‘Customers increasingly … [use] Mac mini as a powerful platform for agentic AI’, Tim Cook said in July.

After rumours of an impending announcement were published this morning, Apple has officially revealed its first new Mac mini desktop computer in nearly two years, with two new models featuring the company’s new M6 and M5 Pro chips respectively.

With the M6 chip – also newly announced today (25 August) – the Mac mini can deliver up to four-times faster AI performance, two-times faster storage and graphics, and 40pc faster CPU performance, according to Apple.

The M6 is the company’s first 2nm chip, which features a larger 12-core CPU complex with “the world’s fastest CPU core” according to Apple, along with a larger 12-core GPU with neural accelerators, a dual 16-core neural engine, and up to 170 gigabits per second (Gb/s) of unified memory bandwidth.

Meanwhile, the M5 Pro features up to an 18-core CPU and up to a 20-core GPU – with neural accelerators in each GPU core – with an “enhanced shader core and third-generation ray tracing for complex work” in 3D design, VFX, and game development. The Mac mini with the M5 Pro also supports up to 64GB of unified memory and 307Gb/s of memory bandwidth.

The Mac mini with M6 is priced from $899, while the version with the M5 Pro is priced at $1,699.

The new Mac mini was announced after Bloomberg reported on its impending reveal earlier today.

Sources told the publication earlier today that the new device was expected in the coming days – the tech giant has since officially unveiled the device.

This is likely the last new product launch under CEO Tim Cook, who is set to retire on 1 September.

The upgrade to Apple’s Mac mini line follows a growth in demand for the small, portable device popularly used to run AI applications locally.

“We’re seeing customers increasingly … [use] Mac mini as a powerful platform for agentic AI [or] deploying clusters of Mac Studio systems to run frontier-class models locally,” Cook said at the company’s last earnings call in July.

The machine is available for pre-order starting today, according to the company, with the product set to launch on 22 September.

The Mac mini is one of a number of Apple products set to launch soon, including the iPhone 18 Pro, Apple’s first foldable smartphone, a new range of Apple Watches, updated AirPods and a smart home device.

The company is also readying a new Apple TV set-top box, a HomePod mini smart speaker and a revamped iPad mini with an OLED screen.

The memory chip crunch has hit consumer device developers hard. Earlier this year, Apple announced that it was hiking prices for several of its products, including Macs and iPads, as a result of the global chip shortage.

“The rapid expansion of AI data centres has created an extraordinary surge in demand for memory and storage”, a company spokesperson said at the time, adding that Apple had “never seen a component price increase this much, this quickly”.

According to Counterpoint Research, global smartphone shipments are poised to drop nearly 14pc in 2026, with prices expected to jump by as much as 13pc.

The Mac mini has been a particular problem for Apple in supply chain terms, with deliveries taking weeks or months to be completed. Cook said that the company’s new advanced manufacturing centre in Houston, Texas will be assembling Mac minis starting “later this year”.

With additional reporting by Colin Ryan

Don’t miss out on the knowledge you need to succeed. Sign up for the Daily Brief, Silicon Republic’s digest of need-to-know sci-tech news.

Updated, 3.55pm, 25 August 2026: This article was amended to include up-to-date information on the new Mac mini, as the device was officially announced shortly after our article was published.

I’ve been hooked on smoothies in an almost superstitious way ever since college: A fruit smoothie is like a good luck charm, promising the health you feel you deserve despite all your other bad decisions. But in my more recent adult life, a good blender is the passport to taqueria salsas, Oaxacan-style mole, and all the delicate emulsions I once had to buy at restaurants and in jars.

Well, Vitamix crushes the blender game, but usually comes with a price tag to match. Luckily Vitamix promo codes crop up at various points during the year, and we’re here to help you stay up to date on those discounts.

The Vitamix Made Me a Blender Person—No Kale Required

The spin cycle is this machine’s sweet spot.

