The base model $599 Mac mini is now completely out of stock

The industry-wide supply chain issues continue to hit prospective Apple customers looking to buy new Macs. Today, the base model $599 M4 Mac mini with 256 GB storage is now completely out of stock at the Apple Store. That means Apple won’t let you order it at all, simply stating it is “currently unavailable” for delivery.

In fact, the situation is actually more dire. It turns out any M4 Mac mini with 256 GB storage is now in the same boat, regardless of RAM configuration. (Third-party retailers aren’t faring much better: Amazon only has M4 Pro Mac minis on sale now).

It feels like every week the availability of the current lineup of Mac desktops gets worse. On April 11, we reported that Mac mini with 32 GB and 64 GB RAM options were no longer available to buy.

Now, even more models are unavailable, with the base 256 GB storage option seemingly gone from Apple’s shelves.

Stock of other models is not exactly plentiful either. The Apple Store is currently quoting six week wait times for the 512 GB M4 Mac mini, and that’s the shortest delay we could find. Several of the other models are citing 9-10 week shipping estimates or longer, assuming they are available at all.

The primary cause for this seems to be Apple responding to industry-wide shortages of memory and storage components, and seemingly prioritising any supply for its range of MacBooks, over the lower-volume desktop Macs. Demand for Mac minis is also likely elevated recently in light of the recent personal AI hype-train.

Often, dwindling availability is a good indicator that a hardware refresh is on the way. So, maybe the M5 Mac mini update is imminent.

But that was also the theory for the Mac Studio — another Mac currently facing extremely constrained stock — until Bloomberg reported that an M5 Mac Studio refresh wasn’t due until October.