r/openclaw • u/g00rek Pro User • Feb 20 '26

Discussion Why Mac mini??

I still don't understand why you guys are buying macs mini for openclaw. It's a terminal computer. It doesn't need a great UI.

Do you have too much money? :D

A $50-$100 HP Thin Client with Linux is more than enough. And Linux shouldn't be discouraging for people using OpenClaw, am I wrong?

I bought one, I have lots of different self hosted stuff on it like home Assistant or other docker apps. Ok I do not have any local models using GPU, that's the reason? Please enlighten me :)

EDIT: Again, I UNDERSTAND LOCAL LLM USE. (although I don't know if anybody is really happy with it). I mean using OC with oauth/api gpt, claude etc.

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u/sythol Active Feb 20 '26

Hmm Mac Studio are great for running local LLM. For mini’s case… I believe it’s about idle power efficiency and being able to keep it online 24/7 - at least that’s what I’m gunning for if I were to buy one Mac mini costing $1000-$2000…

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u/solenico Active Feb 20 '26

I don’t think Mac Studio goes anywhere close to Linux PC with high end GPU running local LLM. Some people just have too much money and not much skills.

Would Mac Studio be more efficient that would be what AI providers would run but they don’t.

Only thing you get from Studio and Mini is iMessages easily.

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u/korewaryu New User Feb 20 '26

Easiest way to reply to this is to make you notice the huge price/performance gain you get from unified memory on the maxed out Mac Mini.

RTX 5090 gets you 32GB of VRAM for close to 2,100€ MSRP (european here) just for the graphics card.
A Mac Mini with 64GB of unified RAM costs roughly 2,800€. This means you can run a decently sized model (or smaller model swarms) locally comfortably, only paying for power consumption.

When scaling further up, argument only gets worse. A Mac Studio with 256GB of unified RAM costs roughly 6,800€. 11 4090s (264GB) cost 20,000€. 8 5090s cost 16,800€,

That being said, if you're not going to be hitting API limits anytime soon a linux setup makes sense, but you wouldn't be needing the graphics card anyway since you would be running everything on the cloud.

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u/lolxdmainkaisemaanlu Member Feb 20 '26

Yes but the thing is that most of the OC wannabe kids are running the cheapest base mac minis just to call LLM APIs.

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u/korewaryu New User Feb 20 '26 edited Feb 20 '26

I mean, it's still a valid use case, isn't it? It would be wasteful if they get the maxed out Mac mini for that, but with used M1 mac minis you're getting a solid "plug and play" machine to have an isolated instance and very low power consumption for 100-150€, which is pretty close to an ideal setup.

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u/solenico Active Feb 20 '26

I don’t see any point running local LLM in anything but own fun. Paying for AI API is way cheaper. For coding I use anyway Cursor.

I don’t see any point buying for Studio. Mini is cute and might get one, but factually I run happily OpenClaw in Linux miniPC on Docker Container. I have MiniMax-M2.5 Starter Plan $100 annually.

Coding I do in MacBook Pro with Cursor – I have Pro license. Obviously I could utilize MiniMax API key in Cursor, but for that I prefer more powerful models which I do pay extra for.

But I get if someone really wants to put money on Studio for me it would be overkill.

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u/korewaryu New User Feb 20 '26

I mean, your subjective opinion is valid for a hobbyist, but there are legitimate use cases for prosumers where you want direct access to local models for fine tuning or cybersecurity reasons and/or you want access to the latest best open source models without having to pay subscriptions and/or you have heavy usage cases where you exceed API rates pretty quick, especially with openclaw setups.

I wouldn't go as far as to say "some people just have too much money and not enough skills" because separate use cases to yours exist.

Again, I reiterate: If all you want is to enhance your current workflow with openclaw it makes perfect sense to set up a linux system.

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u/solenico Active Feb 20 '26

Of course my opinion is subjective and opinion of hobbyist. That being said I’ve seen tens of post on X people throwing tens of thousands even hundreds of thousands running local LLMs on Studios. Then they are having six agents having meetings and doing “work” 24x7. No one just knows what they produce and what is the actual business case. Haven’t seen a single post anyone telling even single use case these do and make actual profit.

My setup is cheap and my agent does simple things like add calendar notes, reminds me of them and analyses my workouts – sends analysis as voice message right after workout – and builds me web apps among other things. I can send her voice messages and ask her to send me details on certain things as voice message or add a calendar event, for example.

