It's a bit of an emotional goodbye to the super cheap Mac Minis we got to enjoy for a while. I got some for family members, we had some serving as iOS/macOS build servers sitting in a closet at my last job, they were fantastic.
Not that they're a bad deal now, but at European prices of over €1000 for M6/16GB/256GB it's a psychological barrier that's been broken.
glimshe · 2026-08-25 14:25:36 UTC
If you adjust for inflation, is it a big change from the super cheap Mac Minis of the past? Probably still somewhat more expensive, but not as much as the nominal difference would imply.
petu · 2026-08-25 14:37:48 UTC
Mac Mini M4 launched less than 2 years ago at $600 (US, $500 with edu discount; as low as $400 on general discounts). Now same config with M6 is $900.
ex1fm3ta · 2026-08-25 14:42:00 UTC
same spec, same chip. I tought Apple would at least bump the RAM
simonh · 2026-08-25 14:54:08 UTC
You thought they'd bump the base RAM in the middle of the biggest RAM crisis in history?
drob518 · 2026-08-25 15:49:19 UTC
Yea, that wasn’t going to happen.
ex1fm3ta · 2026-08-25 18:46:15 UTC
yep why not ? "Unified Memory" was always their favourite selling argument
airstrike · 2026-08-25 20:27:15 UTC
Because they would be throwing away margin for no real reason
leoc · 2026-08-25 16:17:25 UTC
And except at the beginning, the Mac Minis of the past weren’t famous for being cheap, but rather for being disappointingly, unattractively expensive and, over time, apparently increasingly forgotten by Apple.
markdown · 2026-08-25 18:47:39 UTC
Actually they were famous for being tiny.
musicale · 2026-08-26 00:38:36 UTC
Mac minis from 2005-2024 launched with entry-level models priced from $499-$699, with the outliers being the 2018 model at $799:
Though $599 for the M4 in 2024 seems like a local optimum.
Dathuil · 2026-08-25 14:47:57 UTC
When they discontinued the M4 with 16GB a few months ago I had literally just ordered one off Amazon which they promptly cancelled. It would have been 600 after exchange rate from GBP.
I can't justify a more than 2x price increase for what I'm guessing are marginal improvements. I want to replace my home lab but as it stands my underpowered NAS will have to continue as it has the past few years
amelius · 2026-08-25 15:07:05 UTC
> but at European prices of over €1000 for M6/16GB/256GB it's a psychological barrier that's been broken.
We should be buying European solutions anyway. Different psychological barrier that was broken long before.
I want a mini Neo for like $399 or whatever apple can muster. it could be the size of a deck of cards to boot.
abricq · 2026-08-25 14:04:46 UTC
> Up to 2x faster gaming performance with ray tracing in Cyberpunk 2077: Ultimate Edition when compared to Mac mini with M4.
Interesting that Apple quotes performances when playing Cyberpunk 2077 ! Maybe they will want to care more about gaming ?
And while i'm at it, I was wondering a few weeks ago if I should try this game on my M3 pro. Anyone has played it on Apple and has feedback ?
mcphage · 2026-08-25 14:07:04 UTC
> Interesting that Apple quotes performances when playing Cyberpunk 2077 ! Maybe they will want to care more about gaming ?
They include game metrics in their marketing often, because they know their customers care about gaming. But no—for whatever reason, it never translates into Apple caring about gaming. I don't get it, but that's the way it has been for a long time.
wlesieutre · 2026-08-25 14:18:03 UTC
With the “game mode” and “game porting toolkit” in recent history, I think there’s one person at Apple who cares about gaming and every couple of years he escapes from the basement where they keep him locked up and manages to sneak something into the release branch
They’ve also said when they pull Rosetta for intel compatibility, it will still be available for old games to use, which is a huge improvement from their usual stance of “that game studio that hasn’t existed since 2008 should dust off their code and update it to our new architecture.”
efficax · 2026-08-25 14:26:00 UTC
they've done a bunch to make macs a better gaming platform, including the very nice game porting toolkit (https://developer.apple.com/games/game-porting-toolkit/) which you can use yourself to run pc games on the mac. All macs since m1 have very nice gpus that can handle most games made today, and the newer ones can run the latest AAA ones with good detail. At this point it's more that game publishers/studios don't care about the mac
andrewingram · 2026-08-25 14:15:41 UTC
I play quite a few games on my Mac Mini via Crossover, but rarely anything particularly graphically intensive. Though I do see occasional buzz about improvements in the game porting toolkit leading to significant perf improvements when they make their way into Crossover.
