Mac Mini Out of Stock: Has the “Beheaded” MacBook Become the New Favorite in AI?

Source Domain: eu.36kr.com

About four or five years ago, there was a trend in the second – hand market for something called “headless MacBooks”. Specifically, these were MacBooks with broken screens. The upper part was simply removed, and they were sold as mini – hosts with a keyboard and trackpad. Compared with normal MacBooks, their prices were much cheaper.

However, as Mac quickly entered the era of self – developed chips, the emergence of high – cost – performance Apple hosts like the Mac mini M4 made headless MacBooks lose their purchasing value and gradually fade out of people’s sight.

However, 2026 was a rather magical year. The sharp increase in storage prices combined with the lobster craze directly led to the Mac mini M4 being out of stock, followed by price hikes. Currently, Apple has even directly discontinued the 256GB base version of the Mac mini M4, only offering versions with a capacity of 512GB or more, significantly raising the price threshold. Against this backdrop, headless MacBooks made a comeback and unexpectedly became the new favorite in the AI field.

The price of Mac mini soars, and headless Apple laptops become the new favorite

In my memory, shortly after the release of the Mac mini M4, it started to see price cuts on major e – commerce platforms. For a long time afterwards, the price with the 10 – billion subsidy remained stable at around 3000 yuan. The powerful performance of the M4 chip, combined with a starting memory of 16GB and a compact and lightweight body, made the cost – performance advantage of this mini – host extremely obvious. However, the lobster craze triggered by OpenClaw at the beginning of 2026 quickly made the Mac mini an excellent device for lobster farming. This Apple host was sold out in a short period, and e – commerce platforms started to run out of stock.

Later, the delivery time of the Mac mini sold at the original price on the Apple official website was repeatedly extended. Recently, with the continuous increase in storage prices, the…

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