MacRumors Contest: Win a Mac Mini to Run AI Agents with Astropad’s Workbench App

For this week’s giveaway, we’ve teamed up with Astropad to give away MacRumors readers a chance to win a Mac mini to use with Astropad’s new Workbench app. For those unfamiliar with Astropad, it’s the company behind Astropad Studio and Luna Display. Astropad Studio lets you use an iPad as a drawing tablet connected to a Mac and Luna Display turns an ‌iPad‌ into a secondary display for a Mac, so Workbench is a natural evolution of Astropad’s existing products.

The ‌Mac mini‌ has become the go-to platform for local agentic AI, and Astropad Workbench is the ideal companion application. Workbench is a remote desktop app for Mac and Astropad designed it for use with AI. Workbench uses the LIQUID engine designed by Astropad for Luna Display and Astropad Studio.

With Workbench, you can control your AI agents remotely on an iPhone, making it ideal for people who have set up a ‌Mac mini‌ as a personal server for OpenClaw and other agentic AI platforms. Workbench can be used to view logs and verify agent work, restart failed tasks, or reconnect to long-running tasks. Workbench is more comprehensive than options like Remote Control for Claude Code, as Anthropic’s tool only provides terminal access, while Workbench provides access to your full desktop.

Workbench allows you to monitor your AI agents from anywhere, without needing to be tied to a desk. Astropad offers native apps for Mac, iPhone, and ‌iPad‌, so you can connect to your Mac desktop from an iPhone or ‌iPad‌, wherever you are. There are even tools for quickly switching between multiple Macs connected to a Workbench account.

The app supports high-fidelity streaming with a unified virtual display for multiple monitors, low latency, voice dictation, and multiple control options including gestures, keyboard input, mouse, and Apple Pencil. For larger desktops, there is a mini map that makes navigation easier.

Setup is simple with a global relay network across 11 regions, with no network configuration required. End-to-end encryption protects your data and no viewing records are captured and saved.

Workbench requires macOS 15 or later, iPadOS 26 or later, and iOS 26 or later. It will work best on Apple Silicon Macs, with limited support on Intel Macs.

Workbench is free to use for 20 minutes each day, with an unlimited paid plan available for $10 per month or $50 per year.

Astropad is giving away a 16GB ‌Mac mini‌ with a 512GB SSD. To enter and win, use the widget below and enter an email address. Email addresses will be used for contact purposes only to reach the winner(s) and send the prize(s). You can earn additional entries by subscribing to our weekly newsletter, subscribing to our YouTube channel, following us on Twitterby following us on Instagram, following us on Threads or visiting the MacRumors Facebook page.

Due to the complexity of international laws regarding promotional gifts, only Residents of the United States aged 18 or over, residents of the United Kingdom aged 18 or over, and Canadian residents who have reached the age of majority in their province or territory are eligible.. All federal, state, provincial and/or local taxes, fees and charges are the sole responsibility of the prize winner. To provide feedback or find out more information about gift restrictions, please refer to our Comments section of the site, as this is where discussion of the rules will be redirected.

Astropad workbench gift

The contest will run from 9:00 AM PT today (May 1) until 9:00 AM PT on May 8. The winner will be chosen at random on or shortly after May 8 and will be contacted by email. The winner will have 48 hours to respond and provide a shipping address before a new winner is chosen.