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Comment by locusofself | Hacker News Reader

why were mac minis so popular for this compared to any other machine, cloud VPS or local VM?

Macs have "unified memory" meaning the GPU uses the same memory as the CPU and minis can have up to 64 gigs. So its a lot faster than running on a CPU and a lot cheaper than any other GPU based rig with similar memory.

Most openclaw users are not running the models locally.

This is what I thought. The iMessage integration makes sense I guess though.

It allows your Claw to access all your iCloud data easily like reminders and iMessage for example

Everything about that makes me feel very uncomfortable. Google made and spent a fortune on getting people's data, and now people are just handing it out for free by the GBs.

Unified Memory and Integrated GPU.

Apple is amazing at marketing to make 1990s technology sound cutting edge. I'm sure they change something for plausible deniability, as a nominalist, not even 2 of the same computers are the same.

Mac’s are still pretty terrible at running LLMs. They will be there someday, but that isn’t today

Everyone recommending a Mac Mini for OpenClaw is recommending the base model (which has just 16GB of ram), so it’s not about the unified memory, it is about the agent being able to interact with your apple ecosystem services like reminders, iMessage etc.

It is the cheapest Mac you can get for that.

Because these people have Apple IDs, and they need a machine that can access their various accounts.

The Mac mini has a very good value for money if you need raw performance in a small silent package. Frequently available for between $399 - $499 discounted.

A VPS that can perform like a Mac mini will likely cost the same as a Mac mini in 12 months time.

Openclaw is running via api. The reason people are bying separate machines is for security isolation and 24/7 power — performance is irrelevant.

I picked one up to replace my prior mini that I spent 4x the amount of money on. It's an absolute speed demon.

claws are run mainly by rich american programmers. The only computer they have is a macbook. The only brand they know is apple. The only cloud they know is serverless

so you can use the full operating system

More importantly iMessage

And get hacked via prompt injection

That’s why people buy separate machines / use VPS.

In classic Apple fashion, they fooled people into thinking an integrated GPU is the same as Nvidia.

Gosh I wish I could hire their marketing company.

Where did they say this?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com