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Comment by Ambroos | Hacker News Reader

It's a bit of an emotional goodbye to the super cheap Mac Minis we got to enjoy for a while. I got some for family members, we had some serving as iOS/macOS build servers sitting in a closet at my last job, they were fantastic.

Not that they're a bad deal now, but at European prices of over €1000 for M6/16GB/256GB it's a psychological barrier that's been broken.

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When they discontinued the M4 with 16GB a few months ago I had literally just ordered one off Amazon which they promptly cancelled. It would have been 600 after exchange rate from GBP.

I can't justify a more than 2x price increase for what I'm guessing are marginal improvements. I want to replace my home lab but as it stands my underpowered NAS will have to continue as it has the past few years

> but at European prices of over €1000 for M6/16GB/256GB it's a psychological barrier that's been broken.

We should be buying European solutions anyway. Different psychological barrier that was broken long before.

What's the European alternative to a Mac Mini?

IMEC Mini.

https://www.imec-int.com/en

It runs MacOS? That is the main reason I buy Macs.

If you adjust for inflation, is it a big change from the super cheap Mac Minis of the past? Probably still somewhat more expensive, but not as much as the nominal difference would imply.

Mac Mini M4 launched less than 2 years ago at $600 (US, $500 with edu discount; as low as $400 on general discounts). Now same config with M6 is $900.

same spec, same chip. I tought Apple would at least bump the RAM

You thought they'd bump the base RAM in the middle of the biggest RAM crisis in history?

Yea, that wasn’t going to happen.

yep why not ? "Unified Memory" was always their favourite selling argument

Because they would be throwing away margin for no real reason

And except at the beginning, the Mac Minis of the past weren’t famous for being cheap, but rather for being disappointingly, unattractively expensive and, over time, apparently increasingly forgotten by Apple.

Actually they were famous for being tiny.

Mac minis from 2005-2024 launched with entry-level models priced from $499-$699, with the outliers being the 2018 model at $799:

https://everymac.com/global-mac-prices/all-msrp-mac-mini-pri...

Though $599 for the M4 in 2024 seems like a local optimum.

I want a mini Neo for like $399 or whatever apple can muster. it could be the size of a deck of cards to boot.

No bro, >1000€ for 16/256 is a really bad deal

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