Apple announced updated Mac mini and Mac Studio desktop computers on Tuesday, pairing new silicon with higher price tags across both lineups. The Mac mini now starts at $899 — up from $599 over recent months — while the Mac Studio begins at $2,499. Both machines are available to preorder today and will hit stores on September 22, shipping with macOS 27 Golden Gate, which will roll out to other Mac users this fall. Shares of AAPL slipped 0.34% on the day, trading around $309.30.

Mac mini: M6 or M5 Pro, Starting at $899

The Mac mini starts at $899, up from the $799 price set in May, and can be configured with either the new M6 chip or an M5 Pro processor.

Wall St Engine summarized the launch on X:

$AAPL LAUNCHES NEW MAC MINI WITH M6 AND M5 PRO

Apple unveiled a new Mac mini lineup, with preorders starting today and availability beginning Sept. 22.

M6 Mac mini: • Starts at $899 • 12-core CPU / 12-core GPU • Up to 40% faster CPU performance vs. M4 • Up to 4x faster AI… pic.twitter.com/xJSCqz14Bg

— Wall St Engine (@wallstengine), August 25, 2026 (post)

M6: Apple's First 2-Nanometer Chip

The M6 is Apple's first chip built on a 2-nanometer process. Shrinking transistors remains the semiconductor industry's core lever for delivering more performance per watt, and Apple has moved its custom silicon to each new leading-edge node in recent generations — the M1 shipped on 5nm in 2020 and the M3 family moved to 3nm in 2023 — so the M6's headline gains reflect a full node transition rather than a mid-cycle refresh. It packs a 12-core CPU, a 12-core GPU, and a Dual 16-core Neural Engine, delivering up to 40% faster CPU performance versus the M4 and up to 4x faster AI performance, according to the launch announcement. Memory bandwidth comes in at 170 gigabytes per second, a 10% improvement over the M5.

“Built using the cutting-edge 2nm process, M6 combines a new CPU complex, two additional CPU and GPU cores, a Dual 16-core Neural Engine, and more unified memory bandwidth,” said Sri Santhanam, Apple's VP of Silicon Engineering.

The standard Mac mini with M6 includes 16GB of unified memory, while the M5 Pro version can be configured with up to 64GB.

Mac Studio Goes Big on Pro Power

The Mac Studio is aimed squarely at professional users who need serious horsepower. It starts at $2,499 with the M5 Max chip and goes up to $5,499 for the M5 Ultra model. A fully loaded Mac Studio with the M5 Ultra tops out at $18,299.

The M5 Ultra configuration offers up to a 36-core CPU and an 80-core GPU, with a ceiling of 512GB of unified memory — a spec that matters for workloads where CPU and GPU draw on the same memory pool, such as running large models locally. The chip uses a quad-die architecture, connecting two dual-die M5 Max chips via Apple's UltraFusion technology. It delivers 1.2 terabytes per second of memory bandwidth, 50% more than the M3 Ultra.

Both machines include Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 6. The Mac mini keeps the compact form factor introduced with the M4 models back in 2024.

Price Hikes Tied to Supply Squeeze

The Mac mini's climb from $599 to $899 did not happen overnight. Apple pulled the $599 base model in May, bumping the floor to $799, and the entry price has now risen again to $899. The increases have been linked to memory chip supply constraints tied to AI demand — a squeeze reflected industry-wide, where AI datacenter buildouts have driven up demand for memory chips and tightened supply for computer makers broadly.

Tim Cook, who is stepping down as CEO at the end of this month, noted during Apple's Q2 earnings call that demand for the Mac mini and Mac Studio has outpaced supply — remarks made in the final weeks of his tenure. He pointed to advanced chip node availability, not memory, as the bottleneck.

“I think on the Mac Mini and the Mac Studio, I believe it will take several months to reach supply-demand balance,” Cook said.

The Mac mini has found a particularly strong audience among developers running AI agents locally, with OpenClaw cited as a popular use case — a customer base that lines up with the M6's “up to 4x faster AI performance” claim. Apple also confirmed plans to begin manufacturing the Mac mini in the U.S. later this year, leaving two concrete markers for the months ahead: whether supply catches up with demand on the timeline Cook outlined, and whether U.S. Mac mini production begins as scheduled.