Apple has quietly increased the starting price of the desktop to $799 following high demand from developers working on local AI tools, which led to empty shelves. Tim Cook states it might take months to restock.
For five years, the Mac mini has served as the most affordable entry into Apple’s desktop realm. Since the M4 update in late 2024, its price was set at $599, a notably aggressive figure from Cupertino, making the small aluminum box unexpectedly popular.
It became the recommended entry-level Mac, the preferred home server for tech enthusiasts, and increasingly, the primary local machine for developers executing AI models on personal hardware.
As of Friday, the $599 Mac mini has been discontinued.
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Apple has removed the 256GB version of the M4 Mac mini and repositioned the 512GB model, priced at $799, as the new starting point. Bloomberg initially reported this change, referencing Apple’s own product pages, with further confirmations by MacRumors, 9to5Mac, Macworld, and AppleInsider. The pricing of each configuration remains unchanged; only the entry-level model has been eliminated.
This effectively means that purchasing a base Mac mini is now $200 more expensive than it was a day prior.
Apple’s rationale was clearly outlined during this week’s Q2 earnings call. Tim Cook, the company’s CEO, attributed the shortages of both the Mac mini and the more powerful Mac Studio to demand that exceeded internal forecasts, linking this demand directly to AI workloads.
Both machines, he noted, are “amazing platforms for AI and agentic tools, and the customer recognition of that is occurring faster than anticipated.”
This recognition has a particular format. The Mac mini and Mac Studio contain a feature that has, in 2026, gained unexpected value: large amounts of unified memory directly accessible to the GPU and Neural Engine on Apple’s M-series chips.
For developers operating local large language models, agentic tools managing multi-step tasks on a single setup, or compact research arrangements that otherwise would need cloud GPUs, that memory configuration is a significant benefit. A 64GB Mac Studio costs less than the least expensive Nvidia H100, is quiet on a desktop, and doesn’t charge by the hour.
As a result, there has been a surge in inventory similar to launch levels, not typical of nine-month-old products. Most high-RAM configurations on Apple’s online store are currently listed as unavailable. The 16GB, 512GB Mac mini, the new base model, is reported to be backordered till June by some retailers.
Beneath the consumer-oriented narrative is a less visible one centered on supply. The same advanced memory chips found in Mac minis and Mac Studios are critical components for the AI server farms being established by hyperscalers, and the disparity between data-center demand and global memory production has been worsening for over a year.
DRAM prices have soared, and analysts have started cautioning that consumer electronics producers will increasingly face competition from cloud service providers willing to pay above-market prices.
Cook acknowledged this limitation during the call, indicating to investors that bringing the supply-demand balance for both machines into alignment is several months away