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Posted by runako 17 hours ago

New Mac mini, featuring M6 and M5 Pro(www.apple.com)
463 points | 285 commentspage 2
deadbunny 14 hours ago|
Do we need a 3rd top level discussion on this?
matt-p 15 hours ago||
2.5Gbe as standard is nice.
wpm 15 hours ago||
About damn time, Gigabit ethernet started shipping on desktop Macs over 20 years ago.
matt-p 14 hours ago||
Eh, for what? Most people use it only for 'internet' and 1G full duplex is generally still enough for that. Happy for 2.5G though :)
Gigachad 7 hours ago|||
The people using Mac mini/mac studios are very likely media editors who have a NAS on the local network. 1gbit ethernet is slower than wifi at this point and incredibly outdated. 2.5gbit ethernet is quite cheap and common now.
Grombobulous 3 hours ago||
Yeah, the Mac mini is cheap in cost but the buyer of that system is more demanding than someone who buys a MacBook Air or iMac despite the fact that the Mac mini is the cheapest Mac.

The Mac Studio is Apple’s realization that the best Mac Pro was actually the Mac mini with some slight modifications.

massysett 12 hours ago||||
My cable internet is 2.5G. So it’s nice to get that full speed when I have a wired connection.

To be honest though, my usage does not benefit from the speed. The only benefit is to the reptile part of my brain that says “speed. Must have the fastest possible, and since I’m paying for it, even though maybe I should downgrade it, I want my speed.”

Grombobulous 4 hours ago||
I’d love to take the extra speed if the networking equipment cost wasn’t so crazy.

Then, like you said, on the WAN side you’ve got the monthly internet bill.

1Gbps is the sweet spot, especially since 6Ghz WiFi runs at something like 600Mbps in the real world a reasonable distance away from the WiFi router in an ideal deployment. Saturate your wired, and you get a slight benefit over a 500Mbps plan for your wireless.

0x457 9 hours ago|||
Sure, but I have 3 machines at home connected via 10G, and I do transfers between them often.
brynet 15 hours ago|||
I'm curious what 2.5GbE chipset they used.
HDBaseT 5 hours ago||
I assume a Aquantia one.
lostmsu 10 hours ago|||
Still no SFP option?
thefz 11 hours ago||
10 years later from the rest of the market
muro 16 hours ago||
Double the price of the base m4 mac mini in February :(

(it was late in it's lifecycle and there were frequent sales)

meerita 14 hours ago||
I will buy a Mac mini, 64GB RAM + 2TB. That will replace my current MBP M1 Pro with 16GB (4 years old). For serious upgrade I will wait the M7 Line.
mythz 13 hours ago|
Considering doing exactly this, hopefully by the time M7 Ultra is out, the RAM Apocalypse will be over.
meerita 12 hours ago||
I don't know why some guy downvoted me. It's a great choice without expending 7K on some hardware than in less than two years will be replaced by the M7 (which is in the making).
stuff4ben 15 hours ago||
Which is more important for AI/LLM stuff, the number of GPU cores or the amount of unified memory? I can choose from a Mini with the M5 Pro 18CPU/30GPU and 64GB RAM or a Studio with a M5 Max 18CPU/40GPU and 48GB RAM for roughly the same price
Gigachad 7 hours ago||
They are both somewhat important. The compute speed impacts the tokens per second, and memory impacts the size of the model/capability.

IMO memory size is the most important since you can always wait longer for it to compute while a blazing fast but dumb model is much less useful.

mthoms 14 hours ago|||
Memory bandwidth is one of the most important factors. The Max machines typically have higher bandwidth than Pro (you should look up these exact models to verify though). Having said that, you could run bigger models with 64GB.

I went with a 64GB M2 Max a few years back even though it stretched my budget and I'm glad I did. I'm not sure what I'd pick in this case. Tough call.

cpuguy83 14 hours ago|||
Larger model -> more memory

It depends on what model(s) you want to run.

weli 14 hours ago||
They affect different things. You want more powerful models -> more memory. You want the models that run to be faster -> more gpu cores.
Ned_Williams 4 hours ago||
I'm not a big Mac guy, but I have a couple of laptops. How do people feel about these? Use cases?
HelloUsername 15 hours ago||
Related? "Apple to skip high-end M6 Mac chips in favor of AI-focused M7 line" june 2026 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48676795 380 comments
kotaKat 15 hours ago|
Not really. It's Gurman, once again throwing darts at the wall to see what sticks like a desperate roach begging for subscribers to his bullshit newsletter of guesses and predictions he'll flip in a month the opposite direction for even more clicks and bait.
kuuuzya 16 hours ago||
Wow. Is OpenClaw still alive? Would their users spend so many for the new Mac mini?
rxyz 12 hours ago||
Large majority of users moved to Hermes Agent
amelius 15 hours ago||
How many tokens per second would you even get on them?
kennywinker 15 hours ago|||
Afaik most openclaw users aren’t running their llm locally - just using a mac mini as an always-on sandbox for agents.
xhkkffbf 15 hours ago|||
A sandbox with access to iMessage. Can't have your agent texting with green boxes.
frollogaston 10 hours ago|||
This is why my wife's iPhone 6 is still better in real life usage than the latest flagship Android phone. Playing high-end 3D game vs not screwing up the group chat.
kennywinker 14 hours ago|||
Nono it’s ok iMessage is actually an open standard - steve promised.
copperx 15 hours ago|||
Cool, like a $5 VPS?
o_m 13 hours ago|||
A $5 VPS is easy to block. It's way harder to block a stock mac mini from a residential IP address
kennywinker 3 hours ago|||
Tailscale the vps into your home network, and have it use that as an exit node.
DaSHacka 13 hours ago|||
But why a Mac mini over a $30 raspberry pi on the same residential connection?
frollogaston 10 hours ago||
Guess cause it'll still do local builds and stuff, and probably do a lot more of those if the agents are spamming builds and it's something like Swift or Rust that takes a lot to compile
kennywinker 14 hours ago|||
Yes, but 100 times more expensive.
simonh 15 hours ago|||
OpenClaw was originally designed to run on a Mac, but using remote LLMs accessed via API. Running the LLM locally on beefier hardware came later.
markstos 13 hours ago|
I see that my old M1 Mac Mini with 16 GB memory and 1 TB drive has held value over time, selling for $600 to $700.

A new Mac Mini with that much ram and storage costs about double now.

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