Vitamix New Ascent X5 With Stainless Steel Container

Vitmix’s top-of-the-line blender model, Ascent X5, is now constructed with a stainless steel container. The 48-ounce stainless steel container is not only huge and hygienic, the machine itself combines an intuitive touch interface with a refined, timeless design. The non-reactive stainless steel material resists stains, odors, and corrosion, and expertly handles hot, cold, and acidic ingredients. This futuristic gadget also has an automatic self-cleaning program and ten blending programs for popular items like smoothies, soups, frozen cocktails and more for a precise blend, every time.

Get a $50 Vitamix Promo Code Plus Free Shipping

Vitamix has tons of ways to save on these handy kitchen gear items, including $50 off when you register your email. All you have to do is input your email on Vitamix’s website, and you’ll get a discount of up to $50 sent straight to your inbox. Plus, you’ll get free shipping on orders of $100 or more.

IMAGE COURTESY OF VITAMIX

Does Vitamix Offer Free Shipping?

Glad you asked. Vitamix is offering free standard shipping for orders above $99. This pretty much means that ground shipping is free for blenders at the current discounts. Priority shipping is not free, however.

The WIRED Gear Team’s Favorite Vitamix Blenders

WIRED has long been singing the praises of the classic Vitamix 5200. The model made a blender convert out of contributing reviewer Joe Ray after he realized that the “model of preference for blender aficionados around the world” was also his key to home mole and Oaxacan-style cookery.

A similar road-to-Damascus moment beset WIRED contributing reviewer Heather Arndt Anderson when she tested the Vitamix Ascent X2, also currently on a $50 promo discount. “The more I thought about it,” she wrote, “the more I realized that maybe I’ve never been a blender person because I never had a good blender.” Anderson also made a big batch of mole and avoided passing out from chile fumes, then moved on to homemade masa and a Georgian walnut spread. She regretted only that the blender wasn’t easier to clean.

After testing through a number of brands’ blenders, WIRED contributing reviewer Emily Peck marveled that even the basic Vitamix Explorian E310 churned almonds frictionlessly into butter without even need of a presoak.

Apple just announced the Mac mini with M5 Pro and you’ll need one with 64GB of RAM to run the Junie Local model, a free 27B parameter coding agent that compares to Sonnet 4.5 or GPT-5.

JetBrains developed Junie as a coding agent that runs on your Mac and calls out to models the user chose. That always required some configuration and sending data off to some other AI product, so JetBrains has built Junie Local.

According to a blog post by JetBrains, Junie Local installs with a single command, takes about 20GB of space, and requires at least an M5 Mac with 64GB of RAM. Apple’s recently announced Mac mini costs $2,699 to meet that spec with an M5 Pro processor.

It runs using Qwen3.6-27B at 4-bit and is entirely local. There is no need for tokens or sending data to someone else’s server.

JetBrains targeted the M5 processor as the base spec due to the Neural Accelerator having 8-bit arithmetic instructions, which enables around 40% more prefill throughput. Qwen has a newer version, 3.8, but 3.6 was chosen since it’s faster without the “reasoning” required for 3.8.

The blog post suggests that JetBrains testing placed the 27B parameter coding agent on par with Sonnet 4.5 at a 10,000-token reasoning limit. GPT-5 at medium effort scored slightly higher.

Here’s what JetBrains had to say about the minimum spec requirements:

We know that an M5 Mac with 64 GB of RAM is a big ask. We are not going to pretend otherwise, and we know it puts Junie Local out of reach for many people reading the post.

That is simply what it costs to run a 27B model well today, and it is the number we are working hardest to bring down. The aim is a lower memory floor, wider hardware, and more of the stack optimized. If the lofty requirements are the reason you cannot try Junie Local, rest assured that we are working to bring them down.

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JetBrains says that the Mac is a starting point, not the whole plan. It has started work for DGX Spark and RTX 5090, and they’ve looked at supporting 24GB cards.

Junie Local is free to install. Type /local into Junie and it installs. Switch back to cloud models using /model

• AI authorship is increasingly employed for web pages, Pew Research Center report claims
• Over 33% of pages published since the launch of ChatGPT reportedly show signs of AI generation
• Of the 10,000-page sample used in the study, 10% of pages had signs of AI authorship

An incredible 35% of web pages published since the launch of ChatGPT show signs of AI authorship, new research has claimed.

