Apple has announced a new 14-inch MacBook Pro with the M6 chip, a day before its Pro and tell event. It starts at £1,999 in the UK, $1,999 in the US and €2,299 in Germany, pre-orders open on Wednesday 28 October in 35 countries and regions, and it arrives on Friday 6 November, according to Apple’s press release.
This is the entry-level 14-inch model with the standard M6 chip. Apple has not announced M6 Pro or M6 Max versions, and nothing in the release mentions a touch screen or an OLED display. Those could still come at the event on 28 October.
What M6 brings
M6 has a 12-core CPU and a 12-core GPU, two more cores each than M5. Apple claims up to 30 per cent faster graphics and up to 25 per cent faster AI workloads than the M5 model, and says its new Dual 16-core Neural Engine is up to 1.9 times faster than the one in M5. Each GPU core also has Neural Accelerators for on-device AI work.
Memory starts at 16GB and can be configured up to 32GB, with memory bandwidth of up to 170GB/s. Apple quotes battery life of up to 24 hours, which it calls the longest ever in a Mac.
Display, ports and charging
The Liquid Retina XDR display reaches up to 1,600 nits of peak HDR brightness, and a nano-texture glass option is available. The laptop now has Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 6 and supports up to two external displays. Its ports are three Thunderbolt 4 ports, HDMI, MagSafe 3, an SDXC card slot and a headphone jack.
Apple says the laptop can charge to 50 per cent in 30 minutes with a higher-wattage USB-C adapter such as its 96W Power Adapter. It ships with macOS 27, including Siri AI. Unlike on iPhone and iPad, Siri AI is available on the Mac in the EU, although it still needs one of its six supported languages.
“With the powerful M6 chip, we’re taking performance to the next level, with a boost in CPU speed and graphics and even more powerful capabilities for on-device AI,” said Shelly Goldberg, Apple’s vice president of Hardware Engineering.
Prices and availability
In the UK, the 14-inch MacBook Pro with M6 starts at £1,999 including VAT, or £1,899 with education savings, according to Apple’s UK newsroom. In the US it starts at $1,999 before sales tax, or $1,899 with education pricing. In Germany it starts at €2,299 including VAT, or €2,179 for education, according to Apple’s German newsroom, and in Ireland it starts at €2,349, or €2,229 for education, according to Apple’s Irish newsroom.
Pre-orders open on Wednesday 28 October on apple.com and in the Apple Store app in 35 countries and regions. Deliveries and in-store availability start on Friday 6 November.
Why it matters
Launching the base MacBook Pro by press release, a day before an event called Pro and tell, suggests Apple is keeping the stage for something bigger. Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman has reported that Apple plans a touch-screen MacBook Pro. That remains unconfirmed until Apple announces it.