Apple has quietly raised the entry price of the Mac mini recently. The once standard $599 basic model has been removed from the US official website and no longer appears as an optional configuration. As of May 1, the $599 Mac mini model with 256GB of storage is no longer available for order from Apple's U.S. online store, and that capacity no longer appears in configuration options.
The main models currently displayed on the official website are all higher-priced configurations, and the publicly stated starting price has been increased to about US$799, although the supply of different configurations is still fluctuating. At the same time, this 256GB entry-level configuration has also disappeared from Apple’s exclusive store for education and military personnel, and users can neither place orders nor make out-of-stock reservations. Lower-priced Mac mini models still occasionally appear on Apple's official certified refurbished page, but in limited quantities and with inconsistent availability.
Looking back at the product release nodes, Apple launched the M4 chip version of Mac mini on October 29, 2024, and positioned it as the "most affordable Mac" with a starting price of $599 and standard configuration of 16GB of memory and 256GB of storage. However, not only entry-level models have disappeared, but other configurations have also experienced extended delivery cycles or limited supply, indicating that this tight supply affects more than just a single model. The report pointed out that this basic model experienced a continuous out-of-stock period of about two weeks before being removed from the official website, which is consistent with the previous rhythm of supply constraints for the entire Mac mini product line.
At Apple's fiscal second quarter earnings call for fiscal year 2026 on April 30, 2026, Apple CEO Tim Cook said that demand for Mac mini and Mac Studio has exceeded supply capacity, and it is expected to take several months to return supply and demand to a balanced state. As more and more users look to run AI workloads locally, demand for compact Mac desktops has increased significantly, further exacerbating an already relatively tight supply.
For consumers, the Mac mini can no longer play the role of an "entry Mac" priced at $599, and this positioning is gradually being taken over by the MacBook Neo. In most purchase scenarios, the starting price of Mac mini is closer to US$799, which also means that the cost of entering the macOS ecosystem has been raised overall. From the perspective of Apple's own strategy, removing the lowest-priced configuration in the context of limited supply will help guide users to higher-priced models, thus raising the overall average selling price.
It is unclear whether this price and product mix adjustment is a short-term expedient to deal with supply problems, or a longer-term product line reshaping. According to earlier reports, a new round of Mac mini updates is not expected to arrive until later in 2026, but the specific time is still uncertain, and the current supply constraints may continue to have an impact on Apple's production capacity and channel arrangements.