The most surprising number in Apple's M6 Mac announcement wasn't a benchmark. It was the price — because it didn't move. The new 14-inch MacBook Pro still starts at $1,999 and the M6 iMac at $1,499, the same as their predecessors, according to 9to5Mac. In a year when Apple has raised the price of nearly everything else it sells, holding the line counts as news.
This is the second wave of increases the M6 Macs just sidestepped. The first came in June, when Apple hiked prices across much of its lineup: the iMac went from $1,299 to $1,499, the 14-inch MacBook Pro from $1,699 to $1,999, and the HomePod mini, Apple TV 4K, and iPad mini all went up too. The second wave arrived with the new models themselves. The second-generation HomePod mini, which cost $99 before June and $129 after, now starts at $149. The new Apple TV 4K starts at $299, up from $129 before June and $199 after — albeit with double the storage. The OLED iPad mini announced Monday starts at $699, against $499 before June and $599 after. Even the iPhone got pulled in: the iPhone 18 Pro and Pro Max launched in September at $1,199 and $1,299, up $100, and Apple added $100 to the older iPhone 17, iPhone Air, and iPhone 17e still in the lineup.
Against that backdrop, the M6 machines look almost generous. iMac buyers get more for the same money — the base model now ships with a 10-core CPU and 10-core GPU, up from 8 cores each in the M4 version — and both machines gain the M6's dual Neural Engine and per-core AI accelerators. The catch, as ever, is in the fine print: the base 16GB MacBook Pro still doesn't get the faster 170GB/s memory bandwidth, only the 24GB and 32GB configurations do.
Don't get used to the reprieve. Today's "Pro and tell" event in Los Angeles is expected to unveil the first touchscreen MacBook Pro, and Bloomberg has reported a $2,899 starting price for the 14-inch model, with the 16-inch possibly at $3,399 or more. Pre-orders for five products — the OLED iPad mini, M6 iMac, M6 MacBook Pro, and both touchscreen models — open today at 1:10pm ET, per MacRumors.
The pattern is now clear enough to state plainly: Apple raises prices when it has a new thing to sell, and holds them when it doesn't. The M6 Macs are spec bumps in familiar shells, so they kept familiar prices. The touchscreen MacBook Pro is the genuinely new thing — and it will almost certainly carry a genuinely new price. The question for buyers isn't whether Apple will keep raising prices. It's whether the next machine is new enough to justify it.
— via 9to5Mac