swozey · 2026-08-25 14:26:15 UTC
cp2077 sits permanently at 60fps and looks great on my m1 max 64gb. I used to play it on my 4090, but once I figured out how to do redmods on macos I quit using it and play it on my mac to save power (I'm 100% solar powered and barely generate 600w, 4090 consumes 500+). In apples infinite wisdom they don't support egpus, so my 4090 egpu will never work with my mac, which was a really disappointing thing to discover.
russelg · 2026-08-25 14:48:14 UTC
It could work but that would require NVIDIA to release an arm64 macOS driver. Safe to say this will never happen.
benoau · 2026-08-27 03:08:37 UTC
Someone actually got an eGPU to pass-through to a Linux VM - with a steep performance penalty anyway. If you are gaming at 4K a 4090 will still be better even with the performance hit. Although obviously this will blow your solar budget!
From what I've seen they do care quite a bit about gaming, but not to the point where they're willing to actually do much about it, so I wouldn't expect a proton style compatibility layer anytime soon unfortunately
LetsGetTechnicl · 2026-08-25 15:22:48 UTC
You can get Proton through CrossOver at least. I haven't done much testing but I know some people use it to do some basic gaming.
dragonwriter · 2026-08-26 10:06:28 UTC
> From what I've seen they do care quite a bit about gaming, but not to the point where they're willing to actually do much about it
If they aren't willing to do much about it, they don't—however much they might pretend as long as it costs them nothing of value to do so—actually “care quite a bit” about it.
VCFundedGenYer · 2026-08-25 14:57:32 UTC
Apple does this thing where they pick a very old game and then boast about how well it runs. It's so bizarre.
Not like Mac gaming is good anyway...they have "Game Porting Toolkit" but it's not free and open like Proton so nobody will use it unless Apple pushes them. Removing Rosetta doesn't help either.
thewebguyd · 2026-08-25 15:14:30 UTC
Apple also just can't give up the idea of selling games through the AppStore either and you end up with situations like with AC: Shadows where it was ported, but you must buy the macport via the app store. Your copy on steam does not include the mac port, so if you wan to play on both your Windows/Linux desktop and Mac, you have to buy it twice. So stupid.
wpm · 2026-08-25 15:17:51 UTC
In fairness, Cyberpunk 2077 might be 5 years old but it is the modern day "Can it run Crysis". It is absolutely still a hard game to run.
frollogaston · 2026-08-25 20:08:52 UTC
Also "will it run Minecraft with shaders"
bigyabai · 2026-08-25 20:29:31 UTC
In fairness, Cyberpunk 2077 is playable through Wine translation on a $400 base model Steam Deck.
The game gets a bad rap for the last-gen console performance, but even 2020's iGPUs could handle it: https://youtu.be/oUm5GmJcBPA
0xc133 · 2026-08-25 22:01:57 UTC
The cheapest Steam Deck available now is $789.
bigyabai · 2026-08-25 23:37:01 UTC
You don't need the Deck. The linked video is a random AMD laptop iGPU.
datakan · 2026-08-25 15:34:56 UTC
Cyberpunk isn't old to macOS, they just released the native version a few months ago.
mathisfun123 · 2026-08-25 15:57:32 UTC
> Game Porting Toolkit" but it's not free and open like Proton so nobody will use it unless Apple pushes them.
I don't know what this means - game porting toolkit is free
rxyz · 2026-08-25 17:46:31 UTC
Cyberpunk is THE PC benchmark game since it released
rldjbpin · 2026-08-26 09:59:54 UTC
it happens to be a title well-known but also natively supported. for a wide sea of games and their hostility towards open standards such as vulkan, we get a handful of games supported in their platform through partnerships. in the end of the day don't hold your breath for their involvement unless the game publisher does all the work.
muro · 2026-08-25 14:10:27 UTC
Double the price of the base m4 mac mini in February :(
(it was late in it's lifecycle and there were frequent sales)
PinguTS · 2026-08-25 14:15:44 UTC
What I am missing in all of those benchmarks, how does the M6 compares to the M5 Pro.
I don't care how the M6 compares to the M1, even when the M6 2.3x compared to M1 in Excel spreadsheet. That is no measurement even in accounting. The dead time is not the Excel.
I am to only one?
zamadatix · 2026-08-25 14:21:23 UTC
Benchmarks from the manufacturer are just marketing as well. Wait for independent 3rd party reviews.
speedping · 2026-08-25 14:23:38 UTC
It basically means that every meaningful comparison produced an embarrassing improvement multiplier
Says 1.2x for multithreaded and doesn't specify (I presume smaller) for single-threaded. That's compared to M5 not M5 Pro, so M5 Pro is likely significantly faster.
