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Apple’s M6 Macs finally arrived on Tuesday, two weeks after the company’s “Welcome Home” smart home launch. The announcement, part of another slate of press releases Apple dropped ahead of its private Pro and Tell event on Wednesday, Oct. 28, includes a new 14-inch MacBook Pro with M6, a refreshed iMac with M6, and a round of AI features for Apple Creator Studio, the company’s subscription bundle of creative apps.
The timing isn’t a surprise. When the M6 MacBooks were missing from the Oct. 13 home announcements, Mashable reported that Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman still expected them in October. For the time being, though, outlets like MacRumors report that the expected touchscreen MacBook Pro won’t be announced until Wednesday — so check back here after tomorrow for more details.
In the meantime, Apple’s M6 chip is the main upgrade here. Both machines keep their existing designs, and Apple’s pitch leans hard on running AI locally. According to Apple, M6 adds two CPU cores and two GPU cores over its predecessor, puts Neural Accelerators in every GPU core, and pairs them with a new dual 16-core Neural Engine and up to 170GB/s of memory bandwidth. Apple frames the result as a platform for running large language models (LLMs) on-device while keeping data private.
It’s the same AI push Apple made with its home devices. As Mashable noted earlier this month, Gurman has argued the AI boom caught Apple off guard. Both Macs ship with macOS 27 Golden Gate, which brings Siri AI, Apple’s rebuilt assistant. Apple says it can draw on personal context from messages, email, and photos, answer questions on virtually any topic, and act across apps.
Here’s everything Apple announced for the Mac on Oct. 27:
14-inch MacBook Pro with M6
Credit: Apple
The headline product is the 14-inch MacBook Pro, which gets M6’s 12-core CPU. Apple says M6 features the world’s fastest CPU core. Apple claims the 12-core GPU is up to 30 percent faster at graphics and up to 25 percent faster at AI workloads than M5, while the Neural Engine is up to 1.9x faster. Owners of an M1 model could see bigger jumps: Apple cites up to 11x faster graphics and up to 13x faster AI performance.
Apple’s AI benchmarks are the more telling numbers. It says LLM prompt processing delivers a first token up to 1.3x faster than the M5 model, with similar gains in Blender rendering and Xcode builds.
Battery life is rated at up to 24 hours, which Apple calls the longest ever in a Mac, and fast charging reaches 50 percent in 30 minutes with a 96W adapter. Memory starts at 16GB and tops out at 32GB. Wireless connectivity upgrades to Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 6, and the laptop supports up to two external displays.
Speaking of displays, the MacBook Pro has a Liquid Retina XDR display (with up to 1,600 nits of peak HDR brightness and a nano-texture option), a 12MP Center Stage camera, six speakers, and the same ports, including HDMI, MagSafe 3, three Thunderbolt 4 ports, and an SDXC slot.
The 14-inch MacBook Pro with M6 starts at $1,999, or $1,899 with education pricing, and comes in space black and silver. Apple Upgrade leases start at $38.99 per month for 36 months. Pre-orders open Wednesday, Oct. 28, in the U.S. and 34 other countries and regions, with availability beginning Friday, Nov. 6.
iMac with M6
The iMac skips M5 entirely, jumping from M4 straight to M6. Apple says the CPU and GPU each gain two cores, with configurations offering up to 12 cores apiece, delivering up to 2x faster graphics than M4. Again, Apple’s big claim is the iMac’s ability to run AI locally. The company says the iMac runs on-device AI up to 5x faster than M4, including prompt processing in LM Studio. For anyone still on an Intel iMac, Apple reports an overall performance gain of up to 18x.
Connectivity gets some of the more practical upgrades. Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 6 come standard, available 2.5Gb Ethernet is up to 2.5x faster than before, and Apple says SSD speeds have doubled. Up to four Thunderbolt 4 ports support two 6K external displays.
The rest of the iMac is unchanged, including the 24-inch 4.5K Retina display, 12MP Center Stage camera, color-matched accessories, and seven colors: blue, green, pink, yellow, purple, orange, and silver.
The iMac with M6 starts at $1,499 ($1,449 for education) with a 10-core CPU and GPU, and $1,699 ($1,599 for education) with a 12-core CPU and GPU. That base price matches what the M4 iMac currently sells for after a $200 increase in June, according to MacRumors. Apple Upgrade leases start at $28.99 per month for 36 months. Pre-orders open Wednesday, Oct. 28, with availability beginning Friday, Nov. 6.
Apple Creator Studio
Credit: Apple
Apple also gave its new Macs more AI software to run. Apple Creator Studio adds intelligent assistants (in beta) to Logic Pro for Mac and to Keynote, Pages, and Numbers. Notably, Apple says those assistants are built on a combination of its own models and OpenAI’s. Keynote, Pages, and Numbers also gain Model Context Protocol (MCP) support, which lets third-party AI agents read documents, make edits, and run automated actions inside the apps.
Elsewhere, Final Cut Pro for Mac now includes MotionVFX’s library of effects, transitions, and templates, and Pixelmator Pro adds Generate Fill for editing selected parts of an image using text prompts. Logic Pro’s Stem Splitter can now separate drums.
The Creator Studio updates arrive in November at no additional cost for existing subscribers. The subscription costs $12.99 per month or $129 per year, with education pricing of $2.99 per month or $29.99 per year.
ICYMI: iPad mini with A20 Pro
Apple’s week of announcements technically started Monday with the iPad mini, which Apple calls the tablet’s “biggest update ever.” The headline change is a larger 8.5-inch OLED display that fits in the same footprint, thanks to 24 percent thinner bezels. Apple says peak brightness reaches 1,200 nits, more than double that of the previous model, and a nano-texture option is available.
The A20 Pro chip follows the same local AI script as the M6. It has Neural Accelerators in each GPU core, and Apple claims up to 4.5x faster AI performance than the previous generation. The tablet is also thinner, at 5.4mm, and adds IP67 water and dust resistance, a 12MP front camera on the landscape edge, and Apple’s N1 wireless and C2 cellular chips.
The iPad mini starts at $699 for Wi-Fi and $849 for Wi-Fi + Cellular (education pricing starts at $649), and comes in midnight and starlight. Pre-orders open Wednesday, Oct. 28, with availability beginning Friday, Nov. 6.
Click here to read more >> https://mashable.com/tech/everything-announced-m6-macbook-event