Apple raises Mac mini’s starting price to US$799 after AI frenzy drains supply

[NEW YORK] Apple raised the starting price of its Mac mini desktop to US$799 from US$599, adjusting to inventory shortages driven by artificial intelligence (AI) demand and the tight supply of processors. 

The company is effectively increasing the price by removing the entry-level configuration, a model that includes an M4 processor and 256 gigabytes of storage. The computer now starts with that same chip and 512 gigabytes of space. The US$1,399 starting price of the M4 Pro model hasn’t changed. 

The discontinuation of the US$599 tier comes after that model sold out at most outlets. Other configurations still take weeks or months to arrive from Apple’s online store and have been in limited supply at the company’s retail stores. 

On Thursday (Apr 30), Apple chief executive officer Tim Cook said the shortages were tied in part to the so-called SoC, or system on a chip, the processor that serves as the brains of the Mac mini. 

“The constraints were primarily driven by the availability of the advanced nodes our SoCs are produced on,” he said on an earnings call with analysts. The other factor is that consumers have been snapping up Mac minis and Mac Studios to run AI, he said. 

“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. He added that the MacBook Neo, which also starts at US$599, is seeing stronger-than-anticipated demand. 

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Cook said that it “may take several months to reach supply-demand balance” for the Mac mini and Mac Studio. MacRumors’ Joe Rossignol first noted that the entry Mac mini had been discontinued. 

Both machines can be configured with enough memory to capably run large language models locally, with less reliance on the cloud. Apple is planning to begin producing some Mac mini models in Houston later this year in a shift away from Asia. It has also been preparing updated Mac Studios for the end of the year, Bloomberg News reported.

Apple increased prices on some other Macs in March, raising the starting prices of several MacBook Pro and MacBook Air models. Apple is not the only company raising prices, with other companies like Meta Platforms recently upping the cost of their devices. BLOOMBERG