Apple CEO Tim Cook said on the company’s earnings call on Thursday that it could take “several months” to meet skyrocketing demand for the Mac Mini, the company’s compact but mighty, screen-free desktop computer. Cook’s remarks come after coders determined in recent months that the Mac Mini was the perfect machine for agentic AI tasks.
“On the Mac Mini and Mac Studio, both of these are amazing platforms for AI and agentic tools,” Cook said on the earnings call, in response to analyst questions. “And customer adoption of that is happening faster than we expected.”
The news comes amid another record-setting quarter for the company. iPhone sales came up shorter than expected, though demand for the iPhone 17 has been super high and Apple’s subscription services business has continued to grow.
Apple faced supply constraints on both the iPhone and the Mac product line this quarter. iPhone shortages are being driven mostly by a limited supply of the advanced chips that power the phones. But as Cook made clear, at least two different factors are driving shortages in Apple’s Mac business: The rapid adoption of generative AI, and unexpected demand for the company’s new, colorful, and more affordable MacBook Neo laptop.
Mac sales are typically a fraction of what iPhone sales are—$8.4 billion this quarter, compared to nearly $57 billion in sales of the iPhone—and the Mac Mini, specifically, is a fraction of that. But with the launch of OpenClaw earlier this year, an open-source AI tool, Mac Minis began flying off the shelves because they offer both enough power and a dedicated computing environment for agentic AI tasks.
Some eager customers have already been waiting for months for their Mac Minis. MacRumors reported last month that Apple had stopped selling a configuration of the computer that included 512 GB of memory. As of last week, the base model of Mac Mini was entirely sold out.
Cook, and his soon-to-be-successor John Ternus, also addressed Cook’s transition out of the CEO role later this year. Cook said on the earnings call that it’s the “right moment” to step into the executive chairman role for a “number of reasons,” including that Apple is well-positioned financially and that its upcoming product roadmap is “incredible.” He called Ternus a “person of remarkable character and a born leader.”
Ternus then joined the call for a minute to vouch for Cook as a business leader, and assure investors he’d take a similarly deliberate and thoughtful approach in leading the company. He, too, mentioned the company’s roadmap.
Both men were scant on details around this supposedly very exciting product roadmap, but hopefully, it includes more … road Macs.
