I disagree wholeheartedly. Older models do not perform anywhere near as well as newer models, and certainly not once you throw in agents that can sense check, security check, refa tor and balance, and research queries as they run behind the scenes.

Impossible to find Mac minis in some areas, and if this goes through expect it to get worse.

I settled for the AMD rough equivalent. It’s not perfect but it can still handle most of the work. Now if only extra ram would come down in price… I find I need about 5 GB more than I have

Macs will just get more expensive. C'mon man, we're supposed to be Silicon Valley engineers, the pinnacle of human intellect.