Just a day after warning about Mac Studio and Mac mini supply remaining constrained for a number of months ahead, Apple has apparently discontinued the base Mac mini globally, as advanced node capacity and memory price inflation emerge as potent bottlenecks.
Apple discontinues the base Mac mini as TSMC's advanced node capacity and the ongoing memory inflation begin to bite
The base variant of the Apple Mac mini, which sported the M4 chip, 16GB RAM, 256GB of storage, and a retail price of $599, has now been pulled from the configurator in the US and other key global markets.
Do note that Apple had already stopped taking orders for the base Mac mini variant last week. Of course, the M4 Pro Mac mini already came with a base storage of 512GB, and so remains unaffected.
This comes as Apple conceded during its latest earnings call yesterday that it'll take several months for the supply of Mac Studio and Mac mini devices to catch up with demand, pointing to agentic AI as a major source of demand for these products.
Apple had gone on to note that Mac-related supply constraints were not due to a shortage of memory resources but rather because of the limited availability of advanced nodes at TSMC.
Even so, Apple continues to expect a "substantial" increase in memory costs in the June quarter, with Tim Cook going on to note:
"I can tell you that beyond the June quarter, we believe memory costs will drive an increasing impact on our business, and we'll continue to evaluate this. And as we've said before, we'll look at a range of options."
Meanwhile, as we noted recently, the 512GB variants of the M3 Ultra Apple Mac Studio devices are currently going for as much as $25,000 on websites that specialize in selling used products.
Do note that Apple's unified memory architecture has spurred demand for Mac Studio and Mac mini devices for edge AI workloads. Also, the inventory of M4-based Mac mini is already limited as Apple is gearing up to announce an M5-based version as early as this summer.
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