Apple unveils updated Mac Mini M6 and Mac Studio M5 Max/Ultra with AI-optimized silicon

Apple has finally refreshed two of its most popular desktop machines after months of constrained supply. The new Mac Mini ships with an M6 chip (with an M5 Pro option), while the Mac Studio gets the beefier M5 Max and M5 Ultra processors. Both lines are built around Apple’s latest silicon, which leans heavily into AI workload optimization through beefed-up Neural Engine cores and a unified memory architecture that lets the CPU, GPU, and neural cores share a single pool of high-bandwidth RAM. Pre-orders open September 22, 2026. The Mac Mini starts at $899, which is $200 more than its predecessor’s entry price. The Mac Studio begins at $2,499. What’s actually inside The Mac Studio’s M5 Ultra configuration supports up to 768 GB of unified RAM, paired with a 30-core CPU and 64-core GPU. Apple is targeting professional users in creative production, scientific computing, and AI model development. The unified memory architecture is particularly relevant for machine learning workflows, where large language models and image generators need to load massive parameter sets into memory all at once. Traditional machines with discrete GPUs hit a wall when model sizes exceed VRAM capacity. Apple’s...