Apple Refreshes Mac Studio and Mac mini with M6 and M5 Ultra, Drops Polishing Cloth to $9

Apple announced new Mac Studio and Mac mini models on August 25, 2026, alongside two new chips: M6, the company's first chip built on a 2-nanometer process, and M5 Ultra, its first quad-die system on a chip. Both machines are available for pre-order now, with availability beginning September 22. Apple also quietly dropped the price of the Polishing Cloth to $9, down from its long-standing $19.

M6: Apple's first 2-nanometer chip

M6 is Apple's first chip built on the 2-nanometer process, and it debuts in the Mac mini. The move to 2nm packs more transistors into a smaller die, which Apple is using to add a larger CPU complex, a larger GPU, and a new Neural Engine design rather than just improving efficiency at the same size.

The CPU complex grows to 12 cores, two more than M5, split into 2 super cores, 4 performance cores, and 6 efficiency cores. Apple says the super cores deliver the world's fastest single-threaded performance, with up to 1.2x faster multithreaded performance than M5 and up to 2.4x faster than M1. The GPU also grows to 12 cores, two more than M5, with a Neural Accelerator built into every core for the first time on this chip tier. Apple says that design delivers close to a 30 percent increase in peak GPU compute for AI compared to M5, and more than 8x compared to M1.

M6 introduces a Dual 16-core Neural Engine, providing up to 2x the peak compute of the previous generation, with system frameworks able to run both engines simultaneously for faster model execution. The chip supports up to 32GB of unified memory and up to 170GB/s of memory bandwidth, a 10 percent increase over M5. Apple's developer frameworks, including Core AI, Core ML, Metal, and Xcode, tap directly into the new hardware, letting developers run and fine-tune AI models locally using Apple's own frameworks or their own custom models.

Mac Studio: M5 Max and the new M5 Ultra

The Mac Studio now ships in two configurations. M5 Max brings an 18-core CPU, up to a 40-core GPU with Neural Accelerators built into every core, and up to 128GB of unified memory. Apple says M5 Max delivers up to 3.9x faster AI performance than the prior generation and up to 50 percent faster graphics.

M5 Ultra is the headline chip. It uses Apple's next-generation UltraFusion technology to connect two dual-die M5 Max chips into a single quad-die processor, a first for Apple silicon, with an inter-die bandwidth over 4.4TB/s. The result is an up-to-36-core CPU, an up-to-80-core GPU, and a staggering 512GB of unified memory with 1.2TB/s of memory bandwidth, 50 percent higher than the previous generation. That memory ceiling lets a single Mac Studio run open-weight LLMs with hundreds of billions of parameters entirely on device. Apple is quoting up to 4.3x faster peak AI compute compared to M3 Ultra and up to 9.8x faster than M1 Ultra.

Multiple Mac Studio systems can also be clustered over Thunderbolt 5 using RDMA (remote direct memory access), creating a shared memory pool across machines. Apple says a four-system cluster delivers up to 3x faster AI inference than a single Mac Studio.

Both configurations pick up Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 6 for the first time, Thunderbolt 5 with speeds up to 120Gb/s, support for up to eight displays, and genlock over USB-C for syncing with professional camera capture like iPhone 17 Pro.

Pricing: Mac Studio with M5 Max starts at $2,499 ($2,299 for education). Mac Studio with M5 Ultra starts at $5,499 ($5,099 for education). The 512GB unified memory configuration arrives in late October. Apple Upgrade leasing starts at $48.99/month for M5 Max and $110.10/month for M5 Ultra on a 36-month term.

Mac mini: M6 arrives, plus M5 Pro

The Mac mini is the first Mac to ship with M6, and the gains carry straight through to the machine: Apple says the M6 Mac mini delivers up to 4x faster AI performance and 2x faster graphics than the outgoing M4 model, along with 40 percent faster CPU performance and 2x faster storage.

The M5 Pro configuration is built for heavier workloads: up to an 18-core CPU, up to a 20-core GPU with third-generation ray tracing, and up to 64GB of unified memory with 307GB/s of bandwidth. Apple positions it for video production, 3D design, and running larger local AI models than the standard M6 model supports.

Both Mac mini configurations add Wi-Fi 7, Bluetooth 6, and upgraded 2.5Gb Ethernet (10Gb configurable). The M6 model includes three Thunderbolt 4 ports; the M5 Pro model steps up to three Thunderbolt 5 ports, which also support clustering multiple Mac mini systems to run larger AI models across machines.

Pricing: Mac mini with M6 starts at $899 ($799 for education). Mac mini with M5 Pro starts at $1,699 ($1,599 for education).

macOS 27 and Apple Intelligence

Both machines ship ready for macOS 27, which brings Siri AI, the more capable and personal version of Siri that draws on personal context across messages, email, and photos, along with the next generation of Apple Intelligence. Siri AI is integrated into Spotlight and system-wide context menus, with Visual Intelligence available through a dedicated keyboard shortcut. macOS 27 is currently in public beta ahead of a free update expected in September 2026.

The Polishing Cloth returns at half price

Alongside the Mac announcements, Apple also released an updated version of the Polishing Cloth, now priced at $9, down from the $19 it has charged since the accessory launched in October 2021. Apple's product description is unchanged: a soft, nonabrasive cloth safe for any Apple display, including nano-texture glass. The company hasn't said what, if anything, changed about the cloth itself.

The pricing pattern behind the launch

The new silicon here is a legitimate architecture story. M5 Ultra's quad-die design and M6's 2-nanometer process are real engineering milestones, not routine spec bumps. But the pricing tells a second story. This is the second Mac Studio price increase in two months: the M3 Ultra configuration went from $3,999 at its March 2025 launch to $5,299 in a June 2026 hike Apple attributed to memory and storage shortages, and now M5 Ultra opens another $200 higher at $5,499, a $1,500 climb in seventeen months. The Mac mini has followed a similar path, rising from $599 at its October 2024 launch to $899 with the August 25, 2026 announcement across three separate moves.

TBTL flagged this coming back in January, when Apple's long-term memory agreements were set to expire right as the company launched its most memory-intensive product lineup in years. The June hikes bore that out. The pattern that stands out about August 25 is that the increases kept coming even with genuinely new chips to point to, on the same products, inside the same year. The M5 MacBook Air took a different path in April, doubling base storage at a flat price rather than raising it, which suggests Apple has more than one lever available when memory costs bite. For Mac Studio and Mac mini, Apple chose the other one. Whether that becomes the default move for every future Mac refresh, or a one-time correction tied to this particular shortage, is the question worth watching the next time Apple updates this lineup.