Apple stops selling its cheapest Mac Mini, moving the starting price to $799
Apple stops selling its cheapest Mac Mini, moving the starting price to $799
Publish Date: 2026-05-04 11:07:00
Source Domain: tech.yahoo.com
Buying a new Mac Mini just got a little more expensive — if you wanted to pick up the cheapest model available, that is. As first spotted by MacRumors, Apple has stopped selling the $599 Mac Mini with 256GB of storage. Instead, the new starting point is the $799 model that features 512GB of storage.
While that’s not a price hike per se — the 512GB model was and is $799 — the effect is to remove one of the cheapest ways to buy into the Mac ecosystem on the desktop side. The $599 MacBook Neo still has you covered on the laptop side (and it’s pretty good for a budget laptop). Still, even at $799, the Mac Mini is a zippy machine thanks to the Apple M4 chip that powers everything, combined with 16GB of RAM and 512GB of storage.
The likely cause for the $599 Mac Mini model’s demise is the ongoing memory and storage chip shortage that’s impacting the entire industry. On Apple’s second-quarter earnings call last week, CEO Tim Cook said that the industry-wide shortage could impact the Mac Mini, Mac Studio and MacBook Neo. He added that memory costs will “drive an increasing impact on our business” and that Apple will “look at a range of options.” Another factor: AI hobbyists and entrepreneurs experimenting with homebrew AI solutions like OpenClaw have been driving up demand for Apple’s desktops in recent months.
According to the rumor mill, we could expect an updated Mac Mini with M5 chips to land this year (possibly as soon as around WWDC 2026 in June), so we could also be seeing Apple clearing out some inventory ahead of time. So far, Apple has avoided raising prices across the board on its devices, but we could see that change as the memory shortage continues.