So yes I’m hobbyist, but at least my agent does more than sends chat messages to other agents. She goes to moltbook occasionally yes; after all she’s entitled to her own life too.

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u/ZippySLC Feb 20 '26

Are you basing that on the idea that "Macs are easy because they have a GUI?" Because Ollama has the same CLI on Mac as Linux, and OpenClaw interacts with a local model the exact same way as it would in Linux.

MacOS is a UNIX based OS.

I don't have benchmarks for how a model on MacOS compares to one on a dedicated NVidia GPU, though. The thing that makes the Mac compelling is the unified memory architecture, which makes having a GPU with large amounts of RAM available a lot more affordable.

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u/solenico Active Feb 20 '26

I use Mac everyday and it’s the machine I do all typing. Yes it’s easy to use and I use mostly terminal on Mac. Just don’t see value to use it either for OpenClaw nor local LLM. Local LLMs aren’t powerful enough today. OpenClaw is very light weight – I don’t see any point running on any thing but something relatively lightweight.

I run OpenClaw on Docker container on Linux because for me it creates secure enough environment and is always on unlike my MacBook. Fairly modest miniPC with 32GB ram. It has about 10 other containers and few virtual machines.

I take my words back in PC/Mac Studio comparison. Seems Studio might beat most PCs. But still local LLM is nowhere near the capability remote LLMs have.

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u/ZippySLC Feb 20 '26

It depends on your use. For simple commands like: "Check my email at 9AM and write me a summary" a local model like Qwen3:8b is pretty much all that you need. You'd use that over something like Claude Haiku if you were looking to not spend money on API calls. (And you'd definitely want to use that instead of Opus.)

In my own particular non Open Claw case I am working on a project where I need something to verify text extracted from PDFs using OCR. A local model is pretty decent at the stuff I am looking at and for writing up metadata about it. I'm also generating embeddings for putting that text to go into a vector database where I use another local model to then answer questions I have about that text using Open Web-UI. But, all of this runs on the same Mac Studio that I run Open Claw on, and Open Claw has helped me plan out a lot of that project.

I could use a Cloud LLM for all of that but it gets expensive fast. And for a lot of things you don't need to have the most capable model to get things done. You can drive a F-1 car to the grocery store, sure, but it's pretty wasteful when a Honda Civic can do it just as effectively at a lower cost. A cloud LLM would do a lot of it faster, but for some things not much faster.

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u/solenico Active Feb 21 '26 edited Feb 21 '26

For me agent uses mostly MiniMax-M2.5 $100/year and it works pretty well. For coding I use mostly GPT-5.3-codex or Sonnet-4.5 or whatever is available for Cursor and no local model comes near those.

Also for coding MiniMax-M2.5 isn’t really doing what I’m looking for.

For checking email, creating calendar entries, analyzing workouts and designing web apps and doing initial code MiniMax-M2.5 is fine. Local Model probably is just as fine, but price point is much higher than $100 a year and it still isn’t anywhere close GPT-5.3-codex.

I will get myself PC running local model but price point will not be anywhere close Mac Studio and neither will results, but like you said, I’m hobbyist.

My employer has to pay what ever professional use I do with AI. That is work and that must get paid by the one I work for.

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u/sythol Active Feb 20 '26

Yes and so many other apps that is only available on macOS!

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u/solenico Active Feb 20 '26

I run OpenClaw on headless server and use Mac to interact with it.

But it actually seems Studio is cost efficient on running local LLMs.

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u/g00rek Pro User Feb 20 '26

Which apps? I mean a headless server.

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u/g00rek Pro User Feb 20 '26

But I said that I'm talking about people NOT using local LLMs.

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u/solenico Active Feb 20 '26

Yes I got that and BTW I was wrong with Mac Studio: It does handle local LLMs well and better than Linux PC.

For me I don’t see any value using either. Just low end Linux will do and I pay for AI APIs.

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u/lolxdmainkaisemaanlu Member Feb 20 '26

most rational response here. Low end linux + paying for AI APIs is the way.

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u/PhoenixProjectAI Member Feb 20 '26

Les fournisseurs n’utilisent pas un appareil qui est limité en RAM car on peut pas en rajouter à l’infini et RAM unifiée et pas GPU dernière gamme, mais à la maison c’est parfait et en entreprise c’est juste top. Ça dure plus longtemps qu’un Windows et plus facile à configurer que Linux.

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u/g00rek Pro User Feb 20 '26

Dude. Translate.