Zylokloto · 2026-08-25 14:45:07 UTC
Last time the benchmark numbers from apple were stupid and they still are.
I just wait for practical real live numbers with real stacks i use.
And btw. they reduced the memory bandwdith on the M4 in comparision to its previous version by 40gb/sec or so, you need to wait to see.
rcarmo · 2026-08-25 14:53:57 UTC
The big difference you're not looking at is the memory bandwidth. The M5 Pro has nearly twice the one of the M6:
170GB/s memory bandwidth
Configurable up to 32GB unified memory
307GB/s memory bandwidth
Configurable up to 64GB unified memory
That is also the factor you want to take into account for AI inference, of course.
redox99 · 2026-08-25 17:51:22 UTC
Both are still very low for AI btw.
als0 · 2026-08-25 19:36:21 UTC
Yep, even 600GB/s is barely usable and not fun.
rcarmo · 2026-08-25 22:14:46 UTC
Well, “low” is relative. Not everyone can spend a small car’s worth on a Studio…
redox99 · 2026-08-26 01:55:46 UTC
But everyone can load 10 bucks on a deepseek flash API and have almost unlimited usage at decent speed.
tencentshill · 2026-08-26 16:01:46 UTC
For now. Local will always be free, and will only get better.
NamlchakKhandro · 2026-08-26 02:08:38 UTC
you're looking at the wrong device.
- Apple M5 Ultra chip
- 30-core CPU with 10 super cores and 20 performance cores
- 64-core GPU
- Neural Accelerators
- Hardware-accelerated ray tracing
- 32-core Neural Engine
- 1.2TB/s memory bandwidth
one point 2 terrabyte a second memory bandwidth....
512gb coming later this year
but at the cost of a small car
manquer · 2026-08-26 05:23:21 UTC
Sadly maybe 20 years ago $17K was price of a car. Median car price these days is close to $50K and there are hardly any new cars less than 20
ponector · 2026-08-26 06:01:53 UTC
You can buy a new Toyota car or SUV in USA for $25k. You can buy a used Toyota for $17k.
vehemenz · 2026-08-26 12:31:29 UTC
The median price is high because Americans tend to buy more car than they can afford and/or need.
If we look at what you can realistically buy OTD (out the door) prices, the picture changes. New Odyssey/Sienna are coming in the low to mid $40k, and these are at the upper end of quality and features. Your typical compact SUVs is in the upper $20k range.
chokolad · 2026-08-26 16:56:13 UTC
> Your typical compact SUVs is in the upper $20k range.
Your typical base model compact SUVs start in upper $20K range. Your typical compact SUV usually lands somewhere in the 30s.
vehemenz · 2026-08-26 18:37:07 UTC
You're right. My prices were a few years off. Still, nowhere near the $50k mark.
toasterlovin · 2026-08-25 17:24:28 UTC
Upgraded my work machine from an M1 MBP to an M4 Mac Mini a couple of years ago. I do a lot of work in Excel with large sheets. The performance improvement was very noticeable and appreciated!
post_break · 2026-08-25 14:17:15 UTC
So the price just went up by another $100 am I reading that right?
jdoe1337halo · 2026-08-25 14:22:11 UTC
Era of cheap compute is over I'm afraid
vlucas · 2026-08-25 14:33:23 UTC
Over for now, or at least a little while until production ramps up to our new reality (~5 years minimum is likely).
orphea · 2026-08-25 14:42:21 UTC
No, it's not. We do have to live through this long and harsh winter, though.
c16 · 2026-08-25 14:57:29 UTC
I really want a mini for running local models, but there's no way I'm buying one for the next few years. I'm planning on waiting for models to get better and more powerful, as well as for hardware prices to come down.
gib444 · 2026-08-25 14:46:29 UTC
Just got to wait for the wealth to trickle down to make it cheap again
/s
HumblyTossed · 2026-08-25 15:43:14 UTC
Pretty much. Everyone seems to think prices will come back down, but I don't agree.
linguae · 2026-08-25 14:23:55 UTC
Yup. Yesterday it was $799 for the base Mac Mini M4, a $200 increase from the original MSRP before June’s price hikes.
I paid $499 for my M4 back in April with the academic discount since I predicted the next generation base model would cost more. Sadly my prediction was correct: $599 to $899 is steep. I understand why; the prices of DIMMs, GPUs, and SSDs have also skyrocketed. But $899 for a base Mac Mini is painful, even if the alternatives on the current market are also painfully expensive.
matt-p · 2026-08-25 14:35:18 UTC
Faster CPU and Ethernet is certainly worth $100. Sucks though, I agree.
jdoe1337halo · 2026-08-25 14:18:10 UTC
So happy with my base M4 purchase for $499 when it released. I even snagged a 1TB replacement drive for $199 a year ago. Feels like I got the last train out.
