Apple puts its first 2nm M6 chips into the MacBook Pro and iMac

Apple has refreshed two of its mainstream Macs with the M6, the company's first processor built on a 2nm process. According to The Verge, the entry-level MacBook Pro and the iMac both picked up the new chip in announcements on October 27, days before Apple's "Pro and Tell" event scheduled for Wednesday.

The M6 at a glance

The M6 originally arrived in August as part of Apple's updates to the Mac Mini. In the MacBook Pro, The Verge reports that the chip pairs a 12-core CPU — up from 10 cores in the M5 — with a 12-core GPU that includes a Neural Accelerator in each core. Apple claims the M6 delivers up to 1.2x faster multithreaded performance than its predecessor while also being more power efficient.

The headline feature for many technical users will be the dual 16-core Neural Engine, which Apple positions as the hardware for demanding on-device AI tasks.

MacBook Pro gets a processor-led refresh

The entry-level MacBook Pro received an M5 update only a year ago, and that refresh was notably conservative: identical design, port layout, webcam and speakers, with faster storage and a new 4TB capacity option for an extra $1,200 as the main changes alongside the chip. The M6 model follows the same pattern, with the processor as the clear headline upgrade. The Verge's report was still developing at publication time, so details such as pricing and availability for the new MacBook Pro had not yet been announced.

The iMac skips a generation

The iMac's situation is different. According to The Verge, this is the first iMac refresh since the colorful M4 redesign two years ago — the all-in-one skipped the M5 generation entirely, which should make the move to M6 a more meaningful jump than a typical annual spec bump.

The M4 iMac started with an 8-core CPU, while the new M6 configurations begin with a 10-core CPU and a 10-core GPU. Pricing starts at $1,499, and the design is otherwise largely unchanged.

The two reports describe the M6 differently depending on the machine: a 12-core CPU in the MacBook Pro, but configurations starting at 10 cores in the iMac. The Verge does not clarify whether these represent separate tiers of the same chip family.

More announcements expected this week

Both refreshes land just before Apple's "Pro and Tell" event on Wednesday, suggesting the company is clearing its consumer-facing Mac lineup before turning attention to pro-oriented hardware. Given the name, further chip and machine announcements appear likely.

Why it matters

The M6 is Apple's first 2nm silicon, and the spec sheet shows where the transistor budget is going: the dual Neural Engine and per-core GPU Neural Accelerators indicate that on-device AI is the organizing principle of this generation, not just raw CPU throughput. For developers running local models or building machine-learning features into Mac apps, that hardware commitment matters more than the 1.2x multithreaded gain. The iMac skipping the M5 also means desktop-first teams are jumping two chip generations in a single purchase cycle, making this refresh more compelling than the MacBook Pro's incremental yearly cadence.