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It’s exactly that. They are buying the base model just for that. You are not going to do much local AI with those 16GB of ram anyway, it could be useful for sma

by ErneX 8mo ago

It’s exactly that. They are buying the base model just for that. You are not going to do much local AI with those 16GB of ram anyway, it could be useful for small things but the main purpose of the Mini is being able to interact with the apple apps and services.

chaostheory 8mo ago
No one is buying a base model Mac for local LLM. Everyone is forgetting the PC prices have drastically increased due to RAM and SSD. Meanwhile, Macs had no such price change… at least for the models that didn’t just drop today. Mac’s are just a good deal at the moment.
- briffle 8mo ago
  the new models cost $200 more for each 8GB of Ram you add.. Ouch...
  - Forgeties79 8mo ago
    That's been the case for years. Not new to the M5's
- jsheard 8mo ago
  > Meanwhile, Macs had no such price change Yeah because Mac upgrade prices were already sky high, long before the component shortage. 32GB of DDR5-6000 for a PC rocketed from $100 to $500, while the cost of adding 16GB to a Mac was and still is $400.
  - AnthonyMouse 8mo ago
    I'm kind of curious how Apple's supply contracts actually work, because it's currently more attractive to buy a Mac with a lot of RAM than it usually is, relative to a PC. So if it's "we negotiated a price and you give us as much RAM as we sell machines" the company supplying the RAM is getting soaked because they're having to supply even more RAM to Apple for a below-market price. But if the contract was for a specific amount of RAM and then people start coming to Apple more for high RAM machines, they're going to exhaust their contract sooner than usual and run out of cheap memory to buy. Then they have to decide if they want to lower their margins or raise the already-high price up to nosebleed levels.
    - walterbell 8mo ago
      https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/memory-supply-chain-ai-disrupts-apples-nand-pricing-electronics-nn8tc https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/memory-supply-chain-ai-disrup... Apple has accepted a 100% price increase for Samsung's LPDDR5X memory, with DRAM supply commitments secured only through the first half of 2026. Tim Cook acknowledged during the Q1 FY2026 earnings call that storage price increases would significantly impact Q2 gross margins.. Apple is evaluating ChangXin Memory Technologies (CXMT) and Yangtze Memory Technologies (YMTC) as new supply sources, attempting to rebuild pricing leverage through supply chain diversification.
rafaelmn 8mo ago
16GB should be enough for TTS/Voice models running locally no ? I was thinking about having a home assistant setup like that where the voice is local and the brain is API based
- ErneX 8mo ago
  Sure, that’s why I said maybe it’s useful for a few things. But the main reason people were recommending the Mini was for its price (base model) and having access to the Apple services for clawdbot to leverage. Not precisely for local AI.
- 0x457 8mo ago
  I run ministral for my home knowledge database on 24G iMac and some other non-agentic LLM things.

by ErneX 8mo ago

chaostheory 8mo ago

No one is buying a base model Mac for local LLM. Everyone is forgetting the PC prices have drastically increased due to RAM and SSD. Meanwhile, Macs had no such price change… at least for the models that didn’t just drop today. Mac’s are just a good deal at the moment.

briffle 8mo ago
the new models cost $200 more for each 8GB of Ram you add.. Ouch...
- Forgeties79 8mo ago
  That's been the case for years. Not new to the M5's
jsheard 8mo ago
> Meanwhile, Macs had no such price change Yeah because Mac upgrade prices were already sky high, long before the component shortage. 32GB of DDR5-6000 for a PC rocketed from $100 to $500, while the cost of adding 16GB to a Mac was and still is $400.
- AnthonyMouse 8mo ago
  I'm kind of curious how Apple's supply contracts actually work, because it's currently more attractive to buy a Mac with a lot of RAM than it usually is, relative to a PC. So if it's "we negotiated a price and you give us as much RAM as we sell machines" the company supplying the RAM is getting soaked because they're having to supply even more RAM to Apple for a below-market price. But if the contract was for a specific amount of RAM and then people start coming to Apple more for high RAM machines, they're going to exhaust their contract sooner than usual and run out of cheap memory to buy. Then they have to decide if they want to lower their margins or raise the already-high price up to nosebleed levels.
  - walterbell 8mo ago
    https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/memory-supply-chain-ai-disrupts-apples-nand-pricing-electronics-nn8tc https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/memory-supply-chain-ai-disrup... Apple has accepted a 100% price increase for Samsung's LPDDR5X memory, with DRAM supply commitments secured only through the first half of 2026. Tim Cook acknowledged during the Q1 FY2026 earnings call that storage price increases would significantly impact Q2 gross margins.. Apple is evaluating ChangXin Memory Technologies (CXMT) and Yangtze Memory Technologies (YMTC) as new supply sources, attempting to rebuild pricing leverage through supply chain diversification.

rafaelmn 8mo ago

16GB should be enough for TTS/Voice models running locally no ? I was thinking about having a home assistant setup like that where the voice is local and the brain is API based

ErneX 8mo ago
Sure, that’s why I said maybe it’s useful for a few things. But the main reason people were recommending the Mini was for its price (base model) and having access to the Apple services for clawdbot to leverage. Not precisely for local AI.
0x457 8mo ago
I run ministral for my home knowledge database on 24G iMac and some other non-agentic LLM things.