Want to buy a Mac mini? Good luck with that

Apple's Mac mini $599 entry point is gone, and it's not coming back any time soon.

Since it was released in late 2024, the Mac mini has easily been the best value Mac you can buy. However, last week Apple quietly pulled the $599 base Mac mini, the M4 model with 16 GB of RAM and 256 GB of storage, from its online store entirely, and the machine's starting price has risen to $799 as a result.

To be clear, this is not a price hike, rather it's the disappearance of the bottom rung of the ladder. The $799 model offering 512 GB of storage was priced at $799 at launch and remains the same. But that $200 is a third of the price again, which makes a huge difference at this entry level.

Quiet quitting

The disappearance was as much a quiet quitting as anything. The 256 GB model was first marked "currently unavailable" last week before being removed from Apple's configurator altogether. Even the remaining Mac mini configurations aren't exactly easy to get: the new $799 base model is showing backorders stretching into the second or third week of June, with many higher-end configurations, particularly those with 32 GB or more of RAM, listed as "currently unavailable."

Checking over the weekend, 16 GB models were showing a 5-6 week lead time and 24 GB models 10-12 weeks. There is some variability around the world (these are the US figures), but only by a week or two here or there.

Also in short supply. The powerful Mac Studio

It's not just the Mac mini, either. The Mac Studio is in similarly rough shape, with 128 GB and 256 GB RAM configurations listed as "currently unavailable," and long lead times for everything below that level.

Meanwhile, if you want an M4 iMac, even the 32 GB RAM models can be yours in under a week.

Blame AI...again

Apple CEO Tim Cook addressed the situation directly on the company's recent Q2 2026 earnings call. "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. He added that it could take "several months" to reach a balance between supply and demand.

The problem is that the Mac mini has become a go-to machine for running locally hosted AI agents like OpenClaw that benefit from Apple Silicon's grunt and unified memory architecture that gives CPU and GPU alike access to a shared pool of RAM. That makes it fast, power-efficient, and, at least until recently, relatively affordable. 

As we all know, the AI boom is also squeezing the broader memory supply chain (see RAMageddon 2026 is coming). Cook warned on the same call that Apple expects "significantly higher memory costs" going forward, which could have an "increasing impact" on the business. 

There's a possible second factor in play too. Both the Mac mini and Mac Studio are expected to get M5 refreshes later this year. Historically, lengthening ship times and dwindling stock have been a reasonable indicator that Apple is winding down manufacturing for current models ahead of a new release, though this does seem a fair way out from a presumed fall announcement. 

Caveat emptor

In short, it's not a good time to be buying one of the compact Apple units. If you're after an iMac or even a Macbook Neo (above), then everything is proceeding as normal. But the price performance ratio of the mini and the Studio are making them just too tempting to the AI crowd. Add in the supply chain problems, and it's a combination that effectively takes them off the budget-buy table.

Of course, at $799 the Mac mini remains strong value for the performance it delivers. But the $599 entry point was a big part of what made it such an easy recommendation. That's gone for now, and given the supply and cost pressures, there's no guarantee it comes back anytime soon.