Apple launches upgraded M6 Mac mini and M5 Ultra Mac Studio with AI focus, but price hikes spark debate

AAPL began delivering its new desktop lineup on Tuesday, September 22: a Mac mini with M6 and M5 Pro options and a Mac Studio with M5 Max and M5 Ultra chips, all pitched on running AI models locally. The M6 Mac mini starts at $899 with 16GB of memory and 256GB of storage, and the M5 Pro version starts at $1,699. The M5 Ultra Mac Studio starts at $5,499, and the 512GB memory configuration will not ship until late October.

Reviewers largely agree the performance is real. 9to5Mac measured the M6 at 24% ahead of the M4 in single-core and 48% ahead in multi-core CPU performance, with GPU performance 71% higher, and called it "still an easy Mac to recommend" in an otherwise unchanged 5-by-5-inch chassis. Engadget noted the M5 Ultra can run large language models with hundreds of billions of parameters entirely on device.

The friction is price. The base Mac mini is up $300 from the $599 M4 model, a change Apple attributes to the ongoing memory chip shortage. At the high end, Engadget calculated that a Mac Studio with 256GB of memory now costs $11,299, $3,800 more than the equivalent M3 Ultra configuration at $7,499, and quoted Apple: "We've never seen component prices increase this much, this quickly". Ars Technica's review put it bluntly, calling the M4 mini one of Apple's best values ever and the M6 "not so much."

For investors, the launch is a live read on how much of the memory cost surge Apple can pass through without denting Mac unit volumes. Watch Mac revenue and gross margin commentary on the next earnings call, and whether memory prices ease before the holiday quarter.