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Apple unveils M6 and M5 Pro Mac mini, M5 Max and M5 Ultra Mac Studio

Apple launched four new Mac processors, including the 2nm M6, refreshing the Mac mini and Mac Studio lineups with faster AI performance.

AI News Feed · 2026-08-26 08:30

The most advanced processor introduced today, the M6, will ship with the Mac mini. It is the first Apple chip to use Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co.'s latest two-nanometer node, which embeds tiny batteries called SHPMIM capacitors to improve reliability. These capacitors release stored electricity when a processor's power delivery components struggle to keep up with rapid energy consumption fluctuations, preventing performance drops and errors. They can also absorb excess energy to avoid reliability issues.

The M6's CPU and GPU both have 12 cores, two more than Apple's previous-generation silicon. Two CPU cores are optimized for performance, six for power efficiency and four have a mid-range design. The GPU cores each feature AI-optimized circuits, supported by a dedicated 16-core machine learning accelerator called the Neural Engine.

The second Mac mini edition features the M5 Pro, which is not based on TSMC's two-nanometer node. Its CPU and GPU have six and eight more cores, respectively, than the M6. The onboard AI accelerator includes 16 cores. According to Apple, the M5 Pro enables on-device large language models to process prompts up to four times faster than the M4 Pro, while the M6 is 4.8 times faster than the M4. Apple says the M6 can also significantly speed up other workloads such as Excel calculations.

The M6 Mac mini starts at $899 with 16GB of memory and 256GB of storage. The M5 Pro edition starts at $1,699 with 25GB of memory and a 512GB flash drive.

Apple also introduced two new Mac Studio configurations for engineers and creative professionals. The entry-level edition includes the M5 Max, with an 18-core CPU, a GPU with up to 40 cores and a 16-core Neural Engine. The more expensive configuration includes the M5 Ultra, which combines two M5 Max chips linked by a custom interconnect. Both Mac Studio editions feature a custom N1 chip for Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 6 connectivity, as well as circuits optimized for video codecs that compress and decompress video files to save bandwidth.

The M5 Max Mac Studio starts at $2,499 with 512GB of flash storage and 128GB of RAM. The M5 Ultra edition starts at $5,499, with four times more memory and twice as much storage as the M5 Max version.