Apple announces new Mac Mini and Mac Studio built for AI

Apple refreshed two of its desktop computers on Tuesday, adding its first M6-generation chip to the Mac mini and updating the Mac Studio, with both gadget lines retuned for AI tasks that run locally instead of in the cloud. Preorders opened the same day and units will ship September 22, according to Apple.

$100 jump on entry model

The cheapest new Mac mini now costs $899, which is reportedly $100 more than buyers paid for the model it will be replacing. According to CNBC, the earlier move up from $599 was linked to more expensive memory. The step-up mini, built on the M5 Pro chip, starts at $1,699.

Memory supply has continued to be an issue for the product. Shipments of the Mac mini dropped last quarter during a global shortage of memory chips and processors, just as it started to draw fresh interest as a way to run AI models.

Both mini configurations ship with macOS 27 and a reworked version of the Siri AI assistant from Apple.

M6 chip brings changes

The company claims the M6 chip on the new mini models runs workloads up to four times faster than the M4 model it replaces, all while doubling graphics performance and adding 40 percent on the CPU. The M6 carries a 12-core CPU and a 12-core GPU, and including Neural Accelerators for the very first time in a Mac mini GPU core.

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