Apple M6 probably not as Pro, Max or Ultra

Apple appears to be taking measures to adapt its product development in light of the memory crisis. The Apple M6 processor, expected later this year, will reportedly not come in “Pro,” “Max,” or “Ultra” variants, according to a report from well-informed sources.

Apple M6 becomes a transitional model

If you believe the American journalist and Apple expert Mark Gurman, Apple wants to take a highly unusual step with the Apple M6, which debuts in the new MacBook Pro with a 14-inch display. For the first time there will be no variants with more power. Like Gurman at Bloomberg reports, Apple is foregoing the versions with significantly more performance or a higher number of cores for the M6, which have previously always been introduced with name suffixes such as “Pro”, “Max” and “Ultra”.

According to Gurman, citing his usually well-informed sources in the Apple environment, corresponding, higher spending can only be expected again with the successor Apple M7. According to the Bloomberg report, Apple wants to equip the M6 ​​with an increased memory bandwidth of around 200 GB/s and will also offer a graphics unit with up to 12 cores. In addition, there is supposedly an improved neural engine, with which tasks that need to be completed locally in the area of ​​artificial intelligence can be processed more quickly.

Apple is accelerating work on innovations for M7

However, Gurman does not cite the memory crisis as the reason for the decision to only offer the M6 ​​in its “basic versions”. Instead, Apple wants to use the time to move forward with work on major innovations for the Apple M7 and its more powerful versions more quickly in order to be able to introduce these improvements earlier than planned. The Apple M7 is supposed to arrive in the first half of 2027 and then offer up to 240 GB/s of storage bandwidth. Furthermore, there will probably be improvements in the processing of AI tasks at a local level, it goes on to say.

The more powerful variants Apple M7 Pro and Apple M7 Max will then be introduced later in 2027. The top version Apple M7 Ultra, however, is not scheduled to come onto the market until 2028. In the meantime, a new Apple Mac Studio is scheduled to appear in 2026, which will be equipped with the also new Apple M5 Ultra. The chip has already been tested with up to 768 gigabytes of RAM, but such amounts of RAM are likely to be anything but affordable for most customers in the ongoing memory crisis. Apple is therefore currently examining its options when it comes to the storage equipment of the Mac Studio with M5 Ultra.