Apple announces new M6 Mac mini and M5 Ultra Mac Studio

Apple surprised the market by refreshing its desktop line a day after rumors of new releases, announcing a new Mac mini with the M6 chip and a Mac Studio with the M5 Ultra chip. The company positions the new chips as a “next giant leap” for performance and on-device AI compute. The M6 Mac mini features a dual 16-core Neural Engine and is offered with a base configuration starting at $899 for 16GB of RAM and 256GB of storage; the M6 Mac mini with M5 Pro starts at $1,699. The M5 Ultra Mac Studio offers up to a 36-core CPU and 80-core GPU with up to 512GB unified memory, starting at $5,499, with preorders beginning ahead of an Aug. 22 launch.