Overview
- Apple announced the new 14‑inch MacBook Pro and updated 24‑inch iMac with the M6 on Tuesday, opened preorders on Oct. 28 and set wider availability for Nov. 6.
- The M6 packs a 12‑core CPU, a 12‑core GPU with Neural Accelerators in each core, two 16‑core Neural Engines and faster unified memory that starts at 16 GB and can be configured up to 32 GB with up to 170 GB/s bandwidth.
- Apple links the chip to macOS 27 features such as Siri AI and Apple Intelligence and to updates in Creator Studio, Final Cut Pro and other apps that use on‑device language and image models.
- Apple provided performance claims—up to 30% faster GPU versus M5 and much larger gains versus M1—but those figures are company measurements and independent benchmarks are needed to verify real‑world gains.
- The M6 is limited to the 14‑inch MacBook Pro in this refresh while the iMac is offered in two M6 variants and seven colors; prices and some base configurations such as the iMac’s 256 GB entry storage drew criticism from reviewers.