THE CRUNCH
Apple has announced a new iMac built around its M6 chip, with pre-orders opening tomorrow, 28 October, from $1,499 and availability from Friday, 6 November. The desktop keeps the familiar 24-inch 4.5K Retina design in seven colours but gains a faster CPU and GPU, each core of which carries Neural Accelerators for AI work.
The M6 offers up to a 12-core CPU and 12-core GPU, two more cores of each than the M4, along with a Dual 16-core Neural Engine and memory bandwidth of up to 170GB/s. Apple claims up to 5x faster on-device AI performance than the M4 model, measured on prompt processing in LM Studio, and up to 2x faster graphics for tasks such as photo editing and gaming. For productivity, the company says the machine is up to 50 percent faster than the iMac M4 in applications like Microsoft Excel.
Connectivity is updated with Wi-Fi 7, Bluetooth 6 and optional 2.5 Gigabit Ethernet, and storage is up to 2x faster. Base models ship with 16GB of unified memory, with 24GB and 32GB options. The machine runs macOS 27 and the next generation of Apple Intelligence, including Siri AI, which is built into Spotlight and can act on whatever is on screen via a dedicated keyboard shortcut.
A few caveats are worth noting. Engadget points out that the display is unchanged from the previous model, and that the iMac supports Thunderbolt 4 rather than the faster Thunderbolt 5 connections found on the Mac Studio. Apple Intelligence is also not yet available in Europe, which limits the headline AI features for some buyers.