Uploaded September 2026 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago
Everyone’s missing this.
A day before announcing the iPhone event for September 9th, Apple announced something potentially far more exciting, but as they’re desktops and don’t look any different from last time, few people are talking about them. But what’s inside these diminutive aluminium boxes is anything but boring.
The M6 inside the Mac mini is the fastest single threaded chip on the planet according to Apple’s press release - and while we don’t quite know HOW fast, the previous top score page is dominated by the M5, specifically M5 Max, apart from the top score which is the very rare iPad Pro 11” with somehow a 4.4GHZ Pentium II or III, Geekbench isn’t quite sure.
The M6 won’t be a slouch in multi-core either, gaining 2 additional cores taking it up to a 12 core design, with a pair of Apple’s Super cores, 4 Performance cores and 6 efficiency cores. Apple suggests it’s around 2.4x the performance of M1, which is still what powers my desk setup. Perhaps we’re getting close to upgrade time there. But if you want to compare to M5, which never made it to the Mac mini, its 20% faster than that last generation chip too.
And I know, everyone will complain that Apple’s comparing it to a 6 year old chip, but honestly, the M1 is still very solid. I’ve finally started to notice a couple of times where the 8GB of unified memory is getting a little tight, but only in one app, Cura which is my 3D printer software, and I believe still runs under Rosetta 2.
The M6 is also built on a 2nm process, a first for Apple, and what is expected for the case for the A20 Pro that we’ll be seeing in the new iPhone too. As well as the faster and beefier CPU, the GPU has picked up two more cores too taking that up to 12 cores too, all with neural accelerators for AI and almost 30% faster for AI workflows than M5. Or, 8X the performance of M1. Which is WILD. What does it mean for gaming? Well, 2x faster gaming with ray tracing in Cyberpunk 2077 compared to the last Mac mini with M4.
There is of course the option of an M5 Pro in the Mac mini too, because according to Mark Gurman, M6 is the only chip in the M6 family. No M6 Pro, Max or Ultra on the way, and the M7 family may not be far away. But does that mean the M6 mini should be skipped? I don’t think so. But I may wait for it to be discounted on Amazon.
But then there’s also the Big boy, the M5 Ultra. Apple’s UltraFusion is back gluing chips together, and this time, the interconnect between the FOUR dies has 4.4 terabytes a second of bandwidth for the up to 36 CPU cores, and none of those are efficiency cores. 12 Super, and 24 Performance cores, which deliver 30% faster performance than the previous M3 Ultra. Now, assuming that is correct, that would put this chip at the number 2 position in Geekbench’s fastest ever chips, and almost exactly in line with a presumably overclocked AMD RYZEN Threadripper Pro 9995WX with 96 cores. Catchy name.
And yes, Apple is talking about AI again when it comes to the GPU, but hey, that’s why the studio and mini were in such short supply on the previous generations earlier this year. And dear god has Apple worked some magic here. M5 Ultra has 80 GPU cores all with Neural Accelerators, and its four and a half times faster than the M3 Ultra. That’s actually obscene.
Oh, and ram crisis be damned, you’ll be able to spec it once again with up to 512GB of unified memory, which other than costing around the same as an apartment, will of course, as it’s unified, all be accessible to the GPU for those LLMs, so lets be honest, they’ll be snapped up again, even with the price increases.
So yes, the new Pro and flappy iPhones will be announced next week, and that will be a lot of fun. The iPhones always get the headlines. But if you want to get real work done, even if they’re a bit more expensive than before, Apple’s desktop headless Macs are almost certainly still the most bang you can get for your buck in the computing world. They both go on sale on September 22nd, which is a Tuesday and likely just after the new iPhones land with everyone on September 18th. So the question is… is this the first time that it’s worth upgrading from an M1? For me… maybe.
Let me know your thoughts in the comments and tag any questions with #iCaveAnswers
Thanks to the patrons, thanks for watching, and I’ll see you in the next one.
