Apple's M6 lands in a $1,999 MacBook Pro and a $1,499 iMac, with AI bolted into every GPU core

Apple announced the 14-inch MacBook Pro and the 24-inch iMac with its new M6 chip on Tuesday, Oct. 27, 2026, with preorders starting Wednesday, Oct. 28 and availability Friday, Nov. 6.

Apple's M-series pitch has quietly flipped from "faster" to "faster at AI," and M6 makes it explicit: Neural Accelerators inside every GPU core plus a Neural Engine Apple says is nearly twice M5's. The numbers that matter for normal people are the boring ones — $1,999 and $1,499 starting prices, 16GB minimum, 24 hours of battery — because that is what decides whether on-device AI is a feature or a demo. The "13x vs M1" stat is aimed squarely at the giant installed base of 2020-era Macs; Apple wants that upgrade cycle, and it is using local LLM speed to sell it. Benchmarks are Apple's own, so wait for independent tests before treating 25% as gospel.

Apple's Newsroom posts announcing a new 14-inch MacBook Pro and a new 24-inch iMac, both built on the M6 chip, are dated Oct. 27, 2026. Preorders start Wednesday, Oct. 28, on apple.com/store. Apple says the MacBook Pro is offered in 35 countries and regions. Both are available Friday, Nov. 6. Those dates and the country count are Apple's.

The MacBook Pro's M6 has a 12-core CPU, two more cores than before. Apple calls that CPU core the world's fastest. The 12-core GPU puts a Neural Accelerator in each core. A Neural Accelerator, here, is a small AI helper inside the graphics core, so the part of the chip that draws the screen also runs model math. Apple claims up to 30% faster graphics and up to 25% faster AI workloads than M5, and up to 11x graphics and 13x AI performance versus M1. Those multipliers are Apple's.

M6 has a dual 16-core Neural Engine. That is the block that runs AI models on the machine. Apple says it is up to 1.9x faster than M5's. Apple also cites up to 13x faster time-to-first-token for on-device LLMs versus M1, and 1.3x versus M5. Time-to-first-token is how long a language model on the computer takes to start its answer. An LLM is a large language model, the kind of AI that writes and answers in text. Those speeds are Apple's.

The MacBook Pro comes with 16GB of unified memory standard, configurable to 32GB, and up to 170GB/s of memory bandwidth. Unified memory is one pool the CPU and the GPU share. Bandwidth is how much of that memory the chip can move each second. It has Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 6. Apple says battery life reaches up to 24 hours, which it calls the longest ever in a Mac. Colors are space black and silver. Those specs are Apple's.

The MacBook Pro starts at $1,999, or $1,899 for education. Apple lists Apple Upgrade financing from $38.99 a month. That monthly figure is Apple's example for the $1,999 machine.

The iMac is a 24-inch all-in-one with a 4.5K display, in seven colors: blue, green, pink, yellow, purple, orange, and silver. It goes up to a 12-core CPU and a 12-core GPU. Apple claims up to 5x faster on-device AI than M4, measured as LM Studio prompt processing, and 12x versus M1 on that same test; up to 2x graphics versus M4; and up to 18x faster than the most popular Intel-based iMac. LM Studio is an app for running language models on the computer. The iMac has Wi-Fi 7, Bluetooth 6, and optional 2.5 Gigabit Ethernet. Those comparisons are Apple's.

The iMac with a 10-core CPU and a 10-core GPU starts at $1,499, or $1,449 for education. The 12-core CPU and 12-core GPU model starts at $1,699, or $1,599 for education. Those prices are Apple's.

Shelly Goldberg, Apple's vice president of Hardware Engineering, is quoted on the MacBook Pro announcement. She called it "the pro laptop of choice for a wide range of users," and said that with M6, "we're taking performance to the next level, with a boost in CPU speed and graphics and even more powerful capabilities for on-device AI." That quotation is hers, on Apple's Newsroom page.

The picture is Apple's launch photo of the 14-inch MacBook Pro with M6, open and angled on a dark background with a glowing M6 chip mark behind it. The credit is Apple.

In plain terms, Apple on Tuesday put the same new M6 chip in a $1,999 14-inch MacBook Pro and a $1,499 24-inch iMac. Preorders open Wednesday. Both ship Nov. 6. The pitch is on-device AI: a Neural Accelerator in every graphics core, a faster Neural Engine, and large multipliers against the M1 machines from 2020. The battery claim is 24 hours. The memory floor is 16GB. Every speed number in this story is Apple grading Apple.