Some users are moving to local models, I think, because they want to avoid the agent's cost, or they think it'll be more secure (not). The mac mini has unified memory and can dynamically allocate memory to the GPU by stealing from the general RAM pool so you can run large local LLMs without buying a massive (and expensive) GPU.
I think any of the decent open models that would be useful for this claw frency require way more ram than any Mac Mini you can possibly configure.
The whole point of the Mini is that the agent can interact with all your Apple services like reminders, iMessage, iCloud. If you don’t need any just use whatever you already have or get a cheap VPS for example.
If the idea is to have a few claws instances running non stop and scrapping every bit of the web, emails, etc, it would probably cost quite a lot of money.
But if still feels safer to not have openAI access all my emails directly no?
They recommend a Mac Mini because it’s the cheapest device that can access your Apple reminders and iMessage. If you are into that ecosystem obviously.
If you don’t need any of that then any device or small VPS instance will suffice.
I know, but which open model that fits in there is useful enough for OpenClaw? I don’t think there is one.
If you look at the videos and blog posts where they recommend getting a Mac Mini for this are recommending the base model (which comes with just 16GB), precisely because it’s the cheapest Mac that can read your reminders, use iMessage etc. that’s what those using OpenClaw want from the Mini, not its inference capabilities.
What model are you running with 64GB of VRAM (equivalent)? I doubt most users are doing that. Looking at their documentation, the default path for openclaw seems to be a 3P API for the model.
I think the mini is just a better value, all things considered:
First, a 16GB RPi that is in stock and you can actually buy seems to run about $220. Then you need a case, a power supply (they're sensitive, not any USB brick will do), an NVMe. By the time it's all said and done, you're looking at close to $400.
I know HN likes to quote the starting price for the 1GB model and assume that everyone has spare NVMe sticks and RPi cases lying around, but $400 is the realistic price for most users who want to run LLMs.
Second, most of the time you can find Minis on sale for $500 or less. So the price difference is less than $100 for something that comes working out of the box and you don't have to fuss with.
Then you have to consider the ecosystem:
* Accelerated PyTorch works out of the box by simply changing the device from 'cuda' to 'mps'. In the real world, an M5 mini will give you a decent fraction of V100 performance (For reference, M2 Max is about 1/3 the speed of a V100, real-world).
* For less technical users, Ollama just works. It has OpenAI and Anthropic APIs out of the box, so you can point ClaudeCode or OpenCode at it. All of this can be set up from the GUI.
* Apple does a shockingly good job of reducing power consumption, especially idle power consumption. It wouldn't surprise me if a Pi5 has 2x the idle draw of a Mini M5. That matters for a computer running 24/7.
Ehh, not “it” but it’s important if you want an agent to have access to all your “stuff”.
macOS is the only game in town if you want easy access to iMessage, Photos, Reminders, Notes, etc and while Macs are not cheap, the baseline Mac Mini is a great deal. A raspberry Pi is going to run you $100+ when all is said and done and a Mac Mini is $600. So let’s call it. $500 difference. A Mac Mini is infinitely more powerful than a Pi, can run more software, is more useful if you decide to repurpose it, has a higher resale value and is easier to resell, is just more familiar to more people, and it just looks way nicer.
So while iMessage access is very important, I don’t think it comes close to being the only reason, or “it”.
I’d also imagine that it might be easier to have an agent fake being a real person controlling a browser on a Mac verses any Linux-based platform.
Note: I don’t own a Mac Mini nor do I run any Claw-type software currently.
I only have one Apple devices (an iPad) but from what I seen the subscription is popular on it. I wanted to use Infuse, a video player, for my Jellyfin server but the lifetime price was $100 or a $2/month subscription. Also was interested in Panels, a comic book reader, for my Komga server. Panels was more reasonably priced ($20 for all updates to the current major version) but it also a subscription tier at $1.5/month.
Can an American please help me comprehend how much power a mayor has? I am supposing a NYC mayor would be more influential than that of a less important city. But I still don't understand how that would make an appointment like this significant.
It's only interesting because 8 million people live there, and many more pass through the city
This population size is greater than most countries, and the density and speed of commerce there is fairly unique, so it's a constant coordination problem and experiment on a large scale that people look to.
Think of NYC more as one of the Free Cities in the old world.
They aren't a top level government by any means but they're mostly left alone to have nearly unilateral control of their jurisdiction. New York City has some unique challenges with key infrastructure (like all of the trains) being controlled by New York State and the Federal Government.
Obviously NYC is very big and very wealthy. But the powers of a Mayor depend on the city.
