Apple will not release M6 Pro or M6 Max chips, breaking a product cadence the company has followed since the M1 generation.
The decision means Mac buyers who typically wait for the higher-end chip tiers before upgrading will be waiting until late 2027 at the earliest.
Apple had been developing neural-processing upgrades significant enough to justify pushing the pro-tier chips directly into the M7 generation, bypassing the M6 family entirely.
The M6 lineup will consist of a single base chip, expected inside a new 14-inch MacBook Pro arriving later this year. There will be no M6 Ultra either.
What This Means for Mac Buyers
For anyone who owns an M2 Pro or M3 Pro MacBook Pro and has been holding off on upgrading, the timeline just shifted.
M7 Pro and M7 Max chips are now targeted for the second half of 2027, more than a year away. The base M7 chip is expected in the first half of that year, with an M7 Ultra following in 2028.
Apple’s current M5 Pro and M5 Max chips, which launched in March 2026, will now hold the top of the Mac lineup for longer than any equivalent generation has before.
The M5 Ultra is still expected to arrive in the Mac Studio before the end of 2026, giving power users one more upgrade option this year.
AI Is Driving the Schedule, Not Hardware Readiness
Gurman described the shift plainly in his Power On newsletter: “AI is no longer just another feature Apple’s chips need to support. It is now shaping how those products are designed and when they are shipped.”
The M7 Ultra in particular is being built to deliver a substantial jump in on-device AI performance, and Gurman reports it may eventually power Apple Intelligence servers starting in 2029.
That server ambition helps explain why Apple accelerated the M7 roadmap rather than filling out the M6 family on schedule.
Building chips capable of running AI workloads at the server level requires a different set of trade-offs than releasing a predictable annual lineup, and Apple appears willing to disrupt its own product calendar to get there faster.
The Revised Chip Timeline
Based on Gurman’s reporting, the chip rollout now looks like this: M5 Ultra in late 2026, M6 base chip also in late 2026, base M7 in the first half of 2027, M7 Pro and M7 Max in the second half of 2027, and M7 Ultra in 2028.
Buyers considering a MacBook Pro purchase now are effectively choosing between the current M5 Pro and M5 Max machines or waiting roughly 18 months for the M7 Pro generation.
