Apple takes powerful M6 chip to the MacBook Pro, iMac

If you were waiting to upgrade your Mac until you could get one with the latest CPU, the wait is over. Apple’s 6th-gen M-series processors are finally trickling down to its 14-inch MacBook Pro and iMac family early next month.

Available in either “space black” or silver, Apple’s base-model MacBook Pro is largely unchanged from last gen. This is a mid-cycle refresh and so most of the improvements are under the hood. It sports the same high-res mini-LED display, chiclet keyboard, and port selection as its predecessor.

Most of the improvements come from the silicon itself. Announced alongside a refreshed Mac mini in August, and fabbed on TSMC’s 2nm process tech, the M6 features a refreshed CPU with 12 CPU and 12 GPU cores, and is now complemented by a dual 16-core Neural Engine (what Apple calls its NPUs) which promises better performance for the slew of Apple Intelligence features now baked into macOS Golden Gate.

The M6 MacBook Pro …