Want a Mac Mini to power the AI agents that do your work for you, but you haven’t seen a new one in months? Apple may soon have you covered once again.
Back in February, when everyone with chronic AI brain was in a frenzy over token-guzzling agentic AI systems like OpenClaw, Mac Minis vanished from Apple Store shelves. Gaping security holes or not, running swarms of AI models day and night really only made sense if you handed those functions over to their own dedicated machine, and Mac Minis—which can run while sitting in a drawer—fit the bill nicely. They’re also a hit with people who like to run open weight models on their own home hardware. In April, CEO Tim Cook said on an earnings call that the whole Mac Mini AI craze had blindsided the company, and so they, along with Mac Studios, would need “several months to reach supply demand balance.”
Welp, according to Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman, Apple may have just taken a stab at reaching supply demand balance by plotting to release a surprise run of newly updated Mac Minis. As is often the case, Gurman’s reporting comes from “people familiar with the matter,” who “asked not to be identified because the plan isn’t public.”
Interestingly, these alleged new Mac Minis, which Gurman says have been tested with M5 and M6 chips, may come out, “as soon as the coming days,” which would mean before Apple’s big expected September event, when new iPhones will likely be announced.
And the current line of Mac Minis, if you can find one, are M4-powered, meaning this is a big update either way. If Gurman is right about there being an M6 version, by my reckoning that would be the very first M6 product released by Apple.
This AI hardware rumor coincides with a big AI software rumor: Meta will release its Hatch agentic platform in a matter of weeks, according to the Information. So if you’re planning to get onboard with Zuck, and, uh, join the Hatch revolution(?) Apple may have your hardware needs covered for that.