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Base Mac Mini Sold Out From Apple Online Store

Insightful comment from someone over at ars:

“Apple's supplier contracts with the display makers might also affect their product mix.

If Apple has to take so many displays or gets margin-impacting discounts when they go over certain numbers, and there is a shortage of RAM or NAND storage, the must-take levels of displays is the floor for the number of laptops they make (assuming the market is demanding that many units).

And desktops can get the leftovers.”
 
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Charlie Bonesx said:
Insightful comment from someone over at ars:

“Apple's supplier contracts with the display makers might also affect their product mix.

If Apple has to take so many displays or gets margin-impacting discounts when they go over certain numbers, and there is a shortage of RAM or NAND storage, the must-take levels of displays is the floor for the number of laptops they make (assuming the market is demanding that many units).

And desktops can get the leftovers.”
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Isn’t that a given that applies to everything from the chassis to the PCB?

BOE, LGD, and Sharp supply MacBook LCD panels. It’s not as if Apple is asking for a speciality OLED that only Samsung can make. This means Apple should have very good bargaining power and not be required to take too many LCDs they don’t need.
 
I think main reason is that M5, M5 pro is coming to new mac mini

in last a few year, during transition, stock never sold out.

but this year story is different
 
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Yes it's simply the sign that the M5 will be coming soon. Hopefully with 512GB and hopefully not too expensive (although I expect a price hike).
 
reyesmac said:
Are they no longer being sent on ships from China? Are flights being grounded as well? This logistics issue could turn out to be the next big crisis of 2026. In hindsight things like this would be the tells.
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Yes, people seem to have forgotten that even by air or sea and land the cost of fuel will be added to these devices and also leading to delays due to rationing. Refreshes are also slated which adds to this protracted situation.
 
goobot said:
If all this is due to the ai garbage, governments should really step in and require companies to fulfill consumer demand first and let ai companies get the leftovers rather than the other way around
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First rule of capitalism, follow the money.
 
SkyBell said:
I think the theory is that it is at least partially due to consumer demand, to run AI models locally. I know my M2 mini does it pretty well, so these M4's are probably quite nice for it.
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Has social media not overhyped the floodgate to local LLM with Mac Mini?

While I’m sure there’s been an increase in consumer sales since January with Mac Mini, but people speak like it’s 10 fold or something. It’s not like every high school and college kid is trying to do this. 🙃

A ChatGPT or Claude subscription is still far more approachable than all this for the general public, unfortunately. Until there’s an all-in-one plug and go console like thing, this is all still pretty niche.
 
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theorist9 said:
Of course, that doesn't tell us there will be an imminent refresh, since there's another plausible explanation—that this is due to supply chain shortages.
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...and my point is that the two explanation are not mutually exclusive.
With a refresh approaching, supply chain shortages could easily delay production of the new model, and/or cause manufacturing of the old model to stop early or make more conservative numbers.

Looking at the M5 specs, every M5 variant is using 9600 MT/s RAM vs. 7500 for base and 8533 for pro in the M4 range. That's going to simplify inventory and possibly help Apple's bargaining position if they can guarantee future orders for large quantities. Apple aren't going to waste time trying to source relatively small numbers of 8533 chips - that they won't be using in the future - just for one last batch of high-RAM Minis.
 
Aries79 said:
The revenue per sale from a Mini is for sure higher than the revenue from a MacBook Air, and the revenue from a MacBook Studio is higher than the revenue from a MacBook Pro.
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Evicence? Othewise it's "least hypothesis" that Apple makes more money from selling a $1100 product than a $600 one.

Also - I said "revenue" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revenue) not "profit" for a reason - only Apple's accountants know what Apple's profit margin is on individual sales, and total revenue is still an important performance metric.

Aries79 said:
Also, each MacMini or MacStudio sale will drive sales of overpriced Keyboard, Mouse and even Apple Displays.
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People buy those for MacBooks too. Plenty of mice, certainly. Part of the point of Studio Display is that it acts as a laptop dock. If Mini/Studio sales are as tiny as you claim, they probably sell more Studio Displays to MacBook buyers than they do to Mini/Studio buyers.
Aries79 said:
Given that the Mac Studio and Mac Mini combined are estimated at just 3% of Apple Mac sales, it makes no sense to stop them for months in order to sell the same amount of MacBooks.
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If I was selling on average 50 MacBooks and 1 Mini a week, and had to choose between stocking 1 less Macbook or 1 less Mini, I think I'd dump the Mini.

...especially at a time when there was a widely anticipated refresh to the Mini dragging down sales vs. recently refreshed MacBooks on the shelf. If I's just sold the last Mini, that had been on the shelf for weeks, I wouldn't be hurrying to restock it.
 
theluggage said:
...and my point is that the two explanation are not mutually exclusive.
With a refresh approaching, supply chain shortages could easily delay production of the new model, and/or cause manufacturing of the old model to stop early or make more conservative numbers.

Looking at the M5 specs, every M5 variant is using 9600 MT/s RAM vs. 7500 for base and 8533 for pro in the M4 range. That's going to simplify inventory and possibly help Apple's bargaining position if they can guarantee future orders for large quantities. Apple aren't going to waste time trying to source relatively small numbers of 8533 chips - that they won't be using in the future - just for one last batch of high-RAM Minis.
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OK, but that essentially just repeats what I wrote here (bolded parentheticals added for emphasis), so I don't know why you wrote the above as a reply to my posts—as though you are either disagreeing with me or trying to inform me of something, when in fact you are agreeing with me on those specific points:
theorist9 said:
If not, that would suggest this is due to a shortage rather than a refresh decision.

