Hacker Newsnew | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submit | alwillis's commentslogin

> Mac Minis are also around 1% of Apple's device sales.

Apple doesn't break out the Mac sales by product, but the latest estimates is it's 5% [1] of total Mac sales.

[1]: https://www.macrumors.com/2026/02/23/mac-mini-us-manufacturi...


> Apple doesn't break out the Mac sales by product, but the latest estimates is it's 5% [1] of total Mac sales

Right, but it's closer to 1% of total device sales like I said in my comment.

Macs are only part of their device lineup, of course.


Apple will spend more than $500 billion in the U.S. over the next four yearshttps://www.apple.com/newsroom/2025/02/apple-will-spend-more...

Apple Manufacturing Academy opens in Detroit on August 19https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2025/07/apple-manufacturing-a...

Private Cloud Compute: A new frontier for AI privacy in the cloudhttps://security.apple.com/blog/private-cloud-compute/


> a Ryzen 5800h mini PC last year, which roughly lands in the same performance bracket [as a Mac mini].

Not really. And this is before the M5 Mac mini which ships later this year.

Putting it together in desktop‑mini form factors:

- Raw CPU: M4 is much faster single‑core, generally faster multi‑core at lower power.

- GPU: M4’s iGPU is roughly 2×+ Vega 8 and more modern.

- Memory subsystem: M4 has far higher bandwidth and unified memory, ideal for integrated GPU and many modern workloads.

- Efficiency/noise: M4 wins by a large margin; much higher perf per watt.

- Compatibility: 5800H wins if you need bare‑metal x86 OSes like FreeBSD or specific x86‑only software stacks.

- 5800H: 35–54 W configurable TDP in laptops; mini‑PC implementations often run it fairly hot to maintain clocks.

- M4 in Mac mini: ~24 W base TDP, ~40 W boost, but getting clearly higher performance per watt.


Let's assume the 5800H consumed 50W and the mini consumed 0W and both ran 100% utilization all year at $0.20/kWh.

The mini would save $87/year. That's a 3.5y breakeven assuming no reinvestment.


The M4 is from 2024, the 5800h is from 2021. You should be comparing against the M1 or M2, which was Apple's actual competitor at that performance bracket and time period.

You bought the 5800h last year, and provided last year's price paid for it. That makes the 2024 Mac mini more relevant than the models that weren't being made or sold last year. Unless you'd like to dig up what that 5800h system cost back in 2021, to put that into context against a Mac mini from back then?

> It doesn't say the Mini will be exclusively produced at this US facility.

What's likely to happen is Mac minis for North America will be made in Houston. Otherwise, the ones for the rest of the world will be made at the same facilities they are now.

Just like iPhones for the US are made in India; iPhones for the rest of the world are made in China.


I imagine iPhones for India are also made in India. India has a lot of programs to promote production within the country, and IIRC, Apple moved production there to take advantage of that. Given they have production in India, it makes sense to use that production for shipments to the US given better tariff rates for things produced in India vs China.

All of the major LLMs have re-useable prompts now, so once someone makes a skill [1] that does it, anyone can use it.

Even now, with OpenClaw and all of the spinoffs, it's possible to have n agent do this today.

[1]: https://claude.com/blog/equipping-agents-for-the-real-world-...


What to use? A website where you can quickly buy the stuff you want? Or an LLM where you specify how to buy the the thing you want, wait a while, then actually do the buying, and praying in the meantime, it's not throwing your money away?

> but I don't think the solution is to have LLM's generate bespoke code to do it

But if the LLM needed to write bespoke code to buy the tickets or whatever, it could just do it without needing to get you involved.


It's more like:

- You have to work; you can't stay online all day waiting for the tickets to go on sale

- You have your agent watch for when the tickets go on sale

- Because the agent has its own wallet, it spends the 6 hours waiting for the tickets to go on sale and buys them for you

- Your agent informs you via SMS, iMessage, email, Telegram or whatever messaging platform of your choice

Yes agentic wallets are a thing now [1].

[1]: https://x.com/CoinbaseDev/status/2023893470725947769?s=20


> Unlikely. The future will be some people will do this, but honestly I think it will largely be people who were already tinkering with building things, whether full on software development or not

Billions of dollars of stock market value disappeared because of the concern AI can create core SaaS functionality for corporations instead of them spending millions of dollars in licensing fees to SAP, Microsoft, etc.

This not about tinkering.

SaaS As We Know It Is Dead: How To Survive The SaaS-pocalypse! - https://www.forrester.com/blogs/saas-as-we-know-it-is-dead-h...

Why SaaS Stocks Have Dropped—and What It Signals for Software’s Next Chapter - https://www.bain.com/insights/why-saas-stocks-have-dropped-a...