Waterluvian · 2026-08-25 14:33:57 UTC
I feel that way about my GPU for normal gaming use. Now I’m afraid of it dying on me.
KronisLV · 2026-08-25 15:29:29 UTC
I’m currently hoping that my Intel Arc B580 doesn’t die on me cause even a 5060 Ti 16 GB has reached like 700 EUR price over here. I don’t think the prices will get better anytime soon.
Same with my M1 Air for being on the move, even notebooks would be more expensive than they’re worth.
drob518 · 2026-08-25 15:47:51 UTC
I’m milking my M1 Air, too. It’s still going strong, and I just can’t justify replacing it. Would love 64GB or more memory, though.
garbageman · 2026-08-25 16:12:45 UTC
I got an essentially free upgrade from an M1 air to an M4 air and let me tell you...there is zero difference in day to day usage. You've got another 5+ years of headroom at least.
drob518 · 2026-08-25 21:14:19 UTC
Yep, for cpu I’m sure that’s true. It isn’t often that I wish the M1 was faster. But I need more memory. 16 GB was fine five years ago, but it’s getting cramped for me now.
Atotalnoob · 2026-08-25 17:19:29 UTC
Consider underclocking/undervolt it a little, especially if you aren’t using the GPU to its full potential.
It will last longer and hopefully the GPU prices will recover in a few years.
I hope
qurren · 2026-08-25 17:50:49 UTC
I'm still running a 32GB V100 ...
Yajirobe · 2026-08-25 18:57:02 UTC
Wasn't that lowkey state of the art at one point? I'm running RTX 2070 lol
frollogaston · 2026-08-25 20:06:01 UTC
I don't really care about gaming, but there's a PC I got for free a while back with a 2060ti that overheats if I don't peg the fans at 100% and keep the case open. Would be nice if that holds on.
trq01758 · 2026-08-26 09:57:26 UTC
This problem is solvable with a screwdriver, a bit of isopropyl alcohol, a cloth, new thermal paste and some time.
frollogaston · 2026-08-26 16:24:06 UTC
Probably, but I'd rather not mess with it unless it stops working as-is. I've done CPU re-pasting before but not GPU.
timpera · 2026-08-25 14:58:56 UTC
Same thing for me! Got it with the education discount when it came out in 2024 and, although I've been pretty disappointed with macOS, it's crazy to see that the price increased by $300 in less than 2 years, with no sign of the price increases slowing down.
What will happen once people are priced out of buying computers? I find this worrying.
iamacyborg · 2026-08-25 15:28:35 UTC
> What will happen once people are priced out of buying computers? I find this worrying.
I’m sure some kind capitalist will be happy to rent them a thin client linked to a computer in the cloud.
datakan · 2026-08-25 15:29:44 UTC
Apple is already leasing phones/computers..........
AISnakeOil · 2026-08-25 16:02:41 UTC
Yeah the era of the personal computer is over.
Companies will prioritize components for cloud computing and lease us thin clients...
WesleyJohnson · 2026-08-25 17:37:20 UTC
My take: this was done to pull consumers back into the cycle of upgrading to every new release. iPhones already do so much more than most people need. With the RAM price hikes, even though there was an influx of sales (according to a store rep) initially, I think Apple was expected a significant decline; people just choosing to stick with their current device to avoid paying the premium.
Leasing not only allows Apple to keep "selling" people new devices, it will also mostly like accelerate the second-hand sales and resource recycling arms of the business. Consumers will be more willing to upgrade sooner and stay in perpetual payments vs having to buy out the device at lease end - and Apple gets back newer devices where the recycled tech is arguably more valuable.
brightball · 2026-08-25 15:33:27 UTC
Capitalism will lead to:
- Lots of options competing on quality, price, user experience, user needs
- Every marketplace innovation that we talk about on this platform
So somebody might offer exactly that and if it's a good option, people will use it. If it's not, they'll use an alternative.
Government regulation will lead to:
- Giant entrenched companies that are difficult to disrupt thanks to insider connections
- Lack of competition, price increases, terrible customer service and pretty much everything that "anti-capitalists" today complain about in regards to capitalism.
a2ff6eeb0 · 2026-08-25 15:42:25 UTC
*gestures at prices*
FeloniousHam · 2026-08-25 15:58:31 UTC
In Soviet Russia, prices so low no inventory left!