Though that would not preclude that there's also a refresh coming [so the two aren't mutually exclusive], if Apple sourcing for the LPDDR5X-9600 used in the M5 is better than that for the LPDDR5X-7500 used in the base M4 and the LPDDR5X-8333 in the M4 Pro and Max [sourcing for the 9600 could be easier than for the 7500 + 8333]
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Plus that wasn't the issue at hand. The specific issue I raised, which was the topic of the sub-discussion to which you were initially responding, was to question the certainty some have that the very fact of the Mini becoming unavailable means there's an imminent refresh.

I think such certainty is misplaced, since this could instead be due to a parts shortage (or there could be both a shortage of parts for the M4 and an imminent refresh, where the former is precipitating the latter, as I explained above).

We simply don't have enough info. to know at this point.

This is MR, so it's fine and fun and expected to speculate on what is happening. But often folks become too attached to their speculations, somehow according them the status of certainty.
 
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I'm not buying the supply or memory shortages because the Neo and M5 are currently available for purchase. It would affect not just the Mini.
 
Heat_Fan89 said:
I'm not buying the supply or memory shortages because the Neo and M5 are currently available for purchase. It would affect not just the Mini.
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As I mentioned above, the memory used in the M5 (LPDDR5X-9600) is different from that used in the M4 Minis (LPDDR5X-7500 in the base M4 and LPDDR5X-8333 in the M4 Pro), so the sourcing status for the two could be entirely different.

The Neo comes with 8 GB LPDDR5X-7500. But even if those RAM chips are the same as those used to make the 16 GB RAM in the base M4 (don't know if they are), they could be coming from a different supply chain.

Plus even if Apple could redirect RAM from the Neo to the Mini, they would not want to, since the Neo is a new product with lots of excitement, and they wouldn't want to sabotage that by causing further delays in its sales, which are already 2-3 weeks out:

1777059875980.png
 
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theorist9 said:
Plus even if Apple could redirect RAM from the Neo to the Mini, they would not want to, since the Neo is a new product with lots of excitement, and they wouldn't want to sabotage that by causing further delays in its sales, which are already 2-3 weeks out.
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Exactly.

There is very rightly a pecking order for constrained RAM and SSD across Apple's entire product portfolio, and to some people's continuing confusion, the desktop Macs are at the absolute bottom.
 
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Massy1989 said:
Has social media not overhyped the floodgate to local LLM with Mac Mini?

While I’m sure there’s been an increase in consumer sales since January with Mac Mini, but people speak like it’s 10 fold or something. It’s not like every high school and college kid is trying to do this.
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Yeah, like what are all these people doing with all these supposed local LLMs anyways?

I think it’s just supply chain. Not sure if people have noticed but there’s a lot of **** going on
 
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Charlie Bonesx said:
Yeah, like what are all these people doing with all these supposed local LLMs anyways?

I think it’s just supply chain. Not sure if people have noticed but there’s a lot of **** going on
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I upgraded my MBP in order to mess around with and learn how to use AI. Figure I’d rather get a new laptop than paying Seg Faultman a monthly fee.

It isn’t going away so I figure might as well learn about it. Plan to use Qwen Coder to help me update some old Objective-C code of mine to Swift and rebuild the UI in SwiftUI instead of its current UIKit implementation. Have no idea if it will work or not but it should be an interesting ride.
 
PBG4 Dude said:
I upgraded my MBP in order to mess around with and learn how to use AI. Figure I’d rather get a new laptop than paying Seg Faultman a monthly fee.

It isn’t going away so I figure might as well learn about it. Plan to use Qwen Coder to help me update some old Objective-C code of mine to Swift and rebuild the UI in SwiftUI instead of its current UIKit implementation. Have no idea if it will work or not but it should be an interesting ride.
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That make sense

I just find it hard to believe that so many people are trying to do this sort of thing that it has sapped the supply of a mainstream consumer appliance

I jus don’t buy that narrative
 
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theorist9 said:
As I mentioned above, the memory used in the M5 (LPDDR5X-9600) is different from that used in the M4 Mini (LPDDR5X-7500 in the base M4 and LPDDR5X-8333 in the M4 Pro), so the sourcing status for the two could be entirely different.

The Neo comes with 8 GB LPDDR5X-7500. But even if those RAM chips are the same as those used to make the 16 GB RAM in the base M4 (don't know if they are), they could be coming from a different supply chain.

Plus even if Apple could redirect RAM from the Neo to the Mini, they would not want to, since the Neo is a new product with lots of excitement, and they wouldn't want to sabotage that by causing further delays in its sales, which are already 2-3 weeks out:

View attachment 2624661
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We would be seeing many other products suffering shortages as well. If the M5 Mini was projected for a release in the next few months, they would have started mfg them some time ago so they too were available for customers to buy.
 
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Heat_Fan89 said:
We would be seeing many other products suffering shortages as well.
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Nope, not necessarily.

As I already explained, it's also entirely possible that Apple has enough RAM production reserved, through its contracts, to meet the current production needs of the M5 MBP, M5 MBA, M4 iMac, and A18 Neo, but has run out of what they'd reserved for the M4 Mini and M4 Studio—and, because of the shortage, has had trouble buying up more RAM for the latter two.

I'm not saying that's what's actually happeneing. As I stated above, we don't have enough info. to know either way, because we don't know the details and status of Apple's contracts with their suppliers.
 
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theorist9 said:
Nope, not necessarily.

As I already explained, it's also entirely possible that Apple has enough RAM production reserved, through its contracts, to meet the current production needs of the M5 MBP, M5 MBA, M4 iMac, and A18 Neo, but has run out of what they'd reserved for the M4 Mini and M4 Studio.
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Right, it's only the Mini's that are affected. Sure if you say so.
 
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