I'm not a New Yorker, but here's how I understand it: NYC mayor appoints a bunch of people who run various bureaucratic legs of the city government. The guys who manage taxes, zoning, and whatnot. But the Mayor has to get those people approved by the city council. The mayor can also veto policies written by the city council, but he can be overruled with a two-thirds vote by the council. The council writes the budget, and the Mayor can only approve it or veto it.
This all sounds pretty normal, but it actually varies a lot depending on the city. In Chicago, for example, the Mayor writes the budget, instead of the council. But, the Aldermen (a Chicago city council member is called an Alderman btw) have a lot more power downstream of the budget, since they control stuff like zoning within their respective wards. The Aldermen also redraw their own political boundaries every 10 years, with no input from the Mayor whatsoever. I guess I'd say Chicago's mayor has less "first-order" power but more "second-order" power compared to NYC's mayor. Chicago is weird.
What should you make of this? I'm not sure. Maybe Mayors in Europe or Asia have way more power than Mamdani does, I don't know. I reckon that NYC mayor has more power than most American mayors, even when you ignore the differences in scale.
This is state by state, city by city. In some places, a mayor has broad powers over agencies, taxes, etc. That isn't quite the case in NYC. It's up to the state to delegate these powers, just as the federal government delegates powers to the states.
NYC is explicitly restricted (relative to other cities in NY) by the state in terms of what it can do. It can't independently pass its own tax laws (in many cases, at least), which other cities can, for example. Multiple agencies that would often be municipal are handled by the state or require state approval/ explicit delegation.
The city also gets exceptions for more power, including taxation powers. It's all case by case.
The NYC mayor's powers are complex for this reason. On the one hand, no one cares much about other mayors, so you have a ton of political power. On the other hand, you're not exactly empowered to do a lot without asking someone else to sign off.
While the federal government does delegate some powers to the states, many of the states powers are reserved to the states explicitly in the constitution, with the federal government only having those powers explicitly granted to it. (See the 10th Amendment where this is explicitly laid out.)
NYC is a special case, because it’s at or near the center of the universe: the US financial hub, the center of theater, dominant in all entertainment media, the UN headquarters, the most important historical entry point for all immigrant groups, the most important city for book publishing, advertising, etc. It’s one of the five most important, powerful cities in the world. It has its own foreign policy and diplomatic relationships. Its mayors have frequently, and for many decades, been interviewed for their opinions on world affairs that would seem, at first glance, to have nothing to do with city government.
NYC is a large city, consisting of 5 boroughs (divisions); each of which is larger in population than many US states. Its also the financial capital of the world. So just going by population alone, the NYC City Government represents more people than several state Governments. The economy of the city is also very high tech, high income etc. Although the Mayor does not have the same powers as Governor (e.g. they can't pass tax laws), he still has a lot of impact.
NYC's city budget is larger than every state apart from California, Texas, NY. At $115B, it equals Florida. By numbers alone, he's very influential.
Now NYC is a over-regulated mess that faces gridlock from both unions and the state representatives. In practice, it makes the NYC mayor a cog-in-the-machine. The real task for a NYC mayor is consensus building first, and allocation of funds second.
It varies by city. In some cities, mayor is barely more than a figurehead.
But regardless of power, what the NYC mayor does is widely reported and it's often a political stepping stone (if not always successful) to something greater.
Mamdani in particular is a celebrity right now, and with the reputation of the Democratic party in shambles, many eyes are on him.
> But regardless of power, what the NYC mayor does is widely reported and it's often a political stepping stone (if not always successful) to something greater.
The only "greater" things any recent NYC mayors have done are bankrolling presidential campaigns and failed coup attempts.
Looking back at it, the last NYC mayor who held a notable political position after their mayoral term was Robert Wagner.
In fact, the last mayor I can find who served in a superior political office after their mayoralty was John T Hoffman, who was mayor from 1866-1868 and then NY Governor from 1869-1872.
He has control over city agencies, budgets, personnel. Has little or no power as it relates to laws or infrastructure (like the MTA)--that's all state level.
They seem to be slowly moving away from having a separate coding model. With this release, they're calling the model Codex but expressly mention that it's also supposed to be more suitable than GPT 5.2 for general use.
"The model advances both the frontier coding performance of GPT‑5.2-Codex and the reasoning and professional knowledge capabilities of GPT‑5.2, together in one model, which is also 25% faster. ... With GPT‑5.3-Codex, Codex goes from an agent that can write and review code to an agent that can do nearly anything developers and professionals can do on a computer."
They're specifically saying that they're planning for an overall improvement over the general-purpose GPT 5.2.
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