Apple’s M7 Chips Could Arrive Earlier, M6 Pro and M6 Max Get Dropped

Apple is reportedly changing its Mac chip roadmap as it prepares a faster shift toward chips built for on-device AI, stronger graphics performance, and heavier creative workloads. The company plans to launch a base M6 chip as soon as late 2026, but it will reportedly skip the M6 Pro and M6 Max and move its next high-end Mac chips to the M7 generation instead.



Bloomberg reports that Apple wants to bring newer AI-focused chip technologies sooner than planned, which makes this one of the biggest changes to Apple silicon since the company moved away from Intel processors.



What Apple’s new chip timeline looks like



According to the report, Apple’s updated roadmap includes:




M5 Ultra: Late 2026



M6: Late 2026



M7: First half of 2027



M7 Pro: End of 2027



M7 Max: End of 2027



M7 Ultra: 2028




The base M6 chip will reportedly power entry-level Macs, including a refreshed MacBook Pro, Mac mini, iMac, and future iPad models. Apple has tested the chip with around 200GB/s memory bandwidth, compared with 153GB/s on the M5, which should help with AI tasks, video editing, graphics work, and model training.



The M6 chip is also expected to include an upgraded Neural Engine, a new memory architecture, better video encoding and decoding, and a redesigned GPU with up to 12 cores.



Apple reportedly wants the M7 lineup to carry its next major upgrades for on-device AI and GPU-heavy software. The base M7 could offer around 240GB/s memory bandwidth, while the M7 Pro, M7 Max, and M7 Ultra will target higher-end MacBook Pro, Mac mini, Mac Studio, and future Mac desktop models.



Apple also still plans to launch an M5 Ultra Mac Studio as soon as this year, with around 36 CPU cores, 80 GPU cores, and support for up to 768GB of unified memory.



If this roadmap holds, Apple’s high-end MacBook Pro upgrade cycle will shift later than expected, while entry-level Macs could still move to M6 before the full M7 lineup arrives.