Jim Cramer says AI fears have made the stock market fragile - https://www.cnbc.com/2026/02/23/jim-cramer-says-ai-fears-hav...


Did you see the network security stock sell-off after Anthropic announced a code security analysis feature? There's a sliver of nothing between mob mentality and wisdom of the crowd.

It's too soon to bother making predictions. Shits gonna be wild for the next few years, then some type of market correction will happen, and we'll start to get an idea of how things will actually look.

Can we please have some calm, stable, boring years please, before I'm dead? The last 5 years have already been "wild" enough. The world is unrecognizable. I'm unprepared for further wildness.

Excluding the batshit insane political side, I don't actually think it's been as nuts as people think, or at least not uniformly so.

I have a lot of friends in the tech sector, but outside the FANNG/silicone valley/startup bubbles. It's been largely business as normal across the board. Twitter and social media warps our perspective I think.


there was a whole pandemic

And there’s still biggest war in Europe since ww2. Israel and Gaza. Iran standoff. Tariffs.

Not really whole. COVID was at best like a quarter pandemic.

It depends where you lived. In my city (harshest/longest restrictions in the world), we were not allowed to leave the house for more than 30 minutes a day for 2.5 years unless we were out buying groceries. No large gatherings allowed at our homes. Mask usage enforced everywhere in public.

In the city in my country reknowned for having a much higher level of hypochrondria before the pandemic, imagine the mental health issues my city is going through now.


Stow the propaganda. 1) it's not over, the pandemic continues and will likely continue for a long time 2) it's already the fifth deadliest pandemic in known history. "Quarter pandemic" is an insane thing to think let alone say out loud.

How many dead bodies you need to see to even flinch? Millions not enough?

The market is losing its shit over this because people are operating on the thesis that "AI will be able to ..." rather than "AI can demonstrably do ...". At some point they're all gonna get margin called on their futurisms. It would be a lot better if, before getting excited, we ask to see experimental results. So you say you have a world-beating security tool? Show me something it can do that all the other ones can't. That would be worth getting excited about, not a vague blog post about vibes and dreams.

But then the sellers wouldn’t find the useful idiots to sell their snake oil to.

There are other businesses models than pump-and-dump, they could try it!

>Billions of dollars of stock market value disappeared because of the concern

That's really the key, right there. The value disappeared because of concern, not of anything real.

When ungodly amounts of money is governed entirely by vibes, it's hardly surprising they lose ungodly amounts of money to vibe-coding.

The downside is the effects of all that money shifting is very real :(


> That's really the key, right there. The value disappeared because of concern, not of anything real.

The value also only existed in the first place because of belief, in future work, operations, profits, etc.

Like it or not, confidence in institutions is society. Concern that affects that confidence is as real as any other societal effect.


That's because of P/E and how future earnings work.

If the P/E = 1 then there would be no sell-off. Looks at utility stocks with divs, they don't sell off [as sharply] when there is AI news.


Oh no Bain and Jim Cramer think software is dead. All that is is a signal to buy software stocks

> the AI companies will in the near future declare ownership of all software code developed using their software.

Pretty sure this isn’t going to happen. AI is driving the cost of software to zero; it’s not worth licensing something that’s a commodity.

It’s similar to 3D printing companies. They don’t have IP claims on the items created with their printers.

The AI companies currently don’t have IP claims on what their agents create.

Uncle Joe won’t need to pay OpenAI for the solitaire game their AI made for him.

The open source models are quite capable; in the near future there won’t be a meaningful difference for the average person between a frontier model and an open source one for most uses including creating software.


1. Commodities are huge business.

2. Show me these open source models that cost me $20/month to operate, because that’s what I pay for ChatGPT/Claude.

3. This is not at all similar to “3D printing”.

4. Nobody cares about some solitaire game


> It’s an impossible war and all these investors are throwing their money into a bottomless insatiable pit of money.

Anthropic went from zero to $14 billion in revenue in less than 3 years, growing at 10x per year.

That's what they're investing in.

Also Anthropic seems laser-focused, unlike some of their competitors who are throwing stuff against the wall to see what sticks.


Revenue, but what about profit? Google can be cash positive but I’m not sure Anthropic can be the same.

What about it?

It took Twitter 10 years before it was profitable [1]. I'd guess that Anthropic will be one of the companies left standing when it's all said and done, assuming nothing catastrophic happens.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twitter,_Inc.#Funding


I did the math. Twitter was down $1.3 billion over 10 years.

Anthropic lost $5.2 billion last year. So they are 40x better at spending investor money than Twitter.

Hard to call Twitter the archetype for Anthropic.


Also the switching cost. If its negligible theres no reason for Anthropic to be considered a going-concern in the long term. So its valuation makes no sense from a DCF basis unless you are expecting a liquidation in future. But even then, the liquidation value still doesn't justify its valuation today.

Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: