There's a weird trend happening right now: Mac Minis are selling out. Not because people suddenly discovered GarageBand. Because developers are buying dedicated machines to run AI agents that actually control their computers.
Projects like OpenClaw — open-source frameworks that let you wire up Claude or GPT to click buttons, fill forms, navigate apps — have turned the Mac Mini into the cheapest "AI workstation" you can buy: headless, always on and doing your job while you sleep.
And every time I see another "just got my Mac Mini for my AI setup" post, I think the same thing: this is what Apple Intelligence was supposed to be.
Apple Had Every Advantage
Think about what Apple already owns:
- The hardware — custom silicon optimized for ML workloads
- The ecosystem — your phone, laptop, watch, and tablet all talking to each other
- The trust — decades of "we care about your privacy" messaging
- The data — your calendar, emails, photos, health data, location, contacts
If any company could ship an AI agent you'd trust with actual computer access, it's Apple. They could have built a Siri that doesn't just set timers, but genuinely automates your workflow. File taxes. Respond to emails in your tone. Book flights by actually navigating the airline's website.
Instead they shipped notification summaries and emoji generation.
The $500/Device Missed Opportunity
Here's what kills me: people would have paid for this. Gladly.
If Apple said "Mac Mini Pro AI Edition — $999 — comes with an agent that learns your workflows and automates them," developers and knowledge workers would line up around the block. The margins would be absurd because the differentiation isn't in the hardware — it's in the trust layer.
Nobody trusts Google with root access to their computer. Nobody trusts Meta. Microsoft is getting there with Copilot but they're dragging 40 years of enterprise baggage.
Apple could have charged a premium for being the only company people would let control their machine. That trust was their real moat, and they're letting it depreciate.
The Mac Mini Rush Is a Signal
Right now, people are literally buying extra computers to run someone else's AI on Apple's hardware. Apple gets the hardware margin but misses the platform revenue.
Hardware margins are nice but *platform margins * are what built a $3 trillion company.
The developers setting up headless Mac Minis with AI agents aren't just early adopters. They're building the product that Apple should have shipped. They're proving the demand exists. They're doing Apple's market research for free.
Whether Apple is paying attention is the trillion-dollar question.
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