The tiny desktop is no longer Apple's most affordable computer
The Mac Mini is the latest victim of the AI-fueled RAM-pocalypse. Last week, Apple discontinued the 256 GB version of the system, which cost $599. To get in now, you'll need to drop at least $799 on a 512 GB version.
The price hike makes the Mac Mini Apple's most affordable Mac no longer. That distinction now goes to the $599 MacBook Neo, unveiled back in March.
The decision comes a day after soon-retiring CEO Tim Cook told investors that rising memory prices were negatively impacting the iGiant's business.
Apple has seen strong demand for its entry-level Mac Mini and higher-end Mac Studio among AI enthusiasts. The machines can be had with relatively large quantities of fast memory, which makes them particularly attractive for running local AI agents like OpenClaw at home.
However, Apple's decision to kill off its 256 GB Mac Mini likely has less to do with demand and more to do with the impact of a less local kind of AI on its supply chains.
Over the past six months, flash storage and DRAM memory prices have skyrocketed, with the unrelenting demand for AI infrastructure largely to blame. The typical GPU server now features more than 2 TB of high bandwidth memory (HBM) and another 4 TB or more of DDR5, and that's not even counting local storage.
The proliferation of inference platforms like Claude Code have also driven additional demand for flash storage to store model states between sessions. As a result, consumers have seen the street price of memory and SSD storage jump by 3x or more since the start of the year.
And while Apple's supply chains — perhaps Cook's most enduring legacy — are usually more robust than its competitors', the company isn't immune to the memory shortage.
Apple's starting prices have been trending upward since last fall, when it increased the memory capacity of its Pro iPhones from 128 GB to 256 GB while bumping its price tag by $100.
Then, in March, Apple refreshed its MacBook lineup with a slew of new M5 silicon that was also paired with more capacious SSDs and higher starting prices.
The decision is likely tied to a move away from lower-capacity NAND flash chips previously used in these products. In particular, Apple seems to be phasing out 128 GB NAND in favor of 256 GB and larger modules.
While it would have been possible to replace the two 128 GB modules used by the Mac Mini and MacBook Air with a single 256 GB chip, this may have resulted in lower than advertised transfer speeds, and is probably why they opted to bump the base model's capacity and price tag instead.
For devices with only a single NAND flash module, like the MacBook Neo or iPhone 17 Pro, 256 GB versions are still available. ®