Apple remains on track to launch its first smart home device with a screen before the end of the year, according to Bloomberg's Mark Gurman.
Gurman reiterated that the device will use facial recognition to determine who is standing in front of it and serve up personalized content for that individual user. The description lines up with code found in macOS Tahoe 26.7 earlier this week, which revealed that the smart home hub will support multiple user profiles and use "ambient sensing" to verify identity. Apple is also readying a new Apple TV and an updated HomePod mini as part of the same renewed push into the home, according to Gurman.
Apple's smart home hub has been rumored for years. It is rumored to feature a square, seven-inch display with a front-facing camera, running an operating system closer to tvOS than iOS, with a home screen built around quick-access widgets. Pricing is expected to land somewhere around $350.
There's a big accessory sale happening on Amazon this week, with the year's best prices on Anker chargers, Samsung monitors, Sonos audio products, and much more.
Note: MacRumors is an affiliate partner with some of these vendors. When you click a link and make a purchase, we may receive a small payment, which helps us keep the site running.
Highlights this time around include a collection of audio devices on sale, including the Sonos Ace Headphones for $299.00, down from $399.00, and Sony's WH-1000XM5 Noise Canceling Headphones for $248.00, down from $399.00. You can also get a few soundbars at low prices during this event, including the Sonos Arc Ultra soundbar for $899.00, down from $1,099.00, and the Sonos Beam for $399.00, down from $499.00.
In terms of monitor and TV deals, there are quite a few Samsung deals happening this week on Amazon. The 32-inch Smart Monitor M9 has hit its second-best price on Amazon at $1,199.99, down from $1,599.99, an all-time low price. You'll also find solid sales on The Frame TVs and Odyssey monitors right now, including a great deal on The Frame TV 55-inch model for $797.99, a solid second-best price.
We're also tracking big discounts from brands like LG, Hisense, iVANKY, Jackery, and more in the lists below. Accessories on sale include USB-C wall chargers, MagSafe-compatible wireless chargers, portable batteries, headphones, docks, and monitors.
If you're on the hunt for more discounts, be sure to visit our Apple Deals roundup where we recap the best Apple-related bargains of the past week.
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Apple today quietly introduced updated Magic Keyboard models with revised U.S. English key labeling.
On the new keyboards, the tab, caps lock, shift, return, and delete keycaps are labeled with glyphs rather than edge text. On the full-size models with a numeric keypad, the change goes further, with the home, page up, page down, end, clear, and enter keys also swapping their text labels for symbols.
The one U.S. English model Apple has not refreshed is the Magic Keyboard with Numeric Keypad, which lacks Touch ID and continues to use text labels on the same keys.
Since the U.S. English layout is the default option in Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and Singapore, among other countries, the new labeling effectively extends well beyond the United States. Apple has used glyphs on its British English and other European layouts for some time, so the symbols will already be familiar to customers there.
Apple today released a new version of its Polishing Cloth on its online store. In the U.S., pricing is now set at $9, down from $19 for the previous version of the cloth.
We have yet to determine if the new Polishing Cloth is smaller than the original or has any other notable changes beyond lower pricing. Apple says the cloth continues to be made with soft, nonabrasive material that can be used to clean any Apple display, including those with a nano-texture coating.
Apple today announced a new Mac mini and Mac Studio, and pre-orders for both are already live on Apple's online store and in the Apple Store app in the United States and 30 other countries and regions.
Most configurations ship Tuesday, September 22, which is also when the new models will be available to buy in Apple Store locations and at Apple Authorized Resellers.
Both Mac mini models cost more than the machines they replace for reasons that should be familiar by now. The rapid buildout of AI data centers has pushed up demand for memory and storage chips across the tech industry, and Apple in June raised the M4 Pro Mac mini to $1,599, up from the $1,399 it launched at in October 2024. The M5 Pro version adds another $100 on top of that.
Model
Starting price
Education price
Base memory/storage
Mac mini (M6)
$899
$799
16GB / 256GB
Mac mini (M5 Pro)
$1,699
$1,599
24GB / 512GB
Mac Studio (M5 Max)
$2,499
$2,299
36GB / 512GB
Mac Studio (M5 Ultra)
$5,499
$5,099
96GB / 1TB
The $899 M6 mini is $300 more than the M4 model's $599 original launch price, but only $100 more than the $799 that Apple re-priced it to in June. Education prices reflect Apple's discounts for schools and students.
The M5 Ultra-powered Mac Studio with 512GB of unified memory won't be available until late October, and Apple hasn't announced pricing for it yet.