A study from the Pew Research Center, which used automated tools to assess a sample of 10,000 web pages, also found that in the entire sample – based on data from the Common Crawl project – almost 10% of all pages had signs of AI creation.

Apple has unveiled its new desktop processors with the M6 and the M5 Ultra.

We’ve compared the processors below, noting the differences between the two and which chip you should go for, depending on your needs. 

Read on to learn more about M6 and M5 Ultra, where you can find both chips and which ones will best suit your needs. For more from Apple’s launch, visit our Mac Mini M6 vs Mac Mini M4 guide, while our best laptops round-up includes our favourite computers from the past year.

Specs Comparison Table

	M6	M5 Ultra
CPU	12-core	Up to 36-core
GPU	12-core	Up to 80-core
Neural Engine	Dual 16-core	32-core
RAM	Up to 36GB	Up to 512GB
Memory Bandwidth	170GB/s	1.2TB/s

Availability

At the time of writing, the M6 chip is currently only found within the latest Mac Mini which has a starting RRP of £899/$899. It’s currently available for pre-order and will launch globally from September 22nd.

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The M5 Ultra is also only available in one device: the Mac Studio and is considerably more expensive than the Mac Mini M6, with a starting RRP of a whopping £5499/$5499. At the time of writing, it is also available for pre-order and will launch from September 22nd.

M6 is Apple’s first 2nm chip

Apple explains that its M6 chip is built using cutting-edge 2nm process technology, and is the brand’s first state-of-the-art 2nm processor. This, according to Apple, promises to pack greater transistor density into a smaller die for a “major leap in performance and power efficiency”.

With this in mind, Apple promises the chip advances “every compute block” and delivers gains across every dimension of performance too. 

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M5 Ultra is Apple’s most powerful chip yet

As its name and hefty price tag suggests, the M5 Ultra is hailed as being Apple’s most powerful chip to date. The M5 Ultra also sees a first for Apple silicon, as it uses M5 Ultra next-generation UltraFusion technology to connect two dual-die M5 Max chips to form its quad-die architecture. This, according to Apple, increases bandwidth to over 4.4TB/s and connection density by over 6x, to allow the four dies to behave as one unified processor.

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M5 Ultra itself includes up to a 36-core CPU that’s made up of 12 super cores and 24 performance cores, and a GPU with up to 80-cores that each incorporate a Neural Accelerator too. In addition, the M5 Ultra’s GPU includes Apple’s latest shader core with second-generation Dynamic Caching, hardware-accelerated mesh shading and third-gen ray tracing too. This, Apple promises, delivers up to 40% faster graphics performance than the M3 Ultra. 

Apple says that M5 Ultra is best suited for 3D rendering, colour grading, complex graphics, data science, LLMs, training and perfecting AI models, scientific analysis, 8K video editing and intensive gaming too. 

M5 Ultra supports up to a whopping 512GB of memory – compared to M6 which supports up to 36GB

Following on from the above point, a chip built for such intensive tasks needs plenty of memory to ensure it runs smoothly and quickly. 

Fortunately, the Mac Studio M5 Ultra comes with 96GB of memory as standard, although this can currently be upgraded up to 256GB. If you need a bit more, then you’ll have to wait until late October, as a 512GB option is set to launch then – though we don’t currently know how much this will set you back. Considering upgrading to the 256GB Mac Studio M5 Ultra adds an additional £/$4000, we’d recommend bracing yourself for the 512GB iteration.  

On the other hand, the Mac Mini M6 comes with a more conservative 16GB of memory as standard, though you can upgrade to either 24 or 32GB should you see fit.

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M5 Ultra includes a 32-core Neural Engine

Both M6 and M5 Ultra promise to offer AI-prowess, with Apple stating that developers can run and fine-tune large AI models locally on their Mac, thanks to Apple’s developer frameworks and tools that automatically optimise performance.

