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Comment by pvtmert | Hacker News Reader

Does one really need to _buy_ a completely new desktop hardware (ie. mac mini) to _run_ a simple request/response program?

Excluding the fact that you can run LLMs via ollama or similar directly on the device, but that will not have a very good token/s speed as far as I can guess...

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You don’t, but for those who would like the agent to interact with Apple provided services like reminders and iMessage it works for that.

Oh this makes sense.

I’m pretty sure people are using them for local inference. Token rates can be acceptable if you max out the specs. If it was just the harness, they’d use a $20 raspberry pi instead.

It is just for the harness. Using a Mac Mini gives you direct access to Apple services, but also means you can use AppleScript / Apple Events for automation. Being able to run a real (as in not-headless) browser unlocks a bunch of things which otherwise be blocked.

What other device would you suggest as a home server that a non tech person can set up themselves and has enough power to run several Chrome tabs? Access to iMessage is a plus. Small beeline Windows devices could also work but it’s Windows 11, slow as molasses.

Their existing desktop or laptop computer?

Raspberry Pi using Pi OS

You don't, that's just the most visible way to do it. Any other computer capable of running not-Claude code in a shell with a browser will do, but all the cool kids are buying mac's, don't you wanna be one of them?

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