Apple today announced new Mac Studio models with the M5 Max and M5 Ultra chips, the latter of which is the company's most powerful chip ever.
The new Mac Studio features a next-generation SSD architecture built on PCIe Gen 6 that Apple says is up to twice as fast as before. The machine also gains Thunderbolt 5 ports with up to 120Gb/s of bandwidth, along with Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 6 for the first time via Apple's N1 chip. The new Mac Studio also supports genlock over USB-C and can drive up to eight displays.
The M5 Ultra chip includes an up to 36-core CPU that contains 12 super cores and 24 performance cores. It delivers up to 1.25x higher single-threaded performance and up to 1.3x higher multithreaded performance than the M3 Ultra from the previous generation Mac Studio.
The M5 Ultra features a GPU with up to 80 cores, and a Neural Accelerator is built into each core, offering up to 4.5x the peak GPU compute for AI tasks compared to the M3 Ultra and more than 6x compared to the M1 Ultra. Apple says the GPU's latest shader core technology, paired with second-generation Dynamic Caching, hardware-accelerated mesh shading, and third-generation ray tracing, delivers up to 40% faster graphics performance than the M3 Ultra.
The chip also includes a more capable Media Engine, with dedicated hardware for H.264, HEVC, four ProRes encode and decode engines, and hardware-accelerated AV1 decode, along with a 32-core Neural Engine for on-device AI tasks.
The M5 Ultra is built by connecting two dual-die M5 Max chips using Apple's next-generation UltraFusion technology, which increases inter-die bandwidth to over 4.4TB/s and connection density by more than 6x, allowing the four dies to function as a single processor.
The new Mac Studio with the M5 Ultra supports up to 512GB of unified memory and up to 1.2TB/s of memory bandwidth, which is a 50% increase over M3 Ultra. Apple says the added memory and bandwidth allows users to store large datasets locally, increase tokens per second, and run large language models with hundreds of billions of parameters entirely on device.
Users can also cluster multiple Mac Studio systems together using built-in support for Thunderbolt 5 and RDMA (remote direct memory access), creating a shared memory pool across systems. Apple says a cluster of four Mac Studio systems delivers up to 3x faster AI inference than a single system.
The Mac Studio is also now available with the M5 Max chip, offering an 18-core CPU with 6 super cores and 12 performance cores, up to 40 GPU cores, up to 128GB of unified memory with up to 614GB/s of memory bandwidth, and up to 8TB of storage. Apple says the M5 Max delivers up to 3.9x faster AI performance than the previous generation.
The new Mac Studio will be released on September 22, but the model with 512GB of unified memory launches in late October. It is available for pre-order now.
Apple today announced the M5 Ultra, which the company says is its most powerful chip ever.
The M5 Ultra is built by connecting two dual-die M5 Max chips using Apple's next-generation UltraFusion technology, which is the first time Apple has used a quad-die architecture in an M-series chip. UltraFusion increases inter-die bandwidth to over 4.4TB/s and connection density by more than 6x, allowing the four dies to function as a single processor.
The chip includes an CPU with up to 36 cores, containing 12 super cores and 24 performance cores, delivering up to 1.25x higher single-threaded performance and up to 1.3x higher multithreaded performance than the M3 Ultra.
Its GPU scales up to 80 cores, with a Neural Accelerator built into each core for the first time on an Ultra chip. Apple says this delivers up to 4.3x the peak AI compute performance compared to the M3 Ultra, along with up to 1.8x faster graphics than the previous-generation chip.
The M5 Ultra also includes a 32-core Neural Engine and a more capable Media Engine, with twice the video encode and decode blocks as M5 Max, allowing users to simultaneously play up to 33 streams of 8K ProRes 422 at 30 fps.
The chip supports up to 512GB of unified memory and up to 1.2TB/s of memory bandwidth, a 50% increase over M3 Ultra. Apple says the added memory and bandwidth let users store large datasets locally, increase tokens per second, and run large language models with hundreds of billions of parameters entirely on device.
The M5 Ultra is exclusively available in the new Mac Studio, which is available for pre-order today, with availability beginning on September 22. Configurations with 512GB of memory launch in late October.
Apple today announced the next-generation Mac mini, which can be configured with an all-new M6 chip or the M5 Pro chip released earlier this year.
The M6 chip is equipped with a 12-core CPU and a 12-core GPU, up from a 10-core CPU and 10-core GPU in the M5 chip. In addition, the M6 chip features the first-ever dual Neural Engine with two 16-core engines, up from one in previous chips. The M6 chip has up to 170GB/s memory bandwidth, up from 153GB/s for the M5 chip.
