Good Luck Getting a Mac Mini for the Next ‘Several Months’
Apple CEO Tim Cook said during the company’s earnings conference call Thursday that it could take “several months” to meet growing demand for the Mac Mini, the company’s compact but powerful, screen-less desktop computer. Cook’s remarks come after coders determined in recent months that the Mac Mini was the perfect machine for agentic AI tasks.
“On Mac Mini and Mac Studio, both of those platforms are incredible platforms for AI and agent tools,” Cook said on the earnings conference call, in response to questions from analysts. “And customer adoption of that is happening faster than expected.”
The news comes amid another record quarter for the company. iPhone sales were shorter than expected, even though demand for the iPhone 17 was very high and Apple’s subscription services business continued to grow.
Apple has faced supply constraints on both the iPhone and Mac product line this quarter. iPhone shortages are primarily due to a limited supply of the advanced chips that power the phones. But as Cook made clear, at least two different factors are driving shortages in Apple’s Mac business: rapid adoption of generative AI and unexpected demand for the company’s new, colorful and more affordable MacBook Neo laptop.
Mac sales are typically only a fraction of those of the iPhone — $8.4 billion this quarter, compared to the iPhone’s nearly $57 billion in sales — and the Mac Mini, in particular, is only a fraction of that. But with the launch of OpenClaw earlier this year, an open-source AI tool, Mac Minis have started flying off the shelves because they offer both ample power and a dedicated computing environment for agentic AI tasks.
Some impatient customers have already been waiting for months for their Mac Mini. MacRumors reported in early March that Apple had stopped selling a configuration of the computer that included 512 GB of memory. As of last week, the base model of the Mac Mini was completely sold out.
Cook and his soon-to-be successor, John Ternus, also discussed the transition of Cook leaving the CEO role later this year. Cook said on the conference call that it was the “right time” to take on the role of executive chairman for a “number of reasons,” including that Apple is well-positioned financially and its roadmap of upcoming products is “incredible.” He called Ternus “a person of remarkable character and a born leader.”
Ternus then joined the call for a minute to vouch for Cook as a business leader and to assure investors that he would take a similarly deliberate and thoughtful approach to running the company. He also discussed the company’s roadmap.
Both men were short on details on this supposedly very exciting product roadmap, but hopefully it will include more road-going Macs.
