For many customers, the new Mac mini that Apple announced yesterday will look like an unusual lineup. The $899 model features Apple's brand new M6 chip, the company's first silicon built on a 2nm process, while the $1,699 model uses the M5 Pro, a chip from the previous generation.
The reason is that Apple is skipping the M6 Pro and M6 Max entirely, and there will be no M6 Ultra either. The plan was reported back in July, long before yesterday's announcement confirmed it.
According to Bloomberg's Mark Gurman, 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."
The M7 chip is expected in the first half of 2027, with M7 Pro and M7 Max variants following in the second half of that year. An M7 Ultra is expected to arrive in 2028. That leaves the Mac mini in the unusual position of selling two chip generations side by side, with the newer chip at the bottom of the range. That said, Apple has done something similar before: last year, it updated the Mac Studio with mismatched M4 Max and M3 Ultra chips.
So how much better is the M6 chip compared to the M5? Check out our buyer's guide for all the details.
