Mac mini

Apple CEO Tim Cook says the iPhone maker must raise its prices to offset the impact of the rising memory and storage chip prices. According to one estimate, this year’s iPhone 18 Pro could cost as much as $1,299!

“Unfortunately, price increases are unavoidable,” Cook said Wednesday in an interview with The Wall Street Journal. “We’re doing our best to mitigate the huge increases that are being passed to us, and we’ve been trying to shield our customers from the increases, but the situation has become unsustainable.”

Not everyone has a spacious home office, a purpose-built studio or a spare room to dedicate to a dream workstation. The Cult of Mac Setups archive is full of people working in bedrooms, studio apartments, shared living spaces, dorm-adjacent Manhattan rooms and any other constraint that life in a city tends to impose. But space limitation, it turns out, is one of the great engines of creative thinking in a setup. The best compact Mac setups, below, find ways to thrive in tight spaces.

There’s a moment, familiar to anyone who has experienced it, when you move from a dual-monitor setup to a single ultrawide and realize the bezels were never doing you any favors. One seamless, curving (or not) expanse of glass — from 34 inches to 49 inches and beyond — that wraps gently around the periphery of your vision, eliminating the dead stripe down the middle of your workspace where two screens met. We found the best ultrawide Mac setups from years of Cult of Mac coverage.

Apple recently nixed the $599 Mac mini from its product lineup. And the most affordable version of the MacBook Pro also got cut.

This raises serious questions about how much longer Apple can keep offering the cheapest versions of the MacBook Air and MacBook Neo.

Apple finally found a software fix for one of the most mocked Mac design decisions in years. In macOS 26.5 Tahoe, released Monday, Apple added a new option that allows M4 Mac mini owners to turn on their machines without picking them up.

In some ways, iPad is the most versatile computer Apple makes — which makes it an unusually rich ingredient in a Mac workstation. And as iPadOS grows ever more capable, more users find new, smarter roles for their tablet. The following 10 examples drawn from the Cult of Mac Setups archive represent the best uses of iPad in Mac setups. They show just how many ways the tablet can earn its place on a desk.

If you’ve been on the fence about buying a Mac, you might want to stop waiting. A growing DRAM and NAND shortage is about to make all kinds of computers more expensive and harder to find.

Right now, Apple is still (somewhat) ahead of that curve. But that window is closing fast. So, if you need to buy a Mac, now’s the best time to pull the trigger.

Apple no longer offers the M4 Mac mini with 256GB of storage at a $599 price. Instead, the base model now comes with 512GB of storage and a higher $799 price tag.

Here’s why.

I’ve always noticed a certain breed of Apple enthusiast for whom less is definitively not more. While minimalist setups have their ascetic charm, the rigs below operate on an entirely different philosophy: more computers, more screens, more audio gear — more of everything. These are the top 10 maximalist setups.

They’re the ones that made commenters ask if the owner works at “the money factory making commerce,” for example, or declare, “OP has done it: they’ve finally hit the limit of too much screen space.”

Customers are buying Macs in such high numbers that even Apple’s vaunted manufacturing expertise can’t keep up — and current Mac supply constraints could extend for months.

Apple CEO Tim Cook said Thursday that a couple of factors mean the Mac mini, the Mac Studio and the new MacBook Neo laptop might not be easy to find.

Anyone still using an Intel Mac needs to know that when macOS 27 launches this fall, it won’t be available for computers that don’t use Apple’s own processors.

It’s not like your Intel-based Mac will suddenly explode in your face because it’s running an older version of macOS, but the odds of getting hacked go up considerably. Here’s why.

Apple’s $599 M4 Mac mini is the latest casualty of the ongoing DRAM shortage. The machine is no longer available for purchase on Apple’s website.

It’s possible this is a sign that a new model with a faster processor is imminent.  But for now, only the M4 Pro Mac mini is available, and with ridiculous wait times stretching into July.

A year into owning an M4 Pro Mac mini, it began feeling slow. With dozens of Chrome tabs and numerous other apps running in the background, everything felt more sluggish than it should. 

I was already convinced I needed an upgrade. Turns out, I just needed to do a little spring cleaning.  Here’s what I did to speed up my slow Mac mini.

Update: Perplexity said in March it would unleash Personal Computer software to work as an artificial intelligence manager for Mac, and now it’s available. 

Today we're releasing Personal Computer.

Personal Computer integrates with the Perplexity Mac App for secure orchestration across your local files, native apps, and browser.

