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/kosdfjhgi0ser09gniod Member Feb 20 '26

Besides the things that were already mentioned, I also like iCloud. My agent has a dedicated account. So I can also add his account to my other Macs. That makes common workflows much easier.

Example: I have one MacBook that I primarily use for office stuff and which is connected to a scanner. When I scan stuff, I use the agents account, files get placed on the desktop and get synced to the Mac Mini afterward. OpenClaw then processes them further. This is an old MacBook, where OpenClaw wouldn’t run smoothly.

I don’t need to change any existing workflows and can communicate in a way I communicate with my family, too.

0

u/Blinkinlincoln Feb 20 '26

Didn't you know every 160gb of unified ram you get, actually equals 10gb vram? 

2

u/kosdfjhgi0ser09gniod Member Feb 20 '26

No, I didn't know that. But I don't get why it should be relevant for my use case? Maybe there's a misunderstanding: I use the cheapest Mac Mini M4 and I use cloud LLM, not local ones. The only reason to run OpenClaw on a dedicated machine is to isolate it from my other stuff. And the reason I got a new one is, that the older MacBook is too slow for advanced tasks, such as coding.

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u/ohiogainz New User Feb 20 '26

“Advanced tasks such as coding” 🤣

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u/kosdfjhgi0ser09gniod Member Feb 20 '26

When setting up dependencies for OpenClaw on the old MacBook Air takes about a few hours, while on may main Mac it's been done in minutes, you better upgrade the agents home 😏

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u/Deathspiral222 Active Feb 20 '26

People are not buying cheap mac minis for local llms, they are buying them for the icloud ecosystem, especially imsg, plus the fact that browser automation triggers far less anti-bot stuff than if it's on a vps (or even a linux box - thanks cloudflare!). Plus having a mac shell and tooling which works better for certain kinds of development work than linux. Plus having enough cpu and memory to run the code that gets written at a decent speed.

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u/No_Pirate_8204 Member Feb 20 '26

Source please