AI Summary
5 min readApple refreshed its Mac lineup Tuesday with the M5 Max and M5 Ultra Mac Studio starting at $2,500 and a new Mac Mini available with M6 or M5 Pro chips starting at $900. The M6 Mac Mini is $100 more than its predecessor, while the M5 Ultra Studio is up $200. Pre-orders open today, but the Mac Minis won't ship until September 22nd — a delay Apple likely needs to stock inventory after the last generation sold out faster than expected, driven by demand for running AI agents.
The new Macs: two chips, two form factors
The entry-level Mac Mini with the M6 chip starts with 16GB of unified memory and 256GB of storage. The M5 Pro version starts at 24GB and 512GB. Both now ship with storage that is twice as fast as the previous generation, matching the recent MacBook Air and Pro updates. They also support 2.5 gigabit Ethernet as standard, with an optional upgrade to 10 gigabit, and use Apple's N1 chip for Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 6.
The M6 Mac Mini has a 12-core CPU and 12-core GPU, up from the M4's 10-core CPU and 10-core GPU, with memory bandwidth increasing from 120 GB/s to 170 GB/s. Apple says the M6's CPU includes two "supercores" — a new naming convention for a faster tier of performance core — and that the 12-core GPU with neural accelerators is up to twice as fast at graphics rendering with ray tracing compared to the M4 in some games.
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What you'll learn
- 1 New Macs — Tech Brew Ride Home (August 25, 2026)
- 2 (00:04) **Apple Refreshes Mac Studio and Mac Mini** - Apple announces M5 Max/M5 Ultra Mac Studio and M6/M5 Pro Mac Mini with major AI performance gains
- 3 (02:34) **Storage and Connectivity Upgrades** - Both Mac Mini models get double-speed storage and improved networking
- 4 (03:39) **M5 Pro Mac Mini Specifications** - Configurable with up to 18 CPU cores and 20 GPU cores
- 5 (04:11) **Ports and Software** - Key connectivity unchanged except for Ethernet upgrade
- 6 (04:56) **M6 and M5 Ultra Chip Details** - Apple's first 2-nanometer chip and its most powerful chip ever
- 7 (06:30) **OpenAI's Jalapeño Chip Performance** - OpenAI claims significant efficiency and latency gains over Nvidia
+ Full timestamped outline available in the app
Show Notes
Apple refreshed the Mac Studio with M5 Max and M5 Ultra and gave the Mac mini M6 silicon, at higher prices. OpenAI's Jalapeño chip beat Nvidia on efficiency, Perplexity went fully local, WhatsApp toughened logins, and Uber livestreamed teen rides.
Links
- Apple updates the Mac Studio with M5 Max and M5 Ultra, with up to 4.3x faster AI performance, faster graphics, and up to 512GB of unified memory for $2,499+ (Apple Newsroom)
- Apple unveils a Mac mini with M6 and M5 Pro, with up to 4x faster AI performance and 2x faster graphics, for $899+ and $1,699+, with preorders today and shipping September 22 (The Verge)
- Apple's M6 is its first 2nm chip with a 12-core CPU and GPU, while the M5 Ultra fuses two dual-die M5 Max chips into a 36-core CPU, 80-core GPU "most powerful chip ever" (The Verge)
- OpenAI says its Jalapeño chip delivered 1.5x-1.9x more AI work per watt and 1.7x-3.6x lower latency than Nvidia chips across GPT-OSS, DeepSeek R1, Kimi K2.5 1T (The Verge)
- WhatsApp upgrades its two-step verification, letting users replace the six-digit PIN with a longer alphanumeric password, and adds support for multiple passkeys (TechCrunch)
- Perplexity launches Portable Computer, a local AI agent platform running fully on-device with zero token costs, starting with Nvidia DGX Spark and RTX Linux PCs (VentureBeat)
- Uber launches an optional safety feature allowing parents or guardians to watch a livestream of their teen's ride via the driver's front-facing phone camera (Bloomberg)
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