Marco Arment1d ago

RE: https://mastodon.social/@bealex/116297678513693440

I'm guessing:

- The M5 Mac Mini hasn't shipped yet because the Texas factory isn't ready yet

- Tons of people bought them in the last two months to run AI agents, and Apple's manufacturing estimates weren't prepared for the spike

- The highest-RAM configurations are even more squeezed by memory shortages

(Although the M5 MBP can be ordered with max RAM with an estimate of April 8–15. But that's probably different RAM, and in a product that Apple makes in greater and more predictable volume.)

Show threadMarco Arment1d ago

Apple was cutting Mac Mini prices through reseller discounting all last summer and fall. One might conclude that the M4 Mac Mini wasn't a particularly strong hit.

And then OpenClaw happened.

Show threadMieszko Ślusarczyk1d ago
@marcoarment is 16GB RAM enough to run anything related to it?
Show thread🌈D. 'Xalior' Rimron-Soutter1d ago
@spitfire @marcoarment openclaw runs on a 2GB raspberry pi :)
Show threadMieszko Ślusarczyk
@Xalior @marcoarment ah, I thought they were running some models locally. Why get a Mac for something like that if a Pi (or probably any dumb terminal) can run it?
Mar 27 at 12:32amIvory for iOS
Show thread🌈D. 'Xalior' Rimron-Soutter1d ago
@spitfire @marcoarment the same can be said for many daily computer actions, why don’t you use a Pi for those? ;-)
Show threadMieszko Ślusarczyk1d ago
@Xalior @marcoarment I mean the process can be ran on a cheaper computer, so why get a much more expensive one for that? And Pi is not cheap either - getting terminal like computer (like a used Dell Wyse 5070) or an N100 based one is much cheaper and can probably get the job done. If it’s headless does it matter whether it runs macOS or not?
Show thread🌈D. 'Xalior' Rimron-Soutter1d ago
@spitfire @marcoarment does it matter if YOUR DESKTOP runs MacOS? It’s all just a preference.