Apple launches 14-inch MacBook Pro with M6 at $1,999

Apple announced the 14-inch MacBook Pro with its M6 chip on October 27. Pre-orders open October 28 in 35 countries and regions, and the laptop starts arriving in customers’ hands and in stores on Friday, November 6. It costs $1,999 in the U.S., or $1,899 with education pricing.

What changed

The M6 has a 12-core CPU and a 12-core GPU, two more cores of each than the M5 in last year’s model. According to 9to5Mac’s rundown of Apple’s figures, the CPU is split into 2 super cores, 4 performance cores and 6 efficiency cores. The M5 used 4 super cores and 6 efficiency cores. The Neural Engine is now a dual 16-core design, which Apple says runs 1.9x faster than the M5’s. Memory bandwidth rises to 170GB/s from 153GB/s.

Apple says the GPU is up to 30 percent quicker than M5 for graphics and up to 25 percent quicker for on-device AI jobs such as prompt processing for local language models. Its own comparisons against the M5 model show:

• 1.3x faster time to first token for LLM prompts
• 1.3x faster ray-traced rendering in Blender
• 1.2x faster image processing in Affinity
• 1.3x faster code builds in Xcode

Wireless gets an upgrade through Apple’s N1 chip, which 9to5Mac notes first appeared in the iPhone 17. The laptop moves to Wi-Fi 7 from Wi-Fi 6E and to Bluetooth 6 from Bluetooth 5.3. Apple rates battery life at up to 24 hours, which it calls the longest in a Mac.

Everything else carries over: the Liquid Retina XDR display with up to 1,600 nits of peak HDR brightness, a 12MP Center Stage camera, six speakers, HDMI, MagSafe 3, three Thunderbolt 4 ports, an SDXC slot and a headphone jack. It comes in space black and silver.

Memory starts at 16GB and goes to 32GB. Engadget lists the upgrade prices: 24GB for $200 more and 32GB for $400 more. Storage starts at 1TB, with 2TB costing $500 extra and 4TB costing $1,500 extra. The nano-texture display option adds $150. Apple also offers a U.S. lease through Apple Upgrade from $38.99 a month over 36 months.

The machine ships with macOS 27, which Apple calls Golden Gate. Apple says Siri AI is in beta in macOS 27.2 and is not available in the EU on iOS, iPadOS or watchOS.

Why it matters

This is a spec-bump refresh. 9to5Mac describes it as two new chips and no other listed changes, with the design identical to the M5 model. Apple pitches the biggest gains at people upgrading from older machines. For buyers coming from an Intel-based Mac, it points to a battery life increase of up to 14 hours, and for M1 owners up to four more hours. Those buyers also get 16GB of starting memory and an extra Thunderbolt port.

The larger 16-inch MacBook Pro has not moved to M6. Engadget notes it still runs the M5 Pro or M5 Max, so anyone who wants the bigger screen stays on the previous generation for now.

What we don’t know yet

Tom’s Hardware reports that Apple is holding an event in Los Angeles on October 28, and says the iMac is also getting M6, including a cut-down 10-core CPU and 10-core GPU option. 9to5Mac says a more heavily overhauled MacBook Pro with top-tier chips is expected at that event. Apple has not detailed either product in the announcement for this laptop.