Everyone’s missing this.
A day before announcing the iPhone event for September 9th, Apple announced something potentially far more exciting, but as they’re desktops and don’t look any different from last time, few people are talking about them. But what’s inside these diminutive aluminium boxes is anything but boring.
The M6 inside the Mac mini is the fastest single threaded chip on the planet according to Apple’s press release - and while we don’t quite know HOW fast, the previous top score page is dominated by the M5, specifically M5 Max, apart from the top score which is the very rare iPad Pro 11” with somehow a 4.4GHZ Pentium II or III, Geekbench isn’t quite sure.
The M6 won’t be a slouch in multi-core either, gaining 2 additional cores taking it up to a 12 core design, with a pair of Apple’s Super cores, 4 Performance cores and 6 efficiency cores. Apple suggests it’s around 2.4x the performance of M1, which is still what powers my desk setup. Perhaps we’re getting close to upgrade time there. But if you want to compare to M5, which never made it to the Mac mini, its 20% faster than that last generation chip too.
And I know, everyone will complain that Apple’s comparing it to a 6 year old chip, but honestly, the M1 is still very solid. I’ve finally started to notice a couple of times where the 8GB of unified memory is getting a little tight, but only in one app, Cura which is my 3D printer software, and I believe still runs under Rosetta 2.
The M6 is also built on a 2nm process, a first for Apple, and what is expected for the case for the A20 Pro that we’ll be seeing in the new iPhone too. As well as the faster and beefier CPU, the GPU has picked up two more cores too taking that up to 12 cores too, all with neural accelerators for AI and almost 30% faster for AI workflows than M5. Or, 8X the performance of M1. Which is WILD. What does it mean for gaming? Well, 2x faster gaming with ray tracing in Cyberpunk 2077 compared to the last Mac mini with M4.
There is of course the option of an M5 Pro in the Mac mini too, because according to Mark Gurman, M6 is the only chip in the M6 family. No M6 Pro, Max or Ultra on the way, and the M7 family may not be far away. But does that mean the M6 mini should be skipped? I don’t think so. But I may wait for it to be discounted on Amazon.
But then there’s also the Big boy, the M5 Ultra. Apple’s UltraFusion is back gluing chips together, and this time, the interconnect between the FOUR dies has 4.4 terabytes a second of bandwidth for the up to 36 CPU cores, and none of those are efficiency cores. 12 Super, and 24 Performance cores, which deliver 30% faster performance than the previous M3 Ultra. Now, assuming that is correct, that would put this chip at the number 2 position in Geekbench’s fastest ever chips, and almost exactly in line with a presumably overclocked AMD RYZEN Threadripper Pro 9995WX with 96 cores. Catchy name.
And yes, Apple is talking about AI again when it comes to the GPU, but hey, that’s why the studio and mini were in such short supply on the previous generations earlier this year. And dear god has Apple worked some magic here. M5 Ultra has 80 GPU cores all with Neural Accelerators, and its four and a half times faster than the M3 Ultra. That’s actually obscene.
Oh, and ram crisis be damned, you’ll be able to spec it once again with up to 512GB of unified memory, which other than costing around the same as an apartment, will of course, as it’s unified, all be accessible to the GPU for those LLMs, so lets be honest, they’ll be snapped up again, even with the price increases.
So yes, the new Pro and flappy iPhones will be announced next week, and that will be a lot of fun. The iPhones always get the headlines. But if you want to get real work done, even if they’re a bit more expensive than before, Apple’s desktop headless Macs are almost certainly still the most bang you can get for your buck in the computing world. They both go on sale on September 22nd, which is a Tuesday and likely just after the new iPhones land with everyone on September 18th. So the question is… is this the first time that it’s worth upgrading from an M1? For me… maybe.
Let me know your thoughts in the comments and tag any questions with #iCaveAnswers
Thanks to the patrons, thanks for watching, and I’ll see you in the next one.
