Chapter 1: Why did the host change their mind about Apple and AI?
By every standard AI metric, Apple is losing. They're not selling tokens.
Chapter 2: What factors contributed to the Mac Mini shortage?
They're not building data centres. They're not doing advanced research.
Chapter 3: How is China embracing OpenClaw technology?
And yet, their hardware is the machinery on which the most advanced AI users on the planet are actually running their day to day. So what is this race that Apple is actually running? As one of the big tech giants, Apple has really been noticeable in its absence in the AI race. I was one of many analysts who said, God, Apple intelligence is a disaster. What's happening with Siri?
Chapter 4: What are the implications of Apple's hardware for AI?
Apple specialists like John Gruber wrote a year or so ago that Apple's credibility had been damaged and squandered by their presentation at the Worldwide Development Conference where he called the demo a concept video. Casey Newton said, Apple's begun to lose the plot.
Chapter 5: How does Apple's privacy architecture impact AI adoption?
And Ben Thompson, who runs the newsletter Stratechery, said, Apple's nowhere near the cutting edge. And I was part of that chorus of voices as well. They were somewhat disappointed, perhaps blind oblivious to the fact that every single day when I was hammering away at ChatGPT or at Claude, I was doing it through an Apple device. And in fact, even as I switched from model to model to model,
Chapter 6: What is the K problem in AI and its relevance?
the device I used did not change. So there was something that I missed that was right in front of me. But recently there is something interesting that is happening.
Chapter 7: How does local AI processing compare to cloud-based solutions?
So when I went off and started to play with the OpenClaw agents earlier this year, I was running them on a small Mac mini that I have in my equipment cabinets. And within a week or so, I was hammering it so hard that
Rune, which is the audio transport that I use around the house and our CCTV cameras were really no longer working, partly because the OpenCore agent was demanding so much of the resources on the system. So I went off and I bought a new Mac mini, as you know, for our mini Arnold. I've discussed this many, many times.
When I then suggested to my team that they might want to get Mac minis, we noticed that instead of a three to four day delivery time, delivery times had extended somewhat.
Chapter 8: What does the future hold for Apple in the AI landscape?
And Tom's Hardware, which is a fantastically nerdy blog that I've been reading for years and years, had a headline that said it all. OpenClaw-fueled ordering frenzy creates Mac... shortage. And there was a TikTok from a Best Buy employee about a month ago showing all these empty shelves where Mac minis had sat previously asking, is this an AI thing? Well, yes, it's an AI thing.
I'm going to hazard the hypothesis here. I'm not going to tell you this is what is exactly happening. I don't have visibility of who all the people are going in to buy Mac minis at Apple stores around the world. I don't have visibility on what's happening with Apple's supply chain, given the pressures, the demands on RAM in the markets at the moment.
I mean, virtually every class of RAM has got backlogs of a year or two or more, if you go and see what's happening with Micron and SK Hynix and others. But I'll hazard that The demand for these higher-end Mac minis is coming from OpenClaw. And the reason is simple. I mean, I've taken you through my personal setup.
Pete Steinberger, the Austrian developer, sort of released that OpenClaw version in November 2025. And as of today, it's got 350,000 stars on GitHub, which you'll be bored of hearing this whenever I talk. It's the record. It's the fastest number, the fastest time to that number of stars on GitHub.
And here's the thing, if you look at my setup, and admittedly, I'm a, maybe not bleeding edge, but I'm certainly on the front edge of usage. I've now got a setup where I have three Mac minis and my MacBook Pro to support the work that I do. And what we're doing is a real microcosm of what is happening elsewhere. And I think the most interesting spot is what's happening in China.
So China has gone open-clawed. crazy. About a week ago, early March, Tencent's engineers set up folding tables outside of their headquarters in Shenzhen and spent the day installing OpenClaw on strangers' devices for free. I mean, I love that idea that you just walk past and you hand over your phone and someone puts on a piece of open source software for you. But a thousand people showed up.
They were carrying NAS drives because NAS drives normally have a bit of Linux running on them. You can run quite a lot of code on them and some with Mac minis under their arms. And a few days later, Tencent launched three AI agent products in the same day and their stock surged 7%. That same week, several Chinese local governments rolled out a subsidy program.
Shenzhen, Haifei, Huangzhou, Nanjing, they were offering $2.8 million grants of some sort to entities to support the deployment of these agents. They were calling it the OPC, the one-person company. So if you haven't read Po Zhao, he has a substack called Hello China Tech. I mean, he's writing some really interesting things about this.
We'll actually have quite a lot on OpenClaw in China in Sunday newsletter. But Po's work on this has been really, really excellent. He's noted that this is a structural break. For decades, Chinese local governments have competed for factories and headquarters. And now what they're doing is they're trying to compete for individuals with AI agents.
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