While the M6 chip introduces a Dual 16-core Neural Engine that promises to provide up to two times the peak compute over previous generations for faster on-device AI, the M5 Ultra doubles this with a 32-core Neural Engine instead. This should drive complex AI tasks, plus Apple Intelligence features, securely and with “industry-leading” energy efficiency too. 

Early Verdict

Choosing between the M6 and M5 Ultra chip will depend entirely on your needs. If you’re looking for a device that can support everything from intensive gaming to 3D rendering and training AI models, then the M5 Ultra Mac Studio is undoubtedly the device that’ll suit you best. However, you’ll need to factor in the very high price tag.

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On the other hand, if you need more of any everyday yet still powerful device, then the Mac Mini M6 should give you all the power you realistically need.

Despite the continued growth of increasingly large flat-panel TVs and premium direct-view displays, the projector is not going away. For dedicated home theaters and larger multipurpose spaces, projection can still deliver screen sizes that conventional televisions simply cannot match without moving into far more expensive territory.

Advances in laser light sources, HDR processing, brightness, and installation flexibility have also made modern projectors more capable outside of completely darkened theater rooms. Epson’s flagship QL7000 ($32,999), for example, delivers up to 10,000 lumens of color and white brightness, supports HDR10, and can produce images up to 300 inches with a choice of interchangeable lenses.

At CEDIA Expo 2026, Epson will showcase its latest home projection solutions across several screen configurations, demonstrating why projection remains a serious option for custom integrators and consumers who want a genuinely cinematic image at home. Bigger televisions may continue to grab headlines, but when the goal is a 150-inch, 200-inch, or even larger image, projectors still have a rather persuasive argument to make.

Epson QL7000 Goes Big with Stewart Filmscreen

For its CEDIA demonstrations, Epson will be employing its top of the line 10,000-lumen QL7000 4K 3LCD Laser Projector.

Demo One: The QL7000 will be paired with Stewart Filmscreen’s new slimmer profile Director’s Choice Generation 2 four way masking screen — an impressive 215-inch, 2.0:1 cinematic display optimized for today’s growing library of 2.0:1 streaming content. The setup will showcase the impact of high brightness projection and HDR performance on a truly cinematic scale.

Demo Two: The QL7000 will also be demonstrated with Stewart Filmscreen’s StudioTek 130 G4 acoustically transparent screen. The screen allows speakers to be positioned behind the image, helping preserve precise LCR localization and a cohesive soundstage while still delivering a premium visual experience.

Demo Three: This demonstration combines the QL7000 with Stewart Filmscreen’s 160-inch Balón Edge Phantom HALR+ ambient light rejecting, acoustically transparent screen to showcase high brightness projection in environments with controlled ambient light.

As with the StudioTek demonstration, the Balón Edge Phantom HALR+ is acoustically transparent, allowing speakers to be installed behind the screen. However, the Phantom HALR+ material is also designed to maintain image contrast in rooms with higher levels of ambient light.

Demo Four: An additional demonstration pairs the QL7000 with the ELPLX02S short throw lens and Stewart Filmscreen’s 135-inch Luxus G2 Electric Roller Screen with GrayMatte 70 material. In this setup, the QL7000 will be integrated into the ceiling with only the lens visible, while the screen retracts out of sight when not in use.

The installation demonstrates how projection can serve as an integrated alternative to direct view displays and video walls while minimizing its visual impact on the room.

To round out Epson’s CEDIA 2026 exhibit, a live projector comparison will demonstrate key Q-Series performance differences in brightness, HDR, and color, showing how each model; the QL7000, QL3000, and QB1000 — is suited to different home installation requirements.

For a thorough rundown on all three projectors, refer to our previous article: Epson’s New Q-Series Projectors Will Light Up Even the Brightest Living Spaces and our comparison chart below. These projectors were all released in late 2024. 