Apple said the Mac mini with the M6 chip delivers up to 40% faster CPU performance, up to 4× faster performance for AI tasks in particular, up to 2× faster graphics performance, and up to 2× faster storage speeds compared to the previous-generation model with the 10-core M4 chip, 32GB of unified memory, and 2TB of storage.
There are two M5 Pro configurations available, including one with a 15-core CPU and a 16-core GPU, and another with an 18-core CPU and a 20-core GPU. Both of these models are equipped with a single 16-core Neural Engine for AI tasks.
For both the M6 and M5 Pro configurations, Apple said the Mac mini now includes Neural Accelerators in each GPU core for the first time.
Apple silicon continues to deliver industry-leading performance-per-watt, and Apple said the M6 chip has the world's fastest CPU core. Apple touted the Mac mini as the "leading" desktop for "always-on, deskside agentic computing."
Apple's press release provides many specific performance comparisons involving apps such as Affinity, Blender, LM Studio, and Photoshop.
Mac mini models with the M6 chip can be configured with up to a 2TB SSD and 32GB of RAM, while models with the M5 Pro go up to an 8TB SSD and 64GB of RAM.
All of the new Mac mini models support Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 6, up from Wi-Fi 6E and Bluetooth 5.3 on the previous 2024 models. The new models have the same overall design as the previous models and continue to come in silver only.
All models still have two front USB-C ports, a front headphone jack, three rear Thunderbolt ports, a rear HDMI port, and a rear Ethernet port that is now a 2.5 Gigabit port by default, up from 1 Gigabit. A 10-Gigabit Ethernet upgrade option remains available. M6 models have Thunderbolt 4 ports and M5 Pro models have Thunderbolt 5 ports.
All models continue to natively support up to three external displays.
The new Mac mini is available to pre-order starting today, and it will begin arriving to customers and launch in stores on Tuesday, September 22. In the U.S., the M6 model starts at $899, while the M5 Pro model starts at $1,699.
In the U.S., the previous Mac mini initially started at $599 with 256GB of storage and 16GB of RAM, but that configuration eventually rose to $799 alongside price increases to all other Macs and iPads in June. The equivalent configuration with the M6 chip starts at $899, so the Mac mini is now even more expensive.
Apple today announced the M6 chip, its first built using a 2-nanometer process and featuring a Dual 16-core Neural Engine.
Apple says the 2nm process packs greater transistor density into a smaller die, contributing to the chip's overall gains in performance and power efficiency.
The M6 chip features a larger, more powerful 12-core CPU, two more cores than the M5, made up of two super cores, four performance cores, and six efficiency cores. Apple says the chip delivers the world's fastest single-threaded performance and up to 1.2x faster multithreaded performance than the M5, and up to 2.4x faster than the M1.
The chip also features a 12-core GPU, with two more cores than the M5, with a Neural Accelerator built into each core. Apple says this delivers nearly a 30% increase in peak GPU compute for AI compared to the M5, and more than 8x compared to the M1, resulting in faster prompt processing for on-device LLMs.
The GPU also gains updates to the shader core architecture, Dynamic Caching, and hardware-accelerated ray tracing, along with a 50% increase in geometry rates for more complex graphics.
The M6 introduces a Dual 16-core Neural Engine, offering up to 2x the peak compute of previous generations. Apple says system frameworks can automatically use both engines at once, allowing applications to run AI models faster.
The chip supports up to 32GB of unified memory and up to 170GB/s of unified memory bandwidth, which is a 10% increase over M5 and 2.5x more than the M1.
The M6 debuts in the new Mac mini, which launches on Tuesday, September 22.
Apple's new Apple Watch models will feature upgrades to fitness tracking, according to Bloomberg's Mark Gurman, who otherwise characterized this year's changes to the lineup as "minor."
Gurman said much the same in July, pointing to faster performance and better health and fitness tracking in the absence of any design overhaul.
Reports and rumors suggest the next high-end MacBook Pro that Apple will release might not be a MacBook Pro at all. It could actually be something altogether new and more exciting – a "MacBook Ultra" – marketed as the company's top-tier laptop offering. The device is likely to sit above the current M5 Pro and M5 Max MacBook Pros, rather than replace them, suggesting that they will remain on sale.
One thing to state up front is that Apple is expected to stick with the existing M5 Pro and M5 Max chips for its touchscreen "Ultra" model. Apple reportedly plans to skip what would have been the "M6 Pro" and "M6 Max" for more powerful "M7 Pro" and "M7 Max" chips. A new entry-level MacBook Pro with the M6 chip is still expected to launch later this year, while the second-generation MacBook Ultra will adopt M7 chip architecture when it arrives later in 2027.
