Apple's M6 chip lands in 14-inch MacBook Pro and iMac

Apple has updated the base 14-inch MacBook Pro and the iMac with its latest M6 processor. The MacBook Pro moves on from the M5 chip launched in 2025, and the iMac, last refreshed in 2024 with the M4, now gets the same generation. The base 14-inch MacBook Pro features a 12-core CPU with a 2+4+6 layout and a 12-core GPU with Neural Accelerators in each core. Hardware accelerated ray tracing and a separate dual 16-core Neural Engine point to a clear focus on on-device AI and graphics workloads. The base configuration starts with 16GB of unified memory, configurable to 24GB or 32GB. For professionals in design, development and machine learning, the practical question is how these gains translate to real workflows.