Mac mini shows Apple can be low cost — it just doesn't often want to

The New Mac mini starts at $599 and that's a full $500 cheaper than the next least expensive Mac, the M2 MacBook Air. It's about as low a price as Apple goes, but to use the Mac mini, you have to have accessories.

A display, keyboard, and mouse or trackpad are essential, and together, they can add up. Buying Apple's lowest-cost options for these comes to $178 for a keyboard and mouse, plus $1,599 for a Studio Display.

You can buy lower cost and sometimes better value options — especially some of the best displays for Mac. And then, there are optional accessories for your Mac mini, or any Mac. There are optional accessories that mean you could choose between them, or buying another M4 Mac mini.

Apple's most infamous costly extras

While they are solely for one type of Mac, Apple's Mac Pro Wheels Kit is the flagship for accessories so expensive you think it's a joke. If you don't order wheels with your Mac Pro, buying them later will cost you $699.

That's the same as a base Mac mini upgraded to have 10 Gigabit Ethernet.

Or there's the Apple Pro Display XDR, which starts at $5,000 and raises the question of what an accessory is. Unless you plan to lean it up against a convenient wall, you have to have one of the optional accessory stands.

Just as infamously as the Mac Pro wheels, there's the $1000 Pro Stand. That's the price of an M4 Mac mini upgraded to 1TB SSD storage, or 32GB RAM.

Apple does also sell a VESA mount for the Studio Display. And, to be fair, that is a mere $200.

But then a Pro Display XDR plus that VESA mount is the equivalent of eight Mac minis.

Third-party accessories sold by Apple

Apple Stores, including the online one, stock many items that are not made by Apple. Of those meant for the Mac and the iPhone, there's an Apogee Duet 3 preamp that costs $650.

For that money, you could buy a base M4 Mac mini plus a $45 thumb drive like the 128GB SanDisk iXpand Flash Drive Luxe.

Or for $50 more, Apple sells an AmpliFi Alien Router and MeshPoint Range Extender. That would help you network all the Macs you could have otherwise bought.

But Apple accessories are not all for the Mac. If you have an Apple Watch, for instance, you can buy an Apple Watch Hermes Satine Grand H strap for $1,000.

That's the cost of a base M4 Mac mini upgraded to both 24GB RAM, and 512GB SSD storage.

Left to its own devices

Sticking to just the cost of an M4 Mac mini or lower, Apple does obviously sell the iPhone SE for $429. But it also still stocks the 2022 iPhone 14.

In its base 128GB version, the iPhone 14 is the same price as a Mac mini.

But then this price range also includes that other Apple accessory where the price made people wince. Unlike all of the other accessories, though, this device has had opportunity for serious updates — and it has only had a single minor one.

After almost four years, the AirPods Max still cost $549. Keep checking the AppleInsider Mac mini price guide and even the new M4 version will eventually dip below the price of AirPods Max.

But then if you take a base M4 Mac mini, upgrade it to 24GB RAM and 1TB SSD, and you could have bought a second Mac mini.

Someone or rather some team at Apple puts a lot of work into pricing. There will be an element of what's called cost-plus, where you start with how much it actually costs Apple to make something, and that's complicated enough.

But there's also got to be a calculation to do with finding the precise price point at which no-one will buy — and then taking a dollar off it.