Not just OpenClaw. The Mac mini is just stupidly good value for a desktop computer, and the RAM prices have only enhanced its appeal.

Apple doesn't make much of a fuss about it but their chip performance is laughably ahead of the other chipmakers.

The Mac Mini M4 gets a score of 3788 in Geekbench[0]. The top of the PC processor chart is 3395[1]. It's not even Apple's latest chip!

PC processors can only keep up by adding more cores, but real world performance in many workloads is enhanced by having a smaller number of higher performance cores.

[0]: https://browser.geekbench.com/mac-benchmarks

[1]: https://browser.geekbench.com/processor-benchmarks

If you remove the Mac filter, its performance is not even in the top ten

Which is obvious if you spent more then half a microsecond thinking about it, because apple silicone barely draws any power - it's performance is fantastic in it's niche, which is squarely within what a home user cares about - but it's not leading on benchmark performance, because that's not what apple designed it for

The reason its coincidentally good for local ai inference is also just down to the fact the embedded GPU has shared memory access to the system VRAM. That means low performance/throughput but large memory.

Which is great for home use, but once again not gonna top charts.