After announcing its new iPad mini yesterday ahead of its big “Pro and Tell” event on October 28, Apple is back with more product announcements leading up to the event, this time focusing on two major Mac refreshes: the iMac and the 14-inch MacBook Pro.
Both updates are pretty straightforward, with Apple bumping the iMac and 14-inch MacBook Pro to its new M6 chipset, which it announced in August alongside the new Mac mini.
The 14-inch MacBook Pro was already running Apple’s M5 chipset, so it still had plenty of power under the hood. The bigger upgrade, however, is the iMac. Apple last refreshed its all-in-one desktop in 2024 with the M4 chip, making the jump to M6 a more substantial upgrade.
As for the MacBook Pro, the M6 upgrade is limited to the 14-inch model. That’s not particularly surprising, given that Apple is widely expected to unveil a new version of the MacBook Pro with a touchscreen OLED display at its “Pro and tell” event tomorrow.
Both the new M6 14-inch MacBook Pro and M6 iMac will be available for pre-order on October 28, with both models launching on November 6. The new M6 14-inch MacBook Pro starts at $2,000, while the new M6 iMac starts at $1,500.
The same look, with more power
M6 offers a significant leap in performance for graphics and AI
If you’re wondering whether Apple has changed the design of the iMac or 14-inch MacBook Pro, the answer is no. Both updates focus on under-the-hood improvements with the M6 chip, leaving the designs of both devices unchanged.
That said, the iMac is still available in its usual array of eye-popping colors, including blue, green, pink, yellow, purple, orange, and silver. Meanwhile, the 14-inch MacBook Pro comes in space gray and silver.
Turning to performance, Apple is highlighting the gains its M6 chip brings to the 14-inch MacBook Pro, drawing comparisons to both the M5 and M1 models. According to Apple, the new M6 variant delivers up to 30 percent faster graphics performance and up to 25 percent faster AI workloads compared to the M5 model. Compared to the M1, Apple claims the M6 chip delivers up to 11 times faster graphics performance and up to 13 times faster AI performance.
As for the iMac, Apple says its M6 chip delivers up to twice the graphics performance and twice the AI compute performance of the M4 chip. These improvements should come in handy for demanding tasks like video and photo editing, as well as running large language models (LLMs).
Beyond the chipset upgrades, Apple has also equipped the new M6 14-inch MacBook Pro and iMac with Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 6. The iMac also gets a welcome Ethernet upgrade, moving from the Gigabit port on the M4 model to a faster 2.5Gb Ethernet port.
All in all, as I mentioned at the outset, both the new iMac and the 14-inch MacBook Pro are straightforward upgrades to Apple’s M6 chipset, packing plenty of power for graphics-intensive tasks and AI workloads without changing much else. The bigger design changes are expected tomorrow, when Apple reportedly plans to unveil its new touchscreen OLED MacBook Pro, marking the first time the company has brought both a touchscreen and an OLED display to a Mac.
Pre-orders for the M6 iMac, M6 14-inch MacBook Pro, and the previously announced refreshed iPad mini begin on October 28, with all three devices launching on November 6.
