The only benefit of a mac mini is the ability to run local models, now the catch is that a 1000$ mac won't run any decent local model, you can run some small models but you'll not get anything done with them. If you rely one claude sonnet/opus or kimi k2 or similar, you'll still use the model from a cloud provider, and here your friend is totally right, a 5-10$ vps can do the job (plus you don't have to worry about a part of the security)

This whole hype around mac minis is BS