Apple has unveiled two new Macs and also new chips. After the design leap the Mac mini took with the M4, a new generation is here that, together with the Mac Studio, puts artificial intelligence, power, and connectivity front and center. Let’s look at all the new features.
Mac mini: M6, more AI and better connectivity
The Mac mini arrives with a choice of M6 or M5 Pro chip. The M6, the other big unveiling of the day, is the first on a 2 nm process and comes with a 12-core CPU and 12-core GPU, two 16-core Neural Engines, and neural accelerators in every graphics core.
It delivers up to four times the AI performance and get Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 6, 2.5 Gb Ethernet as standard (previously 1GB), and the genlock system. The M6 model offers Thunderbolt 4 and the M5 Pro makes the jump to Thunderbolt 5.
After the price adjustment a few weeks ago, the new Mac mini with M6 starts at $899 while the model with M5 Pro starts at $1,699.
Mac Studio: the M5 Ultra takes things much further
The new Mac Studio arrives with M5 Max and M5 Ultra and makes a huge leap in performance. You can configure it with up to 36 CPU cores, 80 GPU cores, 512 GB of unified memory, and 1.2 TB/s of bandwidth. It’s an enormous change for professional workflows and local AI models.
With PCIe 6 SSD, Thunderbolt 5, Wi-Fi 7, Bluetooth 6, genlock, and support for up to eight displays, you can link multiple machines via RDMA to build a true home datacenter. The lineup starts at $2,499 and the 512 GB option will be available starting in October.
Alongside these Macs, after years of development on the M5 and M6 chips, Apple has updated the Magic Keyboard, replacing the text on the keys with icons, and has launched a more affordable new Polishing Cloth. The new Macs launch on September 22.
