Apple takes powerful M6 chip to the MacBook Pro, iMac
If you were waiting to upgrade your Mac until you could get one with the latest CPU, the wait is over. Apple's 6th-gen M-series processors are finally trickling down to its 14-inch MacBook Pro and iMac family early next month.
Available in either space black" or silver, Apple's base-model MacBook Pro is largely unchanged from last gen. This is a mid-cycle refresh and so most of the improvements are under the hood. It sports the same high-res mini-LED display, chiclet keyboard, and port selection as its predecessor.
Most of the improvements come from the silicon itself. Announced alongside a refreshed Mac mini in August, and fabbed on TSMC's 2nm process tech, the M6 features a refreshed CPU with 12 CPU and 12 GPU cores, and is now complemented by a dual 16-core Neural Engine (what Apple calls its NPUs) which promises better performance for the slew of Apple Intelligence features now baked into macOS Golden Gate.
The M6 MacBook Pro comes standard with 16 GB of unified memory, good for 153 GB/s of bandwidth. Memory can be specced up to 24 GB or 32 GB, boosting bandwidth to 170 GB/s for those with more demanding workloads or, as is more often the case, an aversion to closing Chrome tabs.
Compared to the outgoing M5, which for the moment is still available in the MacBook Air, Apple says the M6 delivers significant performance gains thanks to the addition of two more cores. In Xcode, Apple boasts up to 30 percent higher performance versus a similarly equipped M5 MacBook Pro.
The GPU enjoys similar gains in Blender ray tracing, local AI inference, and image processing, delivering 1.3x faster prompt processing and 1.3x faster rendering, and 1.2x faster performance in the Affinity creative suite.
Despite higher performance, Apple boasts the same 24-hour battery life as the outgoing M5 model. Pricing also remains unchanged. A 16 GB model with 1 TB of solid state storage will set you back $1,999.
One area of improvement not related to performance is connectivity. The M6 finally brings Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 6 connectivity to the 14-inch MacBook Pro.
The majority of these improvements also come to Apple's most colorful of all-in-one desktops: the iMac. Here the performance jump is even larger, owing to the fact the machine never got the M5. Apple claims 1.5x faster performance in productivity apps like Excel, 2x faster graphics performance and 5x faster in local AI.
Continuing the trend of better connectivity, along with Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 6, certain iMac models also gain 2.5 Gbps Ethernet. As with the MacBook Pro, pricing remains unchanged, with iMacs starting at $1,499.
Both the M6 MacBook Pro and iMac are available for preorder starting tomorrow with availability beginning Friday, Nov. 6. (R)