Apple unveils M6 and M5 Ultra: a 2 nm leap in performance and AI compute

Even w/the pricing spike, inflation adjusted we are back to roughly the prices of a new Mac SE/30 for something that can beat a turing test w/o sweating.

I yield the floor to no one when it comes to pessimism, but that's incredible.

Apple Studio with maxed out M5 Ultra, 256GB RAM and 16TB storage is 18,299$. The 512GB RAM version apparently is coming in October, considering that the difference between 96GB and 256GB is priced at 4000$, the 512GB upgrade must be eye watering.

So, on the mini the RAM upgrade runs at 25$ per GB on all tiers, the same as the Studio therefore the upgrade to 512 will probably cost 6400$.

The fully maxed out Apple Studio then will be 24699$. It's 17199$ if you don't upgrade the storage(1TB).

Nevertheless I itch to have one :)

More validated by the day that my $450 M4 Mac Mini (16GB) was the best deal in computing for a long, long time.

Rumors say that Apple will only release M6 base variant and skips M6 Pro, M6 Max and M6 Ultra variants to concentrate all efforts to create a good AI capable M7:

"According to reports from Bloomberg, Apple will be skipping its M6 Pro, M6 Max, and M6 Ultra chips to accelerate development of the M7 chip. That means the only chip to be released from the M6 family will be the base M6.

The reason for this break with tradition: AI. Apple had been planning major neural-processing upgrades for the M7 family and ultimately decided those improvements were important enough to justify accelerating the next generation rather than completing the M6 lineup." https://9to5mac.com/2026/08/08/apple-m7-chip-heres-why-it-ma...

I'd skip M5 and M6 chips for LLM work and wait for a year for M7.

Apple still has the best hardware so I moved to it for the last few years, but the closed software ecosystem is terrible for taking advantage of it.

I wasn't able to debug network errors (restartin my Mac worked), Metal was missing low level disassembly / debugging tools (there is some hard to use UI), but the worst thing was the inflexible windowing system.

Even getting all the window handles on all screens/desktops with their titles and programs is impossible.

I just decided that I move to Omarchy 4 (basically Hyperland + QuickShell) + NVIDIA GPU, and I already was able to customize it more than my Mac in years.

I will miss Apple's hardware for sure, but not MacOS and the missing hardware documentation

I run a lot of local models (I am always experimenting) on my 32G M2-Pro MacMini - I would love to upgrade.

The financial aspects don’t work however: I can learn and experiment with what I have for local models, and I pay as I go on FireWorks.ai for open model inferencing and no matter how much I use this service my monthly bill is between $10 and $40 and much faster than any reasonable home rig.

Hybrid ‘small local’ and buying inference is the way I choose.

The 512GB Ultra is amazing, sure. But who is it for exactly? VC funded big spender founders? In that case why would they need local AI? The ultra rich enthusiast? But there can't be too many of those. So who actually buys these?

Leasing now an option, only $50/month (cheaper than inference subscription?), so even cash-poor can go the amortized-investment route.

I've often felt there is tremendous value locked up in underutilized old computers. It would be interesting to see Apple in 3 years offering compute as a service using lease returns (or more likely, partnering with someone else to operate it (perhaps exclusively in secondary markets like China or India, to address political demands for local siting or jobs). Apple is in the best position to work around or even gap-fix older software/hardware limitations in a controlled environment, and now they can do so without cannibalizing new hardware sales.

Just bought AMD AI 395+ 64GB RAM for 2000eur. Mac mini would be 2x for about similar performance. Pass.