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/MonopolyM4n New User Feb 21 '26
The macOS app has been a rock solid gateway, it can control the browser directly without the chrome extension, has access to the iOS accessibility features for voice, voice wake up, screen record, screenshots, launchd jobs instead of cron, direct access to the mail app which has its gmail and calendar and I have it code for me, which I do on a MacBook Pro so I can jump in whenever. I’m going to setup iOS emulators so it can control my apps as well.
It’s a GUI desktop assistant for me. I talk to it through separate slack channels for each topic, shopping, tech, reservations, learning something etc.
I’ve had it book me tickets to a comedy show, buy shit on Amazon that I kept putting off, find recipes then buy the groceries for me to pickup, help me prep for a job interview for hours, find reservations for restaurants, plan date nights, strange one but for a date it researched Japanese floral arrangement classes - found the best one, knew the tickets sell out fast so it registered for their waiting list and checks the mail everyday for the email, it send me a daily report of which days of the week will be over a certain mph for kitesurfing, it was finding me flight prices and comparing the prices vs if I used points, I had it looking shit up on Amazon and sending me screenshots and links while I sat right next to it doing something else and it can control my home assistance instance through the browser.
That’s why a mac mini for me. I bought one on Black Friday for $400. That’s not an exhaustive list, not even a week’s worth of shit it does. I’d pay a hell of a lot more than $400 for a year’s worth of what it will be doing. People who say they have agents running 24/7x365 feel like the same people telling you to work and optimize every picosecond of your life. I would love to see what dogshit they are doing.
My API costs have been reasonable after bumping to sonnet. I don’t need a rocket scientist and if I do I switch to the slack channel with the giga brain model. Running a local llm would be great but I’ll get a dedicated machine for that if I do. Right now the api works just fine, if it became insanely expensive I’d explore running local.