In his latest report, Bloomberg's Mark Gurman does not specify a release date for the first MacBook Ultra models, but the wording of his summary of upcoming Macs implies that it could still arrive between October and December this year, barring delays due to the global memory chip shortage.
Below, we've listed the features and changes we are expecting for the MacBook Ultra.
OLED Display
Bloomberg's Mark Gurman and analyst Ming-Chi Kuo say Apple is readying OLED technology for these models, and industry reports corroborate their claims. Samsung Display is said to be making the panels exclusively, and the supplier has invested heavily in an 8.6-generation OLED production line in South Korea. The line reached a key milestone for mass production in May.
OLED presents an overall upgrade over the current mini-LED display technology, bringing deeper colors and a higher contrast ratio with true blacks. In an OLED display, individual pixels turn off instead of dimming when not activated, so there's less light leakage and better power efficiency. OLED displays also tend to have better HDR ouptut than mini-LED, but they don't always match mini-LED brightness levels.
Touchscreen
The new MacBook Pro is expected to become the first Mac to support touch input directly on the display. It's a notable shift from Apple's longstanding position against bringing touchscreen functionality to the Mac.
Apple previously experimented with touch controls through the OLED Touch Bar on earlier MacBook Pro models, but the feature was ultimately discontinued following a lukewarm reception. Rather than positioning the MacBook Pro as a touch-centric device like the iPad, Apple is reportedly planning to let users move seamlessly between touch and traditional trackpad or mouse input across the system.
There are features in macOS Golden Gate that hint at a future touchscreen Mac. Apple added direct touch input to Sidecar so users can tap and interact with macOS elements when using the iPad as a Mac display. macOS Golden Gate also supports an iPhone-style pull-to-refresh option, and it can be used across apps like Safari, Mail, News, Podcasts, and Calendar. A pull-to-refresh option makes the most sense on a touch display.
Reinforced Hinge
Apple has reportedly developed a reinforced hinge and screen hardware to prevent the display from bouncing back or moving when touched. Apple is apparently aware of the same issue that plagues existing touch PCs.
Thinner Design
Gurman has reported that Apple is working to make the OLED MacBook Pro significantly thinner, as part of the company's plan to create "the thinnest and lightest products in their categories across the whole tech industry." (Think the latest iPad Pro and iPad Air – two of the thinnest devices the company has ever made.) Indeed, the reporter has said there's a good chance that the next MacBook Pro model will represent a "true overhaul" for the laptop, thanks to the combination of the OLED display and thinner design.
Notably, the MacBook Pro got thicker and heavier with its most recent redesign in 2021. A major highlight was the reintroduction of several ports that were removed in previous iterations in favor of chassis thinness. How Apple will make its redesigned MacBook Pro thinner without removing the functionality it reintroduced fairly recently is the big question.
Dynamic Island
The MacBook Ultra could ditch the current notch used in the MacBook Pro models for a display cutout potentially similar to the iPhone's Dynamic Island, according to Bloomberg. Such a move would mirror Apple's iPhone evolution, since the iPhone's notch became the current Dynamic Island starting with the iPhone 14 Pro models in 2022.
As with the iPhone, the Mac Dynamic Island will be interactive and it will contextually expand based on the app or Mac feature in use. The change should address long-standing user complaints about the notch, which physically ingresses into the macOS menu bar.
Price Changes
There is no doubt that Apple will unveil the MacBook Ultra as an ultra-premium product carrying a price tag that is higher than the current MacBook Pro 14-inch and 16-inch models. Apple increased the prices of all its Macs in June 2026 – MacBook Pro pricing went up $300 – so the MacBook Ultra will likely be even more expensive than expected.
For what it's worth, the higher-end 14-inch MacBook Pro with M5 Pro chip starts at $2,499 after the price increase, while the 16-inch M5 Pro MacBook Pro starts at $2,999.
Ahead of the announcement of the iPhone 18 Pro, iPhone 18 Pro Max, and first foldable iPhone next month, a new study from trade-in comparison site SellCell finds that most iPhones lose a considerable amount of trade-in value in the 10-day window between Apple's announcement and the actual product launch.
Looking at the launch of the iPhone 15, iPhone 16, and iPhone 17 lineups, SellCell found that trade-in values dropped for 117 of 156 models tracked, or 75% of the total, between announcement day and release day. That window saw the steepest declines for the iPhone 17 lineup last year, with 50 of 54 iPhone models (92.6%) losing value, with an average drop of $36.46 per device.
