Marked-up Mac minis flood eBay amid shortages driven by AI

Scalpers cash in on Mac mini shortages as AI enthusiasts drive demand for Apple’s compact desktop. | Contesto: cronaca

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• Marked-up Mac minis flood eBay amid shortages driven by AI

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Apple’s latest Mac mini, a compact desktop computer that has become a surprising favorite among artificial intelligence enthusiasts, is selling out at retail and spawning marked-up listings on eBay, according to reports from buyers and sellers this week. The device, which Apple released in recent months, has seen demand spike far beyond typical consumer patterns, with some resellers asking hundreds of dollars above the official retail price. The shortages come as the Mac mini gains traction for running local AI models and tools, a niche use that has turned the once-sleepy desktop into a hot commodity. The Mac mini has long been a workhorse for creative professionals and home users seeking a budget-friendly entry into Apple’s ecosystem. But its latest iteration, equipped with powerful M-series chips, has found an unexpected second life in the AI community. Developers and hobbyists are snapping up the device to run large language models and other AI software locally, avoiding cloud-based services that can incur ongoing costs or raise privacy concerns. This shift has caught Apple off guard, as the company’s supply chain struggles to keep up with the sudden surge in orders from a demographic it did not traditionally target with the Mac mini. Scalpers have seized on the shortage, flooding eBay with listings at prices far above Apple’s suggested retail price of $599 for the base model. Some listings show the Mac mini selling for $800 or more, a markup of over 30 percent. The phenomenon mirrors similar shortages seen for graphics cards and game consoles during previous tech booms, but it is notable here because the Mac mini is not a new product category—it has been a staple of Apple’s lineup for nearly two decades. What has changed is the use case: local AI processing, which demands the kind of unified memory and processing power that Apple’s M-series chips provide. The implications extend beyond eBay flippers. The shortage signals a broader shift in how consumers and professionals approach AI, moving away from reliance on cloud giants like Amazon Web Services or Google Cloud toward local, on-device computation. For Apple, this creates both an opportunity and a...

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Categoria: cronaca