What other device would you suggest as a home server that a non tech person can set up themselves and has enough power to run several Chrome tabs? Access to iMessage is a plus. Small beeline Windows devices could also work but it’s Windows 11, slow as molasses.
I’m pretty sure people are using them for local inference. Token rates can be acceptable if you max out the specs. If it was just the harness, they’d use a $20 raspberry pi instead.
It is just for the harness. Using a Mac Mini gives you direct access to Apple services, but also means you can use AppleScript / Apple Events for automation. Being able to run a real (as in not-headless) browser unlocks a bunch of things which otherwise be blocked.
You don't, that's just the most visible way to do it. Any other computer capable of running not-Claude code in a shell with a browser will do, but all the cool kids are buying mac's, don't you wanna be one of them?