Apple M6 iMac, M6 MacBook Pro and OLED iPad mini 8: What Changed
A seven-colour iMac lineup, a MacBook Pro that outlasts your workday and a pocket iPad with an OLED screen. Apple's Pro and Tell week, explained!
Apple's Pro and Tell week has landed, and the Apple M6 iMac, M6 MacBook Pro and OLED iPad mini 8 are all up for pre-order. After months of rumours, it turns out the biggest news is also the most colourful:
The iMac is bringing the colour to your day. It keeps the thin 24-inch look, but the new M6 chip makes it quicker at the everyday stuff and all the AI tricks Apple keeps adding to macOS. They are now available inblue, green, pink, yellow, purple, orange and silver versions, and the keyboard and mouse match whichever you pick. The bigger model also gets Touch ID, a faster Ethernet port and all four Thunderbolt ports, which matters if your desk is a tangle of drives and screens.
The MacBook Pro keeps going
The 14-inch MacBook Pro also moves to M6, and on paper the headline is staying power. Apple quotes up to 24 hours of battery, which is a full working day plus a long evening of shows. It still has the sort of ports people actually use: HDMI, an SD card slot, three Thunderbolt ports and a proper headphone jack. The screen is the same bright Liquid Retina XDR panel, now with an optional nano-texture finish that cuts glare if you work near a window, at a cafe or outdoors.
Memory starts at a comfortable 16GB, so it is built for video editing, coding and a hundred browser tabs without sweating. It comes in space black and silver.
A tiny tablet with a glowing screen
Then there is the one people have waited years for. The iPad mini finally has an OLED display, which means deeper blacks, punchier colour and a picture that looks almost printed on the glass. Apple has also made the bezels slimmer without making the tablet any bigger, so it still slips into a jacket pocket or a handbag. It is just 5.4mm thin and now carries an IP67 rating for water and dust, which is handy for a device that lives on kitchen benches and train seats (see our coverage of Amazon's new Kindle).
Inside is the new A20 Pro chip, and there is a new midnight colour next to starlight. It works with Apple Pencil Pro, so the mini doubles as a pocket sketchbook and note-taker.
Where this sits next to the MacBook Neo and the rest
Apple's Mac line-up now has a clear ladder. The MacBook Neo is the cheerful, lower-priced way into Mac. The MacBook Air stays the light everyday laptop, and the Mac mini and Mac Studio cover the compact-desktop end. The new M6 MacBook Pro is the one built for long, heavy days away from a power point, and the iMac is the all-in-one that makes the home office look better than it did yesterday.
Between them, the new trio shows what Apple cares about this year: more colour, more battery and a screen worth looking at. None of them reinvents the wheel, but each one takes something people already liked and makes it nicer to live with.
At a glance
- iMac with M6: 24-inch 4.5K display, 12MP Center Stage camera, seven colours. From A$2,399 (10-core) or A$2,699 (12-core).
- 14-inch MacBook Pro with M6: up to 24 hours of battery, 16GB memory to start, space black or silver. From A$3,199.
- iPad mini: 8.5-inch OLED display, A20 Pro chip, IP67, midnight or starlight. From A$1,099 (Wi-Fi) or A$1,349 (Wi-Fi + Cellular).
- Pre-orders: open now at Apple Australia, with stores and resellers from 6th Nov 26.
Verdict: A colourful iMac, a marathon MacBook Pro and a pocket-sized OLED iPad mini add up to Apple's most inviting line-up in years.
