  I'm convinced that this is just guerilla marketing from Apple.

I'm not. I have an M4 Mac Mini running 24/7 so I can use it as my Claude Code machine when I'm on the go.

Why would they do a guerilla marketing campaign now if their Macs are generally sold out despite nearly doubling the Mac Mini price in the last few months?

▲ f055 2 days ago | parent | next [-]

I don’t get it. You don’t need a Mac mini to use Claude Code on the go, any home server with stable internet is enough. Was it the marketing?

▲ gwerbin a day ago | parent | next [-]

Either they're running Claude Code with a local LLM (technically possible via dev tools albeit unsupported), or they genuinely have no idea why the Mac is good for AI and just bought it because they were told it was good for AI.

The former honestly sounds like a nightmare because the Mac Mini can run some big models but not that big, and Claude Code will guaranteed stuff your context with 35k tokens, and all the Anthropic proprietary tool-deferral and tool-search stuff is meant to be handled inside the inference engine in a way that I don't think any open-source engine like vLLM can support right now (much as I wish it did). So you have a huge context on startup, broken functionality, and an underpowered LLM struggling through it all. Not to mention I have no idea how any of the sidecar LLM stuff is meant to work in that context (e.g. auto-mode classifier and even things like dynamic session naming). Am I missing something?

I don't want to assume it's the latter, I want to be charitable to other people. But.

▲ aurareturn a day ago | parent [-]

  Either they're running Claude Code with a local LLM (technically possible via dev tools albeit unsupported), or they genuinely have no idea why the Mac is good for AI and just bought it because they were told it was good for AI.

Neither. I use Claude Code subscription through my Mac Mini when I’m on the go.

▲ aurareturn a day ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I develop using a Macbook primarily. Having a Mac Mini keeps the environment the same when I'm on the go. Plus, any home server would not be as efficient or fast as a Mini with an M4.

▲ rob_b a day ago | parent | prev [-]

Of course it was. I’ve been using Mac minis since they were released and the mania the past year or so is unreal.

▲ nullbio a day ago | parent | prev [-]

So your argument against this being guerilla marketing is that you bought a Mac Mini after seeing the guerilla marketing, to do the thing that you didn't need a Mac Mini to do.

	▲	aurareturn a day ago \| parent [-]
		No I bought it over a year before this “marketing”. I’ve found a new use for it which I’m assuming others have as well.