The largest individual declines came from older models still on the trade-in market at the time. The iPhone 16 Plus 512GB fell from $695 to $566, a $129 drop and the largest loss in the dataset. The iPhone 15 Plus 128GB saw the steepest percentage decline, falling from $440 to $351, a loss of 20.2%.
SellCell paired the pricing data with a survey of 2,000 U.S. iPhone users. 61.4% of respondents said they plan to keep their current iPhone until a replacement is in hand and set up, rather than trading it in around the announcement. The most common reasons cited were needing the phone for continued use and needing to transfer data, which together accounted for 77.4% of responses.
Apple is planning to release a new iPad mini model with an OLED display "by the end of October" this year, according to Bloomberg's Mark Gurman.
Apple already updated the iPad Pro with an OLED display in May 2024, but the iPad mini, iPad Air, and entry-level iPad are all still equipped with LCD screens. The move to OLED technology would result in the next iPad mini offering improved image quality, thanks to richer colors and higher contrast ratio with true blacks.
Given that OLED displays are generally more expensive than LCDs, the next iPad mini could have a higher starting price compared to the current model.
Apple is planning to announce two new AirPods 5 models as early as Wednesday, September 9, according to Bloomberg's Mark Gurman. Like the AirPods 4, the AirPods 5 will be available with and without active noise cancellation, he said.
AirPods 5 references were already discovered in macOS 26.7 Release Candidate code last week, and the report said they could be unveiled at this year's iPhone event. There is no word on how the AirPods 5 will differ from the AirPods 4, which launched in September 2024. In the U.S., AirPods 4 are priced at $129 to $179.
Apple has tested versions of the Mac mini with both M5 and M6 chips, according to Gurman, but it remains unclear which generation of chips Apple ultimately plans to use in the next model. Currently, the Mac mini can be configured with a standard M4 chip or a higher-end M4 Pro chip, 16GB to 48GB of RAM, and up to 8TB of storage.
At the start of May, Apple stopped offering the Mac mini with 256GB of storage for $599, resulting in a 512GB model for $799 becoming the lowest-priced configuration available. Then, in late June, Apple reintroduced the 256GB configuration for $799 after raising prices on all Macs and iPads, the Apple TV, HomePods, and the Vision Pro.
Due to the rising popularity of the Mac mini for on-device AI models, combined with the ongoing memory chip shortage, the Mac mini has been facing extended delivery estimates over the past few months. Currently, the Mac mini has a 4-10 week delivery estimate on Apple's online store in the U.S. depending on the configuration.
In February, Apple announced that Foxconn would begin assembling some Mac mini units at a factory in Houston, Texas later this year. The facility opened this month, with Cook joining U.S. government officials to celebrate the grand opening. So, perhaps Apple's announcement for the new Mac mini will emphasize U.S. assembly.
Apple plans to send out invites for its annual iPhone event this week, according to Bloomberg's Mark Gurman. The event will likely take place on Wednesday, September 9, he said.
iOS 27, iPadOS 27, and macOS Golden Gate include Siri AI, Apple's much more capable version of Siri. When the new updates launch, it appears Apple will use a waitlist and limit initial access.
On the MacRumors forums, Mactracker found that the seventh betas of iOS 27, iPadOS 27, and macOS Golden Gate include waitlist infrastructure.
Apple will use dynamic wait time messages once a user joins the Siri AI waitlist. It looks like Apple will give a clear estimate of the wait, and the company will be able to adjust the wait time readouts server-side based on demand and capacity. Apple will send a notification when Siri AI can be used.
Siri AI had a waitlist during the beta testing period. It took up to a week for some people to get access, but there's no indication yet of how long people might have to wait after the public launch in September.
Apple today released the fifth public betas of iOS 27, iPadOS 27, tvOS 27, and macOS Golden Gate, allowing anyone with a compatible device to download and test the new software. The fifth betas come a week after Apple seeded the fourth betas and a few hours after the seventh developer betas.
You can get started by signing up on Apple's beta website and then opting in to the public beta by opening up the Settings app on your device, selecting General, and choosing Software Update.
We are nearing the end of the beta testing process, and no notable new features were found in today's developer betas.
Apple's first foldable iPhone, with a book-style design featuring a ~5.5-inch outer display and a ~7.8-inch inner display with a minimal crease down the middle.
Apple's new Apple Watch models will feature upgrades to fitness tracking, according to Bloomberg's 
