Apple's Mac mini is now officially an AI agent machine
Apple's Mac mini is now officially an AI agent machine. The new Mac mini comes in M6 and M5 Pro versions, with China pricing starting at 6,999 yuan and 12,999 yuan respectively. Apple is positioning it as a desktop that can run agents 24/7, and the press release literally puts "always-on agentic computing" in the headline.
The M6 is Apple's first 2nm M-series chip, with a 12-core CPU and 12-core GPU. For the first time, each GPU core gets a neural accelerator. AI performance is up to 4x that of the M4. Memory still starts at 16GB, tops out at 32GB, and bandwidth is up to 170GB/s. Apple says prompt processing in LM Studio is up to 4.8x faster than the M4.
The pricier M5 Pro supports up to 64GB of unified memory and 307GB/s of bandwidth, and Apple directly says it's suited for running AI agents long term. Both models add Wi-Fi 7, Bluetooth 6, and a 2.5Gb Ethernet port, and go on sale September 22.
Pricing, meanwhile, is never going back. The M4 Mac mini launched at 4,499 yuan in 2024, rose to 5,999 yuan this year, and the new model starts at 6,999 yuan.