Apple has announced new Mac mini and Mac Studio desktop computers that put AI compute performance front and center. The Mac mini has been upgraded to the first Mac with an M6, with the starting price increased to $899, and its supported capabilities have also been expanded to enable faster local execution of large language models (LLMs).
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New desktop computers have added M6, M5 Pro (M5 Pro), M5 Max (M5 Max), and M5 Ultra (M5 Ultra) chips. The M6 is the first Mac chip made using a 2-nanometer process.
The base price of the Mac mini was raised to $899, and Apple said that the M5 Pro model can process LLM prompts up to 8.5 times faster than the previous Pro chips.
Because the Mac Studio can pool memory by combining multiple systems, the M5 Ultra configuration is aimed at running state-of-the-art AI models with trillions of parameters.
Apple Mac desktop full front upgrade
CNBC reported that as demand grows to develop and run AI agents outside of cloud infrastructure, Apple is positioning the Mac as a workstation for local AI development. The new Mac mini can be chosen with either the M6 or the M5 Pro, and the Mac Studio offers options with the M5 Max and the M5 Ultra.
M6 is the first chip adopted for the Mac among that generation, and it is manufactured using Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co.'s 2-nanometer process. Apple said that the Mac mini with the M5 Pro has a 8.5x faster large language model prompt processing speed than the previous Pro lineup. However, the Mac mini's starting price rose one more step, from $799 to $899.
The Mac Studio with an M5 Max starts at $2,499, as in the previous generation. By contrast, the M5 Ultra configuration starts at $5,499—an even higher entry price than the existing M3 Ultra model (at least $5,299). Preorders begin on Tuesday, and official shipping is scheduled for September 22.
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Strengthening the local AI strategy
Apple is marketing its new desktop products as a “local AI development machine” aimed at developers and researchers who want to reduce dependence on the cloud. The strategy is to capture demand to run agents on dedicated hardware or to train and deploy models on its own infrastructure. Apple emphasized that its Neural Engine and integrated memory architecture are strengths for AI workloads.
Apple said that with these frameworks and new chips, developers will be able to run large AI models locally on the Mac and fine-tune them. It also explained that by pooling memory—operating multiple Mac Studios equipped with the M5 Ultra as one system—Apple can handle even cutting-edge frontier models with trillions of parameters.
This announcement continues Apple’s fast generational update cycle for its desktop lineup. The previous-generation Mac mini offered the M4, M4 Pro, and M4 Max, and the base model price was raised from $599 to $799 over the summer due to higher memory costs—but with this launch, it was increased again to $899.
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