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Apple announced a 14-inch MacBook Pro and a 24-inch iMac with its M6 chip on October 27, 2026. Preorders open October 28 and availability begins Friday, November 6. The MacBook Pro starts at $1,999 and the iMac at $1,499.
Key facts
- MacBook Pro: 14-inch, starts at $1,999, in space black or silver, with 16GB of unified memory as standard, according to TechCrunch.
- iMac: starts at $1,499 for the 10-core model with two ports. The 12-core model with four Thunderbolt 4 ports costs $1,699, per MacRumors.
- Chip: M6 with up to 12 CPU cores and 12 GPU cores, plus a 16-core Neural Engine.
- Connectivity: Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 6 on both machines.
- Dates: preorders open October 28 at 10:10 a.m. Pacific Time, with availability on November 6.
What changed
The Register describes the MacBook Pro as a mid-cycle refresh: the display, keyboard and ports match the previous generation, and battery life stays at 24 hours. TechCrunch lists HDMI, MagSafe 3, three Thunderbolt 4 ports, an SDXC slot and a headphone jack.
Apple says the M6 gives up to 30% faster graphics and up to 25% faster AI workloads than the M5, according to TechCrunch. Memory bandwidth reaches up to 170GB/s on higher memory configurations. The Register says the 16GB base model is rated at 153GB/s, while TechCrunch's wording implies 170GB/s as the new figure generally. The sources differ on this detail.
The iMac is the larger jump. It skips the M5 entirely, so comparisons are against the M4. The Next Web reports Apple claims up to five times faster on-device AI, up to twice the graphics speed in photo editing, and Excel up to 1.5 times faster. The 12-core model adds 2.5 Gigabit Ethernet and can drive two external 6K displays.
These are Apple's own figures. None of the outlets cited here report independent testing yet.
Why it matters
The iMac design is unchanged. Macworld says it appears physically identical to the M4 model, with the same display, camera, speakers and colors, and calls the lack of another price increase the best part. Its upgrades are in the chip, wireless standards, Ethernet and SSD speed, which Apple says is up to twice as fast.
Pricing context matters. The Next Web notes that, citing EveryMac, Apple raised iMac prices by $200 in June amid rising memory and storage costs tied to AI data center demand. Before that, the cheapest model was $1,299. The new $1,499 start matches the M4 model's price just before launch.
For buyers on an M1-era or Intel iMac, the gains are larger. Apple claims up to 18 times the speed of the most popular Intel iMac, and up to 12 times the on-device AI performance of the 2021 M1 model, per The Next Web.
