(Credit: René Ramos; Apple)
UPDATE (05/04): A few weeks after the $599 Mac mini became unavailable for purchase on Apple's online store, the company dropped the variant and effectively raised the Mac mini's starting price to $799.
Earlier, you could get a base M4 Mac mini with 16GB of RAM and 256GB of storage for $599. Now, the most affordable configuration you can get is 16GB of RAM and 512GB of storage.
Apple said last week that it saw unexpected demand for the device earlier this year and that it would take "several months" to meet the growing demand. The surge is mainly due to the rise of AI agents. Users are increasingly turning to the Mac mini and Mac Studio to run them locally, CEO Tim Cook said during the company's latest earnings call.
"Both of these [mini and Studio] are amazing platforms for AI and agentic tools, and the customer recognition of that is happening faster than what we had predicted, and so we saw higher than expected demand," Cook said.
The outgoing CEO also talked about rising memory costs, noting that Apple was spending more than usual to acquire memory sticks and that he expects prices to go up in the upcoming quarters. This would have an "increasing impact" on Apple's business, he added.
Original Story (04/24):
If you’re looking to buy a Mac mini, good luck finding a configuration of your choice. After higher-memory variants went out of stock last week, the base $599 M4 Mac mini has now been marked as “currently unavailable” on Apple’s online store.
Apple currently offers Mac minis with both M4 and M4 Pro chips. As of publishing, its US online store shows that all M4 variants, regardless of storage or memory, are currently unavailable. The M4 Pro variants, on the other hand, have long wait times, ranging from 5-6 weeks to 10-12 weeks for available configurations.
When Apple products go out of stock, it generally means the company is preparing to release an update. We haven’t heard strong rumors about an M5 Mac mini, but there is an outside chance, given that the device was last updated in 2024.
However, as 9to5Mac reports, the dire situation could also be due to a global shortage of memory and components. AI companies have been absorbing a lot of the supply to build data centers, forcing hardware companies to raise prices and delay shipments.
Apple is known for its strong supply-chain relationships and was able to launch a new product line, the MacBook Neo, amid the memory crunch. The company has yet to increase the prices of its existing Macs or comment on the Mac mini shortage.
Notably, many of the Mac Studio variants are also out of stock. Sources tell Bloomberg that an update for the device could arrive in October, a few months later than earlier predictions. The outlet also reported that the first-ever touch-screen MacBook Pro, despite delays, could arrive early next year.
In other Apple news, CEO Tim Cook will be stepping down in September. He will be replaced by the company’s current hardware chief, John Ternus.