Apple refreshed two of its desktop computers on Tuesday, adding its first M6-generation chip to the Mac mini and updating the Mac Studio, with both gadget lines retuned for AI tasks that run locally instead of in the cloud. Preorders opened the same day and units will ship September 22, according to Apple.
$100 jump on entry model
The cheapest new Mac mini now costs $899, which is reportedly $100 more than buyers paid for the model it will be replacing. According to CNBC, the earlier move up from $599 was linked to more expensive memory. The step-up mini, built on the M5 Pro chip, starts at $1,699.
Memory supply has continued to be an issue for the product. Shipments of the Mac mini dropped last quarter during a global shortage of memory chips and processors, just as it started to draw fresh interest as a way to run AI models.
Both mini configurations ship with macOS 27 and a reworked version of the Siri AI assistant from Apple.
M6 chip brings changes
The company claims the M6 chip on the new mini models runs workloads up to four times faster than the M4 model it replaces, all while doubling graphics performance and adding 40 percent on the CPU. The M6 carries a 12-core CPU and a 12-core GPU, and including Neural Accelerators for the very first time in a Mac mini GPU core.
On memory, the base config comes with 16GB and can be expanded to 32GB, with bandwidth reaching 170GB/s. Apple’s benchmark claims the M6 mini processes LLM prompts in LM Studio up to 13.5 times faster than a Mac mini with the M1, and up to 4.8 times faster than the M4 version.
M5 Pro and the Mac Studio step up
The M5 Pro mini is aimed at heavier work such as app building, video rendering, and scientific simulation. It offers up to an 18-core CPU and a 20-core GPU, supports up to 64GB of unified memory at 307GB/s, and offers access to Thunderbolt 5. Apple says it clears LLM prompts in LM Studio up to 8.5 times faster than the older M2 Pro mini.
The Mac Studio also saw an improvement. The M5 Max version starts at $2,499 and the M5 Ultra version at $5,499, an increase from the $5,299 that an M3 Ultra Studio used to cost.
Apple says the M5 Max runs LLMs close to four times faster than the previous generation, and that two M5 Ultra machines can be wired together to combine memory and run bigger AI models. The same clustering trick can be applied to the M5 Pro mini using Thunderbolt 5.
The new Mac mini will be assembled at a Foxconn plant in Houston, where Apple confirmed production earlier this month and opened an “Advanced Manufacturing Center.”
Apple’s Chief Hardware Officer Johny Srouji said the M6 mini “delivers a whole new level of AI performance,” pointing to its CPU, graphics, GPU Neural Accelerators, and a higher memory bandwidth.
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