The MacRumors Show
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PodcastThe MacRumors Show
Publisher/creatorThe MacRumors Show
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About this episode
It's been an unusually big week for Apple announcements. On this week's episode of The MacRumors Show, we discuss the new Mac mini and Mac Studio, the M6 and M5 Ultra chips, and invites to Apple's September event.
Apple confirmed on Wednesday that its annual iPhone event will take place on Wednesday 9 September at Apple Park, starting at 10:00 a.m. Pacific Time, with select members of the media invited to attend. The event's tagline is "Surprise and Shine." Apple is expected to introduce at least six new products, including the the Apple Watch Series 12, Apple Watch Ultra 4, iPhone 18 Pro, iPhone 18 Pro Max, and the first foldable iPhone. Pre-orders should follow shortly after, and release dates for iOS 27, iPadOS 27 and macOS 27 Golden Gate should also be revealed at the event.
Apple announced the new Mac mini on Tuesday, offering M6 and M5 Pro chip options. The machine gains an N1 networking chip, bringing Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 6, and moves to 2.5Gb Ethernet as standard, up from 1Gb, with a 10Gb option. Thunderbolt 5 is restricted to the M5 Pro model, which gets three Thunderbolt 5 ports while the M6 model keeps Thunderbolt 4. Genlock supportover USB-C is also new, syncing a display's refresh timing to a camera such as the iPhone 17 Pro. Pricing starts at $899 with 16GB and 256GB, rising to $1,699 for the M5 Pro at 24GB and 512GB. Pre-orders are now open, with launch on 22 September.
M6 is Apple's first 2nm chip. Its 12-core CPU is split into 2 super cores, 4 performance cores and 6 efficiency cores, making it the first Apple chip to combine all three core types in one design. Super cores are Apple's top tier, optimised for single-threaded speed. The 12-core GPU features a Neural Accelerator in each core for the first time in a Mac mini. The GPU also adds an updated shader architecture, Dynamic Caching, and hardware-accelerated ray tracing, while an all-new Dual 16-core Neural Engine doubles peak compute over the previous generation, with system frameworks able to drive both engines at once. Memory starts at 16GB and tops out at 32GB, running at up to 170GB/s. M5 Pro scales further, to an 18-core CPU, a 20-core GPU and up to 64GB at 307GB/s.
The new Mac Studio arrived alongside the Mac mini, with M5 Max and M5 Ultra chip options. The M5 Max offers an 18-core CPU with 6 super cores and 12 performance cores, an up-to-40-core GPU with Neural Accelerators in every core, and up to 128GB of memory at 614GB/s, with the GPU running up to 50% faster than the previous generation. Both configurations move to a next-generation SSD architecture on PCIe Gen 6 for up to twice the storage performance, and gain up to six Thunderbolt 5 ports at 120Gb/s, and the same genlock support as the Mac mini. Apple's N1 chip also brings Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 6 to the Mac Studio. Pricing starts at $2,499 for the M5 Max at 36GB and 512GB, and $5,499 for the M5 Ultra at 96GB and 1TB, with the 512GB memory option not arriving until late October.
M5 Ultra is Apple's first quad-die chip, using a next-generation version of UltraFusion to join two dual-die M5 Max chips into a single processor. The result is a CPU with up to 36 cores, and 12 super and 24 performance, delivering 1.25x the single-threaded and 1.3x the multithreaded performance of the M3 Ultra. Its up-to-80-core GPU is the most powerful Apple silicon GPU ever made and the first on an Ultra chip to feature Neural Accelerators. Second-generation Dynamic Caching, hardware-accelerated mesh shading and third-generation ray tracing lift graphics up to 40% over M3 Ultra, and the chip features a 32-core Neural Engine. Memory reaches 512GB at 1.2TB/s, which is a 50% bandwidth increase.
Other announcements this week included a new, softer Apple Polishing Cloth at $9, down from $19, and refreshed U.S. Magic Keyboards for the Mac, now featuring glyphs instead of edge text. Apple Support's 1-800-APL-CARE line is also now answered by a generative AI assistant in the U.S. and Canada.
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Episode summary
This AI-generated Shortcast summary may omit nuance. Use the original episode when context or exact wording matters.
Welcome back to The MacRumors Show. We actually have news, but first: Hartley House of Weather. England’s gone from hot to cooler, and everything has turned dried-out brown.
That is, frankly, the biggest news. It’s still hot, it’s cooling down, and everything outside looks rather parched.
Unlike the gross apples, we suddenly got an M6 Mac mini and M5 Ultra Mac Studio ahead of September. Then Apple sent event invites, so grab popcorn: what does the invite mean?
I’m cynical about invites because they can mean absolutely nothing. The blue sky could point to a sky-blue iPhone 18 Pro, and the lens flare to a variable-aperture camera, but that feels like a stretch.
I used to say artwork meant nothing, but I’m changing my tune a little. The China wording seemed suspiciously foldable—although Google Translate may simply have manufactured some news.
Chinese is complicated. The intended sense is closer to a new chapter occurring, not a book physically opening. Apple’s secrecy is so siloed that the graphic designer may genuinely know nothing.
Maybe, but somebody in marketing surely gave them direction. The likely lineup is iPhone 18 Pro, 18 Pro Max, the first foldable—probably iPhone Ultra—and Apple Watch Series 12 and Ultra 4. Other home products are possible.
The three phones and two watches feel most locked in. “One more thing” is for a new category, like Vision Pro or Apple Watch, not a routine refresh. Watches, Pro iPhones, then the Ultra would make perfect sense.
The line is “Surprise and Shine,” and regular humans may have no clue a foldable is coming. I’m ninety-nine point nine percent sure John Ternus does some version of “one more thing.” I’d put my kid’s future on the foldable.
I’d love a dedicated smart-home event: a hub, new Siri features, Apple TV, and HomePods give you actual life-improving demos. But Apple doesn’t always do what either of us thinks it should.
There’s a large smart-home pipeline: two hub formats, a doorbell, security camera, HomePods, and Apple TV. That is enough hardware for its own event, though it could still be a quick aside.
On Macs, I didn’t expect M6 this early. The base mini starts at $899, far from the old $599 era, and that jump is one of the biggest stories. Two terabytes alone costs $1,000.
M6 is Apple’s first two-nanometer generation, but more useful is its efficiency, performance, super cores, and two Neural Engines. For most buyers, get M6; M5 Pro is for people who know they need stronger multicore work or Thunderbolt 5. An M4 mini remains fantastic.
A maxed mini hits $6,799, which nearly made me throw up in my mouth. A maxed M5 Ultra Studio is $18,299. That’s a car. You can basically drive your Mac Studio.
The Ultra is effectively today’s Mac Pro: Hollywood-scale compute and up to 512GB of memory, but no PCIe expansion. Four chip pieces sounds dramatic, but it’s two two-piece Max chips joined together.
Best upgrade: Apple’s polishing cloth is softer, still full-size, and down from $19 to $9. I bought two because I lose them. One for each hand, apparently.
The revised Magic Keyboard mostly swaps U.S. written labels for glyphs other countries have had for ages. No practical change, so naturally this demands a fifteen-minute review and six-month follow-up.
It’s been a big week after months of not much. I’ll be at the Apple event, we’ll be back talking through it, and MacRumors has Hartley and the team’s buying advice. Catch everybody next week—oh my God.
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