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Apple caught off guard by AI demand for Mac Mini and Mac Studio

macrumors.com

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Re: Apple caught off guard by AI demand for Mac Mini and Mac Studio

#451

Post by jiveturkey »

AnonC wrote: post #426
bensyverson wrote: post #391

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People really have a twisted idea about how corporate America works. Apple does not have a psyops division cooking up ever more elaborate ways to seed demand for low-end, low-margin Macs via bot armies. They honestly don’t need to, because they’re making an avalanche of cash from the iPhone. People really were talking about and buying Minis due to OpenClaw, because they wanted something that was on all the time and h…

> They honestly don’t need to, because they’re making an avalanche of cash from the iPhone. No, Apple is not content with however much it makes from the iPhone. That’s why it stuffed cringeworthy ads in Apple News, filled the App Store screen with ads and is now doing the same with Apple Maps. It’s a company focused on making money through every avenue possible, even if it means being shortsighted and losing the good…

and there's a goddam ad at the start of every apple TV show, and macOS forces ads on you via the SETTINGS app! (both such ads are for other apple products ... still, it's an ad)

Re: Apple caught off guard by AI demand for Mac Mini and Mac Studio

#452

Post by stymaar »

eptcyka wrote: post #425
brookst wrote: post #420

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure. But thinking that means every article is a complicated psyop is classic correlation / causation. If you’ve hot any occam’s razor left in you, consider: 1. Apple is a masterful media manipulator, carefully planting stories like this by gradually seeding fringe media first, then more mainstream, with a clever and subtle goal of making themselves look dumb in order to trick people into, uh, ok, I’m lost here, but…

[flagged]

Because Apple isn't just a trillion dollar corp, it's a Cult:

https://www.businessinsider.com/nyu-professor-says-apple-is-...

Re: Apple caught off guard by AI demand for Mac Mini and Mac Studio

#453

Post by SturgeonsLaw »

com2kid wrote: post #446
20k wrote: post #424

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These companies absolutely do have people who's job it is to sit on social media and promote these products, its marketing 101

Having worked at multiple large companies more often than not the truth is there are 5 levels of approval for every tweet that goes out and writing a single blog post can take months. The smart companies out source their gorilla marketing to a third party, having realized their own inadequacies.

The problem with outsourcing your gorilla marketing is that it can cost big bananas with a hard to quantify return

Re: Apple caught off guard by AI demand for Mac Mini and Mac Studio

#454

Post by ShinyLeftPad »

raydev wrote: post #384
HDBaseT wrote: post #309

Apple was also allegedly "caught off guard" by the Macbook Neo demand. I don't really see how they couldn't see the Local AI demand or demand for a cheaper Macbooks. This just reads like marketing imo.

What is useful marketing in saying "we could have made more money but accidentally didn't"?

They literally announced the products early and profiting on this coverage.

Re: Apple caught off guard by AI demand for Mac Mini and Mac Studio

#455

Post by dannyw »

bensyverson wrote: post #391
nullbio wrote: post #352

I'm convinced that this is just guerilla marketing from Apple. When this started spreading a day or two ago, it was all from no-name spam media sites that are paid to publish articles. They all claimed "a source" is where they got the intel, without specifying the source. It was spreading like wildfire on socials. The same thing happened with Mac Mini's and OpenClaw. Nobody cared about or was using Mac Mini's for Ope…

People really have a twisted idea about how corporate America works. Apple does not have a psyops division cooking up ever more elaborate ways to seed demand for low-end, low-margin Macs via bot armies. They honestly don’t need to, because they’re making an avalanche of cash from the iPhone. People really were talking about and buying Minis due to OpenClaw, because they wanted something that was on all the time and h…

The narrative — ie being associated and seen as an AI-winner — is worth billions of market capitalisation at Apple scale.

I don’t think there’s a direct guerilla marketing division, but I would absolutely bet money that Apple’s marketing/comms team is encouraging creators, influencers, etc to promote Mac Mini and Mac Studio for AI.

And when those teams brief and speak to people, even on confidential terms, they almost expect some things to get leaked; or will keep sharing it with more people until a third party leaks what they want leaked.

So they may seed things like “super confidential, we were internally really surprised by the demand for AI”. Intentionally.

Re: Apple caught off guard by AI demand for Mac Mini and Mac Studio

#456

Post by EagnaIonat »

CrimsonCape wrote: post #334
InterviewFrog wrote: post #333

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a strong suspicion its because of openclaw mania that happened like 3 to 4 months ago. Basically you can have your own 24/7 AI Employee. At-least thats the appeal and folks were buying mac minis massively. Just my gut feel. Everybody moved on from that now. But it was a big deal back then.

If you use OpenClaw now can you tell us how it's going?

I used it to try it out. Security wise I don't trust it at all so I had it running in a VM and local models.

It was able to create an application that Claude created, using the same instructions file. Considerably slower but I was surprised it could do it.

Re: Apple caught off guard by AI demand for Mac Mini and Mac Studio

#458

Post by conradfr »

bensyverson wrote: post #391
nullbio wrote: post #352

I'm convinced that this is just guerilla marketing from Apple. When this started spreading a day or two ago, it was all from no-name spam media sites that are paid to publish articles. They all claimed "a source" is where they got the intel, without specifying the source. It was spreading like wildfire on socials. The same thing happened with Mac Mini's and OpenClaw. Nobody cared about or was using Mac Mini's for Ope…

People really have a twisted idea about how corporate America works. Apple does not have a psyops division cooking up ever more elaborate ways to seed demand for low-end, low-margin Macs via bot armies. They honestly don’t need to, because they’re making an avalanche of cash from the iPhone. People really were talking about and buying Minis due to OpenClaw, because they wanted something that was on all the time and h…

> They honestly don’t need to, because they’re making an avalanche of cash from the iPhone.

Why would they produce "low-end, low-margin Macs" then?

Re: Apple caught off guard by AI demand for Mac Mini and Mac Studio

#459

Post by mister_mort »

nullbio wrote: post #352

I'm convinced that this is just guerilla marketing from Apple. When this started spreading a day or two ago, it was all from no-name spam media sites that are paid to publish articles. They all claimed "a source" is where they got the intel, without specifying the source. It was spreading like wildfire on socials. The same thing happened with Mac Mini's and OpenClaw. Nobody cared about or was using Mac Mini's for Ope…

I'm not so sure. You could literally see configuration options start disappearing from the Mac Mini ordering flow over time as demand increased and supply dried up.

Re: Apple caught off guard by AI demand for Mac Mini and Mac Studio

#460

Post by Gigachad »

dofm wrote: post #445
Gigachad wrote: post #373

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think people just hate subscriptions so much they are willing to make an obviously worse financial choice to buy upfront. I’d be willing to pay more to own vs subscribe, but the gap is currently far too large where buying a Mac Studio for AI is a straight up terrible investment.

I am also willing to overpay to not be reliant on cloud things, to have control of local hardware. My biggest problem with buying a Mac Studio is that even in the case of the M5 Max models, I can’t think of any non-AI macOS applications in my creative life that have anywhere near that level of hardware requirements, and nor can I forecast that I would within its ordinary supported lifespan as a macOS machine. These m…

I think the best move right now is to just wait a couple of years. There is room for the prices to drop dramatically. Buying the highest spec mac at the peak prices probably isn't a financially sensible move.
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