{"id":238902,"date":"2026-05-04T07:51:00","date_gmt":"2026-05-04T11:51:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/2026\/05\/04\/apple-pushes-mac-mini-starting-price-to-799-eliminates-256gb-option\/"},"modified":"2026-05-04T08:55:08","modified_gmt":"2026-05-04T12:55:08","slug":"apple-pushes-mac-mini-starting-price-to-799-eliminates-256gb-option","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/2026\/05\/04\/apple-pushes-mac-mini-starting-price-to-799-eliminates-256gb-option\/","title":{"rendered":"Apple pushes Mac mini starting price to $799, eliminates 256GB option"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.macworld.com\/article\/3129806\/mac-mini-starting-price-rises-to-799-as-apple-stops-offering-256gb-option.html\">Apple pushes Mac mini starting price to $799, eliminates 256GB option<\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.macworld.com\/article\/3129806\/mac-mini-starting-price-rises-to-799-as-apple-stops-offering-256gb-option.html\">https:\/\/www.macworld.com\/article\/3129806\/mac-mini-starting-price-rises-to-799-as-apple-stops-offering-256gb-option.html<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Publish Date: <a href=\"publish_date]\">2026-05-04 07:51:00<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Source Domain: <a href=\"www.macworld.com\">www.macworld.com<\/a><\/p>\n<p><span>Summary created by Smart Answers AI<\/span><\/p>\n<h3 class=\"miso-summary-title\" id=\"in-summary\">In summary:<\/h3>\n<ul>\n<li>Apple has quietly eliminated the 256GB M4 Mac mini model, pushing the starting price from $599 to $799 for the 512GB version.<\/li>\n<li>Macworld reports this change appears on Apple\u2019s website without official announcement, potentially reflecting a strategy to manage rising memory costs.<\/li>\n<li>Only the MacBook Air and iMac retain 256GB options, making the Mac mini\u2019s entry point significantly more expensive for budget-conscious buyers.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>If you\u2019re looking for the cheapest desktop Mac, you\u2019ll have to spend a little more than last week. On Apple.com, you can no longer buy the M4 Mac mini with 256GB of storage. No, it\u2019s not simply out of stock, nor does it have extended delivery times (as has been the case for a while). It\u2019s just gone. It\u2019s not an option on the Apple store any longer.<\/p>\n<p>This is what the storage section of the configuration page looks like now:<\/p>\n<p class=\"imageCredit\">Apple<\/p>\n<p>Though Apple hasn\u2019t increased the cost of the 512GB model (or other options and variations), this still effectively makes the Mac mini more expensive. You used to be able to get one for $599, and now you have to pay $799, even though you get double the storage. The MacBook Neo and iMac are now the only Macs that still have a 256GB option.<\/p>\n<p>In Apple\u2019s earnings call yesterday, Tim Cook said he was looking at \u201ca range of options\u201d to deal with the massive increase in memory costs. This is one tactic\u2014Apple charges an incredible price premium for RAM and storage upgrades, asking customers to pay several times more than the going rate for these components. By effectively forcing consumers to buy an \u201cupgraded\u201d model, it can absorb the memory chip price increase while maintaining a high profit margin.<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s not clear if that\u2019s exactly what is happening here, or if Apple will use the same tactic on other products to raise the average selling price and profit margin of some products while not technically raising&#8230;<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.macworld.com\/article\/3129806\/mac-mini-starting-price-rises-to-799-as-apple-stops-offering-256gb-option.html\">Source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Apple pushes Mac mini starting price to $799, eliminates 256GB option https:\/\/www.macworld.com\/article\/3129806\/mac-mini-starting-price-rises-to-799-as-apple-stops-offering-256gb-option.html Publish Date: 2026-05-04&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":238903,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/www.macworld.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/M4-Mac-mini-hero-2.jpg?quality=50&strip=all&w=1024","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[43],"tags":[52,53,50],"class_list":["post-238902","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-macintosh","tag-imac","tag-mac-mini","tag-macbook-air"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/238902"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=238902"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/238902\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":238904,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/238902\/revisions\/238904"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/238903"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=238902"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=238902"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=238902"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}