M4 Mac Mini

Apple

Apple has discontinued the 256GB storage model of its M4 Mac Mini. As a result, the cheapest variant now costs $799 instead of $599. This comes after it stopped selling the Mac Studio with 512GB of storage in March and launched the new MacBook Air with a higher starting price.

As first spotted by MacRumors, the 256GB Mac Mini has been out of stock for a while, but it has now been removed from the online store entirely. Apple has stopped selling that variant worldwide and not just in the U.S.

While Apple hasn’t raised the price of any of its SKUs, the discontinuation of a base model means a higher starting price for consumers. The desktop computer that used to start at $599 will now start at $200 more.

Also read: Apple Did The Unthinkable With Its $599 MacBook Neo

The prices of other Mac Mini variants remain unaffected. You can get the M4 Mac Mini with 16GB of RAM and 512GB of storage for $799, which is the same as before. Similarly, pricing for the M4 Pro-powered Mac Mini models remains unchanged.

Apple CEO Tim Cook acknowledged the Mac supply constraint at the earnings call earlier this week. "We think, looking forward, that the ‌Mac Miini‌ and ‌Mac Studio‌ may take several months to reach supply demand balance," he said. “If you look forward to June, the majority of our supply constraints will be on several Mac models,” Cook added.

The AI-driven RAM shortage is affecting suppliers across the globe, and Apple underestimated the demand for its products. "Both of these 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.