Apple unveils M6 chip in new MacBook Pro and iMac, promising much faster on-device AI
Apple is putting its new M6 chip into the 14-inch MacBook Pro and the iMac. Both can be pre-ordered from Wednesday and go on sale on Nov. 6.
Symbolic image · Photo: AzureSaturn / Wikimedia Commons, CC0 (cropped and resized)
Apple on Tuesday unveiled its new M6 processor, debuting in the entry-level 14-inch MacBook Pro and the 24-inch iMac. Apple says the chip has a 12-core CPU and a 12-core GPU with Neural Accelerators, plus a dual 16-core Neural Engine. In the United States, the MacBook Pro starts at $1,999 and the iMac at $1,499. Pre-orders open on Wednesday, Oct. 28, with shipments beginning Nov. 6. The designs of both machines are unchanged, and the iMac still comes in seven colors.
The focus is on artificial intelligence running directly on the device. Compared with the M5 model, Apple says the new MacBook Pro is up to 25% faster at AI tasks and up to 30% faster in graphics. Against an M1 MacBook Pro, Apple claims up to 13 times the AI performance and four more hours of battery life, for roughly 24 hours in total. The iMac jumps straight from the M4 to the M6 and, according to Apple, is five times faster at AI tasks than the 2024 model. Independent testing is still pending.
The Macs are part of a week of launches: on Monday, Apple announced an iPad mini with an OLED display. Industry watchers expect a MacBook Pro with an OLED touch screen at Wednesday's "Pro and Tell" event, though Apple has not confirmed this. According to TipRanks, the shares were little changed after the announcement. Apple reports quarterly results on Nov. 2. The larger 16-inch MacBook Pro models keep the M5 Pro and M5 Max chips for now.