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Apple Says Mac Studio and Mac Mini Will Be in Short Supply for Months
- bottlepalm 6mo agoThe Neo as well, I just need a Mac to test with and finding one is ridiculous. Hackintoshes are hell to setup and run like crap. I tried https://www.macincloud.com/ https://www.macincloud.com/ and that was a waste of time. Someone take my money.
- morphle 6mo agoIf you send me an email I might have a machine or MacOS VM on that machine you can use.
- bottlepalm 6mo agoThanks for the offer, think I'm gonna go the eBay route.
- hurricanepootis 6mo agoI remember 4 years ago I was able to setup MacOS in a virtual machine. Maybe you can setup an Intel copy of MacOS on a qemu/kvm virtual machine?
- bottlepalm 6mo agoI tried this, https://oneclick-macos-simple-kvm.notaperson535.is-a.dev/ https://oneclick-macos-simple-kvm.notaperson535.is-a.dev/, it wasn't bad for 'one click install' and got the VM running, it was just unusably slow and burning up my machine. Seems like I need graphics acceleration in the VM which doesn't work on my Ryzen GPU - QEMU running on Windows, and I don't want to deal with dual booting. Literally would rather buy a Mac (if I could).
- mitjam 6mo agoYou need Mac hardware for this but I run a MacOS VM on Parallels, not connected to my iCloud account. I think it’s nice for OpenClaw and CI.
- montebicyclelo 6mo agoEver considered second hand slightly older gens? Even M1 is still great for many use cases. E.g. often corps are selling them on Ebay, in pretty good condition.
- morphle 6mo agoIndeed, ton's of refurbished for $250-$300
- bottlepalm 6mo agoYea it does look like 5 year old M1's are going for $300 on eBay, but man that's painful a 5 year old machine for that much when you could get a new Neo or Mini for $600, if only you could buy them. I probably should just get the M1, test and sell it back on eBay. Thanks.
- yreg 6mo agoNeo isn't much better than M1.
- kalleboo 6mo agoM1 is even better in some ways, like it has Thunderbolt ports (plural even!).
- wang_li 6mo agoIn my personal experience, 13” M1 MacBook Air, 15” M4 Macbook Air, M4 Pro Mac Mini, and MacBook Neo, the Neo is the fastest for single threaded and strictly CPU bound tasks. E.g. calculating 200x200, 1000 max iterations Mandelbrot fractals it does ~785 in ten seconds compared to ~760 on the M4s and somewhere in the 600s for the M1. Given its RAM size I’m not going to be spinning up VMs, but in terms of general purpose computing it’s more than adequate. And, out of the box, you get a word processor, spreadsheet, presentation, video editing, digital audio, web browser, and a bunch of other things. Xcode is free. This is easily a laptop you can buy and use for years in 90% of settings.
- scboffspring 6mo agoNot sure what happened to you with macincloud, but I used scaleway hosted Mac mini M1 a couple years ago for a self hosted CI server, and it was working very nicely.
- bottlepalm 6mo agoThey don't really advertise that you can install nothing on the machine. It's super restricted.
- ZiiS 6mo agoI think you can at $50/month
- bottlepalm 6mo agoYou're right! That pay as you go plan burned me, $30 to not install any software, but with the dedicated server I can, and I was able to successfully test my app, thanks! You saved me a lot of time and money!
- dyauspitr 6mo agoI don’t even think you can do hackintoshes anymore post Apple silicon right? I remember having one about 10 years ago and it was absolutely fantastic and ran really well. Wish we could do that now so I wouldn’t have to develop apps on my M3 MacBook Air, which constantly runs out of memory and is a huge pain.
- forsalebypwner 6mo agoYou can for now, but in the very near future (macOS 27 I think?) Apple will completely drop support for Intel, and Hackintosh will be dead
- Reviving1514 6mo agoWhat issues did you have with macinacloud? In was considering using that to build and sign some dmgs and test my app and would love to know what your experience was like
- bottlepalm 6mo agoOk, I actually tried MacinCloud again and had much better luck. Instead of the pay as you go plan which you need to spend $30 minimum on, I got the $60 dedicated server which allows me to install software, and in turn I was able to test my software without buying a Mac, yay!
- Reviving1514 6mo agoHah funny I ended up giving it a go and ended up having a lot of trouble - connection issues, display issues, etc. They tried rebooting the machine but no luck. Just bough a used mac today!
- wiradikusuma 6mo agoI guess the sudden demand is due to OpenClaw? But most people will still use cloud LLMs, right? Anything particular with the Mac Mini that non-Mac lack?
- znpy 6mo agoMy understanding is that openclaw is only a factor, and a relatively minor one. Most likely the limiting factor is the crunch that chip companies are going through.