Comments
Not that they're a bad deal now, but at European prices of over €1000 for M6/16GB/256GB it's a psychological barrier that's been broken.
https://everymac.com/global-mac-prices/all-msrp-mac-mini-pri...
Though $599 for the M4 in 2024 seems like a local optimum.
I can't justify a more than 2x price increase for what I'm guessing are marginal improvements. I want to replace my home lab but as it stands my underpowered NAS will have to continue as it has the past few years
We should be buying European solutions anyway. Different psychological barrier that was broken long before.
https://www.imec-int.com/en
Interesting that Apple quotes performances when playing Cyberpunk 2077 ! Maybe they will want to care more about gaming ?
And while i'm at it, I was wondering a few weeks ago if I should try this game on my M3 pro. Anyone has played it on Apple and has feedback ?
They include game metrics in their marketing often, because they know their customers care about gaming. But no—for whatever reason, it never translates into Apple caring about gaming. I don't get it, but that's the way it has been for a long time.
They’ve also said when they pull Rosetta for intel compatibility, it will still be available for old games to use, which is a huge improvement from their usual stance of “that game studio that hasn’t existed since 2008 should dust off their code and update it to our new architecture.”
https://scottjg.com/posts/2026-05-05-egpu-mac-gaming/
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48137145
If they aren't willing to do much about it, they don't—however much they might pretend as long as it costs them nothing of value to do so—actually “care quite a bit” about it.
Not like Mac gaming is good anyway...they have "Game Porting Toolkit" but it's not free and open like Proton so nobody will use it unless Apple pushes them. Removing Rosetta doesn't help either.
The game gets a bad rap for the last-gen console performance, but even 2020's iGPUs could handle it: https://youtu.be/oUm5GmJcBPA
I don't know what this means - game porting toolkit is free
(it was late in it's lifecycle and there were frequent sales)
I don't care how the M6 compares to the M1, even when the M6 2.3x compared to M1 in Excel spreadsheet. That is no measurement even in accounting. The dead time is not the Excel.
I am to only one?
Says 1.2x for multithreaded and doesn't specify (I presume smaller) for single-threaded. That's compared to M5 not M5 Pro, so M5 Pro is likely significantly faster.
I just wait for practical real live numbers with real stacks i use.
And btw. they reduced the memory bandwdith on the M4 in comparision to its previous version by 40gb/sec or so, you need to wait to see.
170GB/s memory bandwidth Configurable up to 32GB unified memory
307GB/s memory bandwidth Configurable up to 64GB unified memory
That is also the factor you want to take into account for AI inference, of course.
- Apple M5 Ultra chip
- 30-core CPU with 10 super cores and 20 performance cores
- 64-core GPU
- Neural Accelerators
- Hardware-accelerated ray tracing
- 32-core Neural Engine
- 1.2TB/s memory bandwidth
one point 2 terrabyte a second memory bandwidth....
512gb coming later this year
but at the cost of a small car
If we look at what you can realistically buy OTD (out the door) prices, the picture changes. New Odyssey/Sienna are coming in the low to mid $40k, and these are at the upper end of quality and features. Your typical compact SUVs is in the upper $20k range.
Your typical base model compact SUVs start in upper $20K range. Your typical compact SUV usually lands somewhere in the 30s.
/s
I paid $499 for my M4 back in April with the academic discount since I predicted the next generation base model would cost more. Sadly my prediction was correct: $599 to $899 is steep. I understand why; the prices of DIMMs, GPUs, and SSDs have also skyrocketed. But $899 for a base Mac Mini is painful, even if the alternatives on the current market are also painfully expensive.
Same with my M1 Air for being on the move, even notebooks would be more expensive than they’re worth.
It will last longer and hopefully the GPU prices will recover in a few years.
I hope
What will happen once people are priced out of buying computers? I find this worrying.
I’m sure some kind capitalist will be happy to rent them a thin client linked to a computer in the cloud.
Companies will prioritize components for cloud computing and lease us thin clients...
Leasing not only allows Apple to keep "selling" people new devices, it will also mostly like accelerate the second-hand sales and resource recycling arms of the business. Consumers will be more willing to upgrade sooner and stay in perpetual payments vs having to buy out the device at lease end - and Apple gets back newer devices where the recycled tech is arguably more valuable.
- Lots of options competing on quality, price, user experience, user needs
- Every marketplace innovation that we talk about on this platform
So somebody might offer exactly that and if it's a good option, people will use it. If it's not, they'll use an alternative.
Government regulation will lead to:
- Giant entrenched companies that are difficult to disrupt thanks to insider connections
- Lack of competition, price increases, terrible customer service and pretty much everything that "anti-capitalists" today complain about in regards to capitalism.