Apple announced new Mac mini and Mac Studio models with the M6 (first 2nm chip) and M5 Ultra, positioning them explicitly for local AI inference workloads. The refresh builds on momentum from macOS 26.2, which added Thunderbolt 5 support for distributed MLX-based AI inference, enabling users to daisy-chain multiple Macs to run larger models than a single device could handle.
Background
Apple's M-series chips with unified memory have become popular among AI hobbyists and researchers for running local LLMs, offering an alternative to NVIDIA GPU-based setups. MLX is Apple's open-source ML framework that leverages this architecture.
- Source
- Ars Technica
- Published
- Aug 25, 2026 at 09:00 PM
- Score
- 7.0 / 10