salient fact about the Mac mini, which is that even at the $799 cost it remains one of the best options in the market if you want to run Mac, Windows, or on-device AI.
