Apple announced new Mac mini machines this week, and the lower-end models include the first M6 chip. The M6 era will be a bit complicated, because not many Macs are going to have it. We won’t have M6 Pro or M6 Max chips, which will shake up the Mac lineup for the next two years.
Devices with M6
The Mac mini is the first Mac with an M6, but the chip will be available on a few other products in the line.
- MacBook Pro – The entry-level 14-inch MacBook Pro could be updated with an M6 chip in October 2026.
- iMac – The 24-inch iMac should also receive the M6 chip, probably at the time of the MacBook Pro update.
- MacBook Air – The MacBook Air could receive the M6 chip in early 2027.
- iPad Pro – The next iPad Pro could receive the M6 chip.
- iPad Air – A future version of the iPad Air will likely adopt the M6. Apple generally keeps the iPad Air processor a generation behind the iPad Pro.
M6 Pro and M6 Max
Apple will not make M6 Pro or M6 Max chips, according to BloombergThe M6 will therefore be the first standalone Apple silicon chip that will not have more powerful variants.
Instead of manufacturing the M6 Pro and M6 Max chips, Apple is accelerating its chip development schedule to bring the M7 Pro and M7 Max to market more quickly. The M7 Pro and M7 Max will feature technologies supporting on-device AI and GPU-intensive software, to better meet the growing demand for processors with these capabilities.
M5 closes the gap
Macs that would have used an M6 Pro or M6 Max chip will be stuck with the M5 Pro and M5 Max until the M7 family is ready. This means that the high-end OLED “MacBook Ultra” that we expect in late 2026 or early 2027 will use the same M5 Pro and M5 Max chips found in the current MacBook Pro models. It’s also possible that it will get the M5 Ultra.
The new Mac mini also received the M5 Pro instead of an M6 Pro chip. The new Mac Studio announced alongside the Mac mini uses the M5 Max and M5 Ultra chips.
Short lifespan
The M6 isn’t going to last long, as Apple plans to launch the M7 in the first half of 2027. The M7 Pro and M7 Max will follow at the end of the year.
M6 Features
The M6 is Apple’s first chip built on a new 2-nanometer process that increases transistor density on a smaller chip. Process change improves performance and efficiency.
It features a 12-core CPU with what Apple says is the world’s fastest CPU core, a larger 12-core GPU with neural accelerators for each core, a new 16-core dual neural engine, and up to 170 GB/s memory bandwidth.
The GPU has an updated core shader architecture, dynamic caching, hardware-accelerated ray tracing, and 50% higher geometry rates for complex graphics.
