Apple stepped up its desktop game on Tuesday with the unveiling of a brand new Mac Mini powered by the cutting edge M6 chip. Starting at 899 dollars, the entry level model arrives equipped with 16GB of RAM and 256GB of storage. While preorders are open immediately, eager customers will have to wait until September 22 for the devices to actually begin shipping.
The leap in performance is centered heavily on artificial intelligence, with Apple claiming that AI tasks now run four times faster than they did on the previous M4 model. This boost is driven by a more robust architecture featuring a 12 core CPU and a 12 core GPU, while graphics and storage speeds have effectively doubled. For those needing even more power, the company introduced an M5 Pro variant starting at 1,699 dollars, which offers higher baseline memory and processing cores to handle heavier workloads.
Connectivity gets a significant upgrade across both versions, as Apple has integrated Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 6 into the hardware alongside standard ethernet options. These machines will launch with macOS 27 and an enhanced version of Siri AI, catering to a growing community of tech enthusiasts who have recently used these compact desktops to run complex local AI agents like Hermes and OpenClaw.
This release comes amid a period of high demand that saw older models fetching premium prices on secondary markets like eBay. In addition to the mini updates, Apple expanded its professional lineup with new Mac Studio models utilizing M5 Max and M5 Ultra chips, priced between 2,499 and 5,499 dollars for users requiring massive amounts of unified memory and storage.