We’re rolling this out to all Perplexity Max subscribers and everyone on the waitlist starting today. pic.twitter.com/kxgFQFo7BB

— Perplexity (@perplexity_ai) April 16, 2026

Original post:

Artificial intelligence search engine company Perplexity just unveiled what it calls Personal Computer. It’s not a new piece of hardware, but a layer of software that transforms a Mac — specifically an M4 Mac mini in the company’s promotions — into a tireless AI employee.

It works around the clock, coordinates other artificial intelligence systems, accesses your local files and can be controlled from anywhere in the world. Mac users might be intrigued. Privacy advocates may not be so sure.

Order a Mac Studio or Mac mini that’s loaded up with RAM, and you’ll wait until August for the delivery. Yes, August.

A rumor going around blames the shortage on people snapping up high-end machines to run local AI models. But there’s another explanation.

Getting your hands on a Mac mini or Mac Studio might be harder than expected. Delivery times for even the basic configurations now stretch to four weeks, with high-end models showing lead times of up to five months.

Apple either appears to be struggling to meet demand or gearing up for an imminent M5 refresh.

Cable management is the invisible infrastructure of every beautiful desk setup. Do it well and your workspace looks effortlessly minimal, almost wireless. Do it badly and a tangle of cords swallows every other design decision you’ve made. Cult of Mac’s Setups section chronicled the most impressive Apple-centric workstations on the internet for years, and cable management — how to hide it, route it, tame it and sometimes eliminate it entirely — is a recurring obsession among Mac owners. Behold the best cable management in setups, below.

In the wake of the very successful launch of the MacBook Neo, Apple should now turn its attention to a desktop version: Let’s call it the Mac Neo. With an A-series processor and 8GB of RAM, this could cost as little as $399.

A macOS desktop at this price could put Macs in the hands of millions who can’t afford one now. It also might expand Apple’s share of the global computer market to heights the company could previously only dream of.

February 28, 2006: Apple introduces an upgraded Mac mini, an affordable computer powered by an Intel processor.

A “headless” Mac for entry-level users, it’s the third Apple computer to switch to Intel chips. Oh, and it makes one heckuva media player when plugged into a television set.

Apple will start assembling Mac mini in the United States later this year. Foxconn will build the tiny desktop computers at its facility in Houston, Texas.

The assembled units will primarily serve local demand, which surged recently due to interest in agentic AI OpenClaw. (For more info, see: How OpenClaw turns your Mac into an action-based AI agent.)

For Apple enthusiasts, one Mac is great — but two or more? That’s when things get seriously interesting. Years of Cult of Mac Setups coverage has showcased hundreds of impressive workstations. But these top 10 multi-Mac setups stand out as particularly fascinating examples of how power users leverage Apple’s ecosystem to its fullest potential.

From new M4-powered machines paired with vintage “trash can” Mac Pros to dual MacBook configurations seamlessly integrated with desktop Macs, these workstations demonstrate that having multiple Macs isn’t just about redundancy. It’s about optimizing workflow, separating concerns and yes, indulging in a bit of Apple-fandom excess.

Retro tech is back, and it doesn’t get much more nostalgic than transforming a new M4 Mac mini into a Macintosh straight out of the 1980s. Better yet, the process is simple: Just pop the Mac mini into the Wokyis M5 dock and you’re done.

Don’t mistake this for simple cosmetic trickery. The add-on includes a functional 5-inch screen. Plus, it’s a hub that adds a variety of ports to the Mac as well as a slot for an internal SSD.

Apple’s tiny yet powerful M4 Mac mini is an amazing deal at any time, and a sale on the desktop computer makes it an even better value. You can get the latest model with 16GB of unified memory and a 256GB SSD for only $499. That’s 17% off the list price. Plus Amazon deals apply to a range of specs. And you can get the M4 Pro model for $129 off, or 9% ($1,399.99 $1,269.99). 

Mac mini is a great option for someone needing their first computer. Especially at this low, low price.

With more than a dozen new Apple products in the pipeline, 2026 is shaping up to be a busy and important year for the company. Among a plethora of high-profile device launches, we should see the first folding iPhone next year

If all the rumors prove true, Apple’s 2026 product road map looks bold, exciting and ambitious. Check out all the new products Apple likely will launch in 2026.

Another year, another incredible collection of Apple workstations in Cult of Mac‘s Setups section that make us rethink our own desk situations. From devices powered by the powerful M4 chip family to innovative display solutions and clever space-saving tricks, the top 10 Apple setups of 2025 brought us some truly remarkable gear and uses for it.

We combed through hundreds of featured workstations on Cult of Mac to bring you the cream of the crop — setups that excel in raw computing power, aesthetic beauty, functional innovation or that perfect combination of all three.