Technology and Scienceupdated 59m ago2 min read
Apple Unveils 14-Inch MacBook Pro With M6 Chip, Wi‑Fi 7, and On-Device AI
“most of its gains land in on-device AI, where M6 runs two Neural Engines instead of one.”
“today’s Mac updates are mere spec bumps.”
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Apple unveils the 14-inch MacBook Pro with the M6 chip. M6 offers up to 12-core CPU, 12-core GPU, with Neural Accelerators.
M6 MacBook Pro Announced
Apple announced the new 14-inch MacBook Pro with M6, and the company said the laptop delivers up to 24 hours of battery life and “powerful on-device AI capabilities.” The M6 includes an advanced 12-core CPU and a 12-core GPU that delivers up to 30 percent faster graphics and up to 25 percent faster AI workloads when compared to M5. The 14-inch MacBook Pro with M6 features Wi‑Fi 7 and Bluetooth 6, and it pairs the chip with a Dual 16-core Neural Engine.
The laptop can run LLMs locally while preserving user privacy, and Apple linked the on-device AI to Siri AI and Apple Intelligence features across apps and macOS. The new 14-inch MacBook Pro with M6 is available in space black and silver, with pre-orders beginning October 28 and availability starting Friday, November 6.
Performance and Connectivity
The 12-core CPU brings “blazing-fast single- and multithreaded performance,” including compiling code and handling complex creative workflows. The 12-core GPU delivers up to 30 percent faster graphics performance when compared to M5, and Apple tied the graphics gains to a third-generation ray-tracing engine and Dynamic Caching. The Dual 16-core Neural Engine delivers up to 1.9x faster performance than M5 and accelerates AI workloads like image generation, Super Resolution, and AI upscaling.
The laptop’s unified memory supports 16GB standard and can be configured up to 32GB, with higher memory bandwidth up to 170GB/s. The 14-inch MacBook Pro with M6 enables “Up to 1.3x faster time to first token performance for LLM prompt processing” compared to the 14-inch MacBook Pro with M5.
iMac Refresh and Dates
Apple also refreshed the iMac with the M6 chip, and Ars Technica said the iMac refresh includes two M6 variants split by Thunderbolt ports.
The “M6 chip with two Thunderbolt ports” option gets a 10-core CPU and a 10-core GPU, while the “M6 chip with four Thunderbolt ports” option gets 12 cores for each.
The two-port iMac variant maxes out at 24 GB of RAM and 1TB of storage, while the four-port iMac variant maxes out at 32GB of RAM and 2TB of storage.
Apple brought the M6 chip to both its entry-level 14-inch MacBook Pro and iMac after debuting the processor with the Mac mini in August.
Preorders open Wednesday, Oct. 28, with shipping expected to start on Friday, Nov. 6, for the new M6 MacBook Pro and M6 iMac.