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by ChaitanyaSai 100 days ago
Question: Why do people want to do this with their mac mini? Can you not do all of this with a hosted VM instance? A mic mini makes it easier for people to set up? Everything still has to talk to data on the cloud right?
3 comments

Short answer: cargo culting. Mac mini is part of the ritual.
It's so they can talk to their bot using Apple iMessage. That's pretty much it.
Oh so you need an iPhone _and_ a Mac mini :)
Mac Mini is a gateway to iMessage. That’s really it.
Ah, that makes a lot of sense!

(Do not use imessage, a Whatsapp user, and we can access that through the browser, which means you can plug it into an extension)

The vast majority of americans have never used whatsapp, if they’ve even heard of it.
You can do it serverless, github and api keys is all you need - https://github.com/stephengpope/thepopebot

The openclaw-like system built using 'free compute' from github