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Apple Puts New Mac mini and Mac Studio Lineup on Sale With M6, M5 Pro, M5 Max and M5 Ultra Chips

September 23, 2026 at 03:23 EDT

Infra & Chips
AI Agents
Software Dev & Coding

Apple's latest desktop Macs went on sale September 22, bringing the M6 and M5 Pro to Mac mini and M5 Max and M5 Ultra to Mac Studio as the company leans harder into local AI. The lineup spans from a $899 Mac mini to a $5,499 Mac Studio and is aimed at developers, creators and AI researchers who want to run more inference, coding-agent, image-generation and model workloads on the machine itself.

September 22, 2026 · Apple

Apple's desktop AI push arrives

Mac mini with M6 and M5 Pro and Mac Studio with M5 Max and M5 Ultra are now on sale, shifting more LLM, creative and coding-agent workloads onto local hardware.

$899

Mac mini with M6 starts

$5,499

Mac Studio with M5 Ultra starts

512GB

Top unified memory option

1.2TB/s

M5 Ultra memory bandwidth

LLM prompt processing jumps on Mac Studio

Apple rates M5 Ultra at 4x the LM Studio prompt-processing performance of M3 Ultra.

1xM3 Ultra

4xM5 Ultra

Takeaway: the largest Mac Studio is being positioned as a local inference machine for large models, not just a video and 3D workstation.

Local AI path

Local model

Runs on the Mac

→

Unified memory

Keeps data close

→

Neural Accelerators

Speed model work

Why it lands

More memory for local LLMs and creative AI
Thunderbolt 5 clustering for shared compute
Compact desktops for always-on agent work

What holds buyers back

Higher entry prices
Memory must be chosen at purchase
512GB Mac Studio configurations arrive later

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