M6 brings Thunderbolt 4, Thunderbolt 5 only with M5 Pro and Max

What was announced on 26 and 27 October

Apple showed the new iPad mini on 26 October and, a day later, the iMac with M6, the 14" MacBook Pro with M6 and the MacBook Pro PROLED XDR with touchscreen. Pre-orders opened on 28 October, deliveries start on Friday 6 November 2026.

The M6 has twelve CPU cores and twelve GPU cores with Neural Accelerators. Apple quotes up to 30 per cent more GPU performance than the M5 and up to 24 hours of battery life. According to Apple's specification sheet, the 14" MacBook Pro with M6 has three Thunderbolt 4 ports at 40 Gbit/s, plus HDMI, SDXC, MagSafe 3, Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 6. The base configuration starts at 16 GB of memory.

The new touch models use a tandem OLED panel with up to 2,000 nits, 10,000,000:1 contrast and Dynamic Island in place of the notch. The panels grow to 14.2 and 16.3 inches, the smaller machine weighs 1.38 kg. They carry three Thunderbolt 5 ports at up to 120 Gbit/s. The chip is still M5 Pro or M5 Max. Retailers quote Swiss entry prices of around CHF 2,800. A list price confirmed by Apple is not available to us.

Ports matter more than the chip generation

For agency fleets the familiar logic is reversed. Thunderbolt 5 carries three times the bandwidth of Thunderbolt 4. That matters with fast RAID arrays, with docks driving several displays and with 6K setups. Anyone running that kind of peripheral ends up on the machines with M5 Pro or M5 Max.

For layout, web, office work and video editing from an external SSD, the M6 with Thunderbolt 4 is a sound choice. The step up to the touch variant costs around CHF 900 and buys a better display, with the same processor generation underneath. The mini-LED models with M5 Pro and M5 Max from March 2026 stay on sale and are being discounted in places.

In mixed fleets this means docks and cables will behave differently depending on the machine. An inventory of the Thunderbolt 5 peripherals you already own is worth doing before the next order.

On the iMac, count the ports

The 24" iMac comes in two configurations. The entry model with 10 CPU and 10 GPU cores has two Thunderbolt ports. The 12 and 12 core version has four Thunderbolt 4 ports and can be ordered with 2.5 Gbit Ethernet. Both drive up to two external 6K displays. PCtipp puts the Swiss entry price at CHF 1,499.

Two ports are tight for a workstation with a dock and an external display. The surcharge for the larger configuration is therefore more a question of connectivity than of performance. Apple's claim of five times faster on-device AI compared with the M4 comes from its own testing, independent benchmarks are not yet available.

What this means for your next order

All new machines ship with macOS 27.2 from the factory. Downgrading this hardware to macOS 26 is not possible. Before a fleet order, check on a pilot machine whether MDM enrolment, Adobe workflows, RIP and print chains as well as local PHP and container environments run on 27.2.

Siri AI gained five further languages with macOS 27.2. German is not among them and, according to heise, will follow in 2027 at the earliest. For German-speaking teams, AI features are currently a weak argument for a hardware refresh.

• Sort the procurement list by port requirements first, then by chip

• Record the Thunderbolt 5 devices in your inventory, those workstations need M5 Pro or M5 Max

• On the iMac, choose the four-port configuration as soon as a dock or external display is planned

• Order 2.5 Gbit Ethernet only where the network supports it

• Compare discounted M5 Pro models against the new touch machines

• Check trade-in values before ordering, the Swiss figures move constantly