[News] Apple Reportedly Skips High-End M6 Chips for M7 Lineup; Partners With Meta to Run Muse AI on Mac Studio
Apple is reportedly shifting its focus to the M7 chip lineup, skipping higher-end M6 variants as it prioritizes technologies designed for AI workloads. According to MacRumors, citing Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman on his podcast, Apple has introduced the base M6 chip in the Mac mini, with M6-powered iMac and entry-level MacBook Pro models also planned. However, the company reportedly intends to skip the M6 Pro, M6 Max, and M6 Ultra, moving directly from their M5 predecessors to the M7 lineup.
Gurman noted that high-end touchscreen MacBook Pro models featuring M7 Pro and M7 Max chips are expected by the end of 2027, while an entry-level MacBook Pro powered by the standard M7 is also slated for 2027. The M7 Ultra is reportedly planned for the first half of 2028, making a Mac Studio refresh in 2027 unlikely, MacRumors notes.
Meanwhile, the upcoming OLED MacBook Pro models are expected to retain the M5 Pro and M5 Max chips used in current models, with no processor upgrade planned until 2027, according to MacRumors. Separately, ZDNet reports that the new OLED models could feature a lighter design, a Dynamic Island replacing the notch, and optional 5G connectivity.
Apple has also begun inviting select media representatives to a product launch experience in Los Angeles on Wednesday, October 28, according to Mark Gurman on X, as noted in a separate MacRumors report.
Apple and Meta Bring 816B-Parameter AI Model to Mac Studio
Beyond its reported chip strategy shift, Apple is expanding its AI capabilities through a new collaboration with Meta. According to CNBC, the companies have announced plans to enable developers to run Meta’s Muse Spark Open model locally on Apple’s high-end Mac Studio desktops.
Meta describes Muse Spark Open as its most capable U.S. open-weight model, featuring 816 billion total parameters, 42 billion active parameters, and a 1 million-token context window. Built on a mixture-of-experts architecture, the model is designed to run locally on M5 Ultra-powered Mac Studios using Apple’s MLX framework. Each M5 Ultra supports up to 512GB of unified memory and 1.2TB/s of memory bandwidth, allowing two connected Mac Studios to accommodate the entire model, according to Meta.
Meta AI chief Alexandr Wang noted that many powerful open-weight models are too large to run on most personal computers, but the Mac Studio’s memory capacity makes running Muse Spark Open practical. Wang said the companies worked together to bring advanced agent capabilities to desktops powered by Apple’s M5 Ultra chips, as highlighted by CNBC.
However, the hardware requirements come at a high cost. According to CNBC, a Mac Studio equipped with the required M5 Ultra chip and 256GB of memory starts at $10,799, while a 512GB configuration is expected later this month.
Read more
- [News] Meta’s Muse Highlights AI Agents’ Higher CPU-to-GPU Needs, Could Benefit Intel, AMD, and Arm
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(Photo credit: Apple)