- operatingthetan 6mo agoAn M4 mini is overkill just to run OpenClaw. I'm running it on a Pentium J5005 and it's running 20 other services in Docker. I think the main thing was many wanted it to be able to access iMessage. I think people dream of also using the mac to run the LLM but the 16gb ones don't have enough ram.
- hparadiz 6mo agoThe shortage is for the 512, 256, and 128 models.
- reverius42 6mo agoThose are the ones that can run the LLMs. Not a coincidence.
- ashdksnndck 6mo agoThe basic 16GB Mac mini is also hard to buy. I bought one used not to save money but because I couldn’t find any store online with it in stock.
- amelius 6mo agoPeople are running openclown on microcontrollers.
- apexalpha 6mo agoWhen they say 'due to openclaw' they refer to running AI models that openclaw uses, not to openclaw itself.
- _the_inflator 6mo agoApple got so bad with its products, so bad indeed that they took a bet on the low price sector with the Neo and abandoned the powerhouses. It is so funny, because due to the high profit margin as a relative share of the price Apple earns more by selling a few top models than with dozens of Neos. Tim Cook, the supply chain master leaves house the moment the very reason why he got hired in the first place is in dire straits. I don’t think that the successor will likely change that, since Cook made sure, no one is remembering Jobs anymore and as top manager won’t pass a reversal of many of his decisions. So he will lead through a CEO he controls. Only if the new guy takes on the battle in the name of product there might be a chance but this would mean, Cook and the new CEO have to be dismissed. So popcorn times, I think Apple is going to stay as boring as it got, while the quality constantly declines.
- dwedge 6mo agoThe Neo won't sell dozens of models they will take the low end laptop market by storm. I think your comment will age very poorly
- stingraycharles 6mo agoThe Neo is already considered a huge success and is the reason for the scarcity.
- robertjpayne 6mo agoThis exactly. No other laptop comes close on price for the hardware you get. Yeah you may get more ram in a PC but promise you it won’t feel as fast when you’re using it day to day or have as good of a display or battery life.
- ankurdhama 6mo agoIn same price range you can get a PC that not only has more ram but also has better multicore performance, better disk speed and better port selection. Yes neo wins on build quality, trackpad, speaker, display and battery life but the PC would also allow you to install any linux distro.
- ksec 6mo agoIt is the SoC, not the memory as reported in the earning call. And lead time for SOC is 3-4 months. i.e even if they decided to increase order in March, if would be at least until July those volumes reaches warehouse ready to be shipped. And that is assuming there are spare capacity from TSMC for Apple to order, right now there is very little to none. What annoys me most isn't the Mac Studio and Mini. It is the Neo. Someone must have done a poor job in demand planing. ( As well as pricing ). Only 5M unit till the end of the year when they are now increasing it to 10M. And it will likely miss this education's year cycle in the summer. Hopefully they do better with A19 Pro Neo. Mac could reach up to 400M to 500M usage share. Roughly 25% of PC market.
- touristtam 6mo agoRightly deserved
- akmarinov 6mo agoHistorically whenever they’ve done lower price products - iPhone SE, the current E editions, etc - they’ve sold poorly, that’s what probably got them. The thing is that the Neo is actually useful.
- joakleaf 6mo agoI disagree. I am old enough to remember the iPod nano -- Especially the 2nd generation. They were effectively low-priced and smaller iPods. Apple sold millions of these much much quicker than the iPods and iPod minis (which came right before). Especially in 2006, it was _the_ "Christmas gift" just before the iPhone, iPod touch and later iPad mini took over. Possibly Steve Jobs' demo where he showed how they fit into the otherwise useless small jeans pocket helped convince the world. The iPod nano effectively wiped out the competing music player market. The Neo reminds me of the iPod nano and iPad mini. It is smaller and cheaper version of an existing successful product. I think the iPhone SE and E are the outliers.
- Royce-CMR 6mo agoI think the outliers have burned them more recently and even Apple loses historical memory over time. That said I remember everything you said and 100% agree - the nano killed everything around it. It’s been awhile since Apple had a similar home run; not an excuse for the clear lack of vision/leadership but a factor nonetheless.
- bajor 6mo agoMore fomo
- libertine 6mo agoSince COVID the FOMO has been turned to 11. I wanted to build a gaming PC, and now that's out of the question, even though I can afford to buy one in the current state. I just refuse to participate in this, so I quit. There are thousands of great games that run on older hardware that would last me a lifetime of gaming. Consumers always get the shit fed to them.
- BerkeyMcBerkey 6mo agoOpps, our lack of foresight into AI tripped us up, again.
- amelius 6mo agoThis is just a preview. At some point even the most economically liberal people will say that enough is enough. Making money and building capital is perfectly okay if you're working hard, but if you use said money or capital against the rest of us (who chose a different life) then we have a problem.
