[qarl2]

Well - maybe. But as I understand it - you can't buy Mac minis right now because agentic coders are buying all of them, so they can properly sandbox their agents. Which means a LOT of people know they need to sandbox their agents.

I'm beginning to think that the true issue here is that people who dislike AI are largely ignorant of the current state. Because willful ignorance.

I say that because I repeatedly see people making extremely silly statements that they really should know better about. But for some reason they don't.

Obviously I could be wrong. Time will tell.

[ethbr1]

Mac Minis are out of stock because they're the cheapest entry point to reasonably capable local agents (read: 64+GB of GPU accessible RAM), which TikTok is all about.

They're being bought as a hardware solution, not a sandbox solution.

As proof, look at all the people wiring up their personal emails, etc. as soon as they turn them on.

[qarl2]

And why don't they simply run that software on the laptop they already own?

What is it about THIS software, unlike any dev software to come before it, that pushes people to buy new small computers?

Why do you think?

[ethbr1]

They can't run it on the laptop they already own, unless they happen to already have a decently-spec'd M-series MBP, which most of the non-hipster-coder world didn't.

And because it lets them create code without knowing how to code.

[qarl2]

HA! So now Apple users are hipsters! Your ugly biases are beginning to show.

You know, I can't prove that the Mac mini problem is due to needing to sandbox agents. All I can offer is my anecdotal experience - and that of everyone I know.

I love that I'm now a 50 year old hipster. This is a wonderful conversation.