Mac Mini sold out for months as AI developers adopt it for local agent workloads

Apple CEO Tim Cook confirmed on the Q2 2026 earnings call that Mac Mini and Mac Studio face several months of wait times, with the $599 base M4 Mac Mini completely sold out. Demand is driven by AI developers using Apple Silicon's unified memory architecture to run autonomous agent tools locally, with the open-source OpenClaw platform cited as a key catalyst. The Mac Studio M4 Ultra supports up to 192GB unified memory. Apple has raised the Mac Mini starting price to $799 and discontinued some high-RAM configurations. Wait times reach 16-18 weeks for 64GB configurations.