- Auzy 6mo agoThe Mac Studio definitely shouldn't be. My M2 studio was the only computer I ever owned that had issues with the USBC ports not working with certain cables (and for the price, it should have had better performance). I've owned a M2 Mac Studio, PowerMac G5, Mac Pro. Every single one had flaws that you would consider inexcusable on PC Hardware priced half that amount. The PowerMac G5 had terrible video cards (the liquid cooled ones also had issues with leaks, but ignoring that). The Mac Pro also had terrible Video cards (they were PCI-X), but also Fully Buffered ECC ram (which cost substantially more than any other ram).. Apple still can't even manufacture a proper mouse (who the hell puts a USB C port at the bottom). It's ridiculous.. If Linux distro's had a way to integrate Android as a first class citizen (like IOS is in MacOS), it would greatly boost the number of apps available in ecosystem, and have a huge impact on MacOS I feel. Waydroid is good, but, it still is too clunky (I'd like to see something more like Wine for Android, where its native)
- ajvs 6mo agoValve's Lepton (Waydroid fork) might solve this when it gets released.
- jmalicki 6mo agoBut the Mac Studio can run LLMs reasonably faster better than non-enterprise-server setup. That is the only thing that matters at this point - it's an LLM accelerator, not a personal computer, at this point.
- t-writescode 6mo agoWhy ... did you put so much energy into typing this out? That's a lot of energy to put into .... something you don't like and probably shouldn't care so much about. Do you wish you could go back to macs?
- noisem4ker 6mo agoForbid they criticize Apple products that are in the very subject of the article. Will you be around to police the discussion the next time something having "Microsoft" in the title is submitted and the shit-flinging-at-Windows-and-the-PC-world contest starts regardless to any relevance to the topic at hand?
- rbanffy 6mo agoI was hoping for an M5 mini and Studio ahead of time, but I guess I'll have to wait a little longer. Maybe by the time they sort it out there will be an M5 Ultra Mac Studio with a full terabyte of RAM.
- apexalpha 6mo agoIf I start the application process now I might have my second mortgage approved by the time said 1TB RAM M5 Ultra is available.
- apexalpha 6mo agoAs I play more with Agents like Hermes and Openclaw I've come to realise these truly are the new GUI. I have Radarr and Sonarr running on my homeserver. I switched my model to cloud Claude, pasted the API docs of said apps and told it to make 'search, add, remove, update, and statusupdate' available in a small MCP. It took 7 minutes, I switched back to my local Qwen3.6 model and I haven't touched the webinterface of Radarr and Sonarr in weeks. I just ask the model. Everyone now gets a chat with my (telegram) AI bot in stead of relaying requests through me. I have been looking into a decent local device. DGX Spark, Mac Studio etc... I think I am willing to spend on this, it really does feel like the 'iPhone moment' for me: I am not going back to individual front-ends for everything when my AI bot is a unified frontend for all API based software.
- klueinc 6mo agoHow are you handling secrets? I want hermes to do stuff on the internet but I am not enthused about dumping the requried keys in .env.local or using process wrapper services like infisical yet. Encapsulating hermes in a docker sandbox feels slippery and I'm always left thinking if i've hardened my server enough.
- apexalpha 6mo agoOpenclaw uses the API key for Sonarr / Radarr, no secrets management (yet). Though egress is heavily restricted for OpenClaw and everything is behind a FW.
- echelon_musk 6mo ago> in stead of relaying requests through me. Overseerr is a thing.
- apexalpha 6mo ago1) You're missing the point. Overseer can do this, yes. AI model can work with ANY REST API. 2) How does Overseerr help? I've never really understood it if I could give my family access to Overseerr over a VPN I could just give them sonarr / radarr directly.
- polyterative 6mo agoLoving my m4 mac studio. I expected this as well
- mark_l_watson 6mo agoThe shortages are caused by memory manufacturers in Asia having supply chain problems, and the pending strike at Samsung, right?
- dawnerd 6mo agoMore the ai bros buying them up and scalpers trying to make a quick buck. There’s a bunch on marketplace now with a couple hundred in markup.
- dabinat 6mo agoAI companies are buying up huge quantities of memory and the memory manufacturers have decided to prioritize those purchases over the consumer market. And Micron decided to just shut down their Crucial brand completely.
- deleted 6mo ago[deleted]
- tomwheeler 6mo agoBack in January, I was debating whether to buy an M3 Ultra Mac Studio or waiting for the M5 version, which many believed would be announced two months later. The 192GB M3 Ultra was on sale at the local Microcenter for $200 below what Apple's own site advertised. Since I knew the RAM shortage would significantly increase the price of the M5 Studio when (or if) it finally did come out, I decided to buy the M3. Time has shown that was the right decision.