Apple has refreshed two of its desktop Macs with new silicon, introducing the M6 chip in the Mac mini and the M5 Ultra in the Mac Studio. Both machines are up for pre-order now; shipping starts September 22.
The Mac mini's base model moves to M6, Apple's first chip built on a 2nm process. It has a 12-core CPU (two more than M5), a 12-core GPU with Neural Accelerators in each core, and a Dual 16-core Neural Engine. Apple claims up to 4x faster AI performance and 2x faster graphics versus the outgoing M4 model. Pricing starts at $899, a $300 jump from the previous M4 base model. An M5 Pro option is also available, with up to an 18-core CPU, 20-core GPU, and 64GB of memory, starting at $1,699.
The bigger story is probably the Mac Studio, now running M5 Max or the new M5 Ultra. M5 Ultra is Apple's first quad-die chip, fusing two M5 Max dies together through a next-gen UltraFusion interconnect rated at 4.4TB/s. It tops out at a 36-core CPU, 80-core GPU, and 512GB of unified memory with 1.2TB/s of bandwidth, which Apple says is 50 percent more than the M3 Ultra.
Mac Studio pricing starts at $2,499 for M5 Max, holding steady with the outgoing M4 Max model. The M5 Ultra version starts at $5,499, a $200 increase over the M3 Ultra. Oddly, the 512GB memory configuration isn't available at launch. Apple says that option won't ship until "late October," which lines up with ongoing reports of tight memory chip supply.
Both machines ship with macOS 27 and the next wave of Apple Intelligence, including the newly upgraded Siri. None of this touches the Mac Pro, which Apple quietly discontinued earlier this year, leaving Mac Studio at the top of its desktop lineup.
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The split between the two machines looks straightforward. Mac mini covers general use and lighter AI workloads at a lower price, while Mac Studio targets people running large local models or heavy content creation, where the extra memory bandwidth actually matters.
