It's one of the only sane form factors available if you need off-site compute power running on MacOS. The rack mount Mac Pro helped to fill that niche somewhat, but they're just insanely expensive.
Amazon has dedicated Mac hardware in AWS as well and the pricing is also crazy expensive.
For large app devs though, the cost is worth it to build their apps in the cloud without bogging down their local machines constantly. If you have rebuild targets for a half dozen OS versions, it can add up!
Datacenters are the solution and the Mac Mini just so happened to be the form factor that was available and could be made to work with less hassle than accommodating laptops.
Amazon has dedicated Mac hardware in AWS as well and the pricing is also crazy expensive.
For large app devs though, the cost is worth it to build their apps in the cloud without bogging down their local machines constantly. If you have rebuild targets for a half dozen OS versions, it can add up!
Datacenters are the solution and the Mac Mini just so happened to be the form factor that was available and could be made to work with less hassle than accommodating laptops.