“Advancements in projection technology are giving integrators more options for delivering compelling large-screen entertainment in spaces that may have traditionally been challenging for projection,” said Melvin Diaz, senior product manager, home entertainment, Epson America, Inc. “At CEDIA Expo, we’re excited to demonstrate how the Q-Series platform combines high brightness, exceptional image performance and a compact, thoughtfully designed form factor to bring immersive cinema experiences to more rooms. From dedicated home theaters designed for large cinematic experiences to beautiful living spaces with more ambient light, the Q-Series gives integrators the flexibility to create an extraordinary viewing experience while allowing the technology to elegantly disappear into the space.”

The Bottom Line 

The annual CEDIA Expo remains the place where custom integrators can see how the latest home theater, control, lighting, and smart home technologies actually work together, and the large scale theater demonstrations are always part of the attraction.

For CEDIA 2026, Epson is taking a more useful approach with the QL7000. Rather than simply putting its 10,000 lumens of color and white brightness on the biggest screen it can find, Epson is demonstrating how the same projector performs with several screen materials, sizes, and installation approaches. That includes a 215-inch masking screen, an acoustically transparent screen, an ambient light rejecting option, and a retractable installation designed to disappear when it is not being used. The QL7000 itself can produce images up to 300 inches and accepts interchangeable lenses, which makes this kind of demonstration particularly relevant for integrators.

That is what makes Epson’s CEDIA presentation interesting. Choosing the projector is only half of the equation; the screen material, room lighting, speaker placement, viewing distance, and installation all have a major impact on the finished system. Visitors to Epson’s booth will be able to see those differences rather than merely stare at another specification sheet.

With enormous OLED, Mini LED, and direct view LED displays continuing to improve, projection has plenty of competition. But when a client wants a 135-inch, 160-inch, or 215-inch image that can be integrated into the architecture of the room, projectors still offer something most televisions cannot. Epson appears determined to make sure integrators remember that.

Price & Availability

Epson Q-Series Projectors are available at the following prices:

Screens: The screens featured in this report are available through Stewart Filmscreen and Authorized Dealers – prices vary depending on size and configuration options – professional installation strongly suggested. 

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Instagram boss Adam Mosseri took the stand in Meta’s latest trial over social media addiction and children’s privacy Tuesday. During his testimony, Mosseri said that it was “news to me” that Instagram employees were told by a company lawyer to “limit” certain types of data they presented to the executive as part of their work on teen safety.

Mosseri appeared as part of a high-profile trial between Meta and attorneys general from dozens of states. Lawyers for the states have said that Meta intentionally tried to “hook” kids onto its platform despite internal research that showed its apps were harming young users.

One bit of internal research that surfaced during the trial Tuesday was from a 2023 slide deck prepared by Instagram designers and others about teen safety on the app. The deck indicated that content related to suicide, self injury and eating disorders had a “disproportionately large teen audience” that was two and half times bigger for teens than adults. It also indicated that content deemed “non-recommendable” to teens was being viewed by teens at a rate that was 1.5 times higher than adults.

A lawyer for the company later told Instagram employees working on the presentation to remove those stats in order to “limit” Mosseri’s “exposure to this information,” according to messages shared during the trial. On the stand Tuesday, Mosseri said that he has never participated in a conversation about moderating his own access to information. “I’m not a legal expert, so I’m not sure what the reasons might be for removing information from presentations before they get to me, but [I’m] not trying to encourage my team to hide anything,” he said. “I think that my understanding is if there are legal implications of certain work, that lawyers review the material.” He described the lawyers’ role as ensuring the accuracy of documents and that “they make sense, particularly when it’s about whether or not something we’re doing complies with the law.”

Mosseri’s comments came after Instagram’s Director of Product Design, Francesco Fogu, testified about the July 2023 presentation and the conversations around what statistics to include in it. Fogu said he was “surprised” because he had never before been told to “hide data from leadership.” He was ultimately permitted to communicate the data to Instagram’s leaders “vocally,” he said. He added that the data was still available to executives because it was detailed in reports that were linked within the presentation. Later, during cross-examination from Meta’s lawyer, he said the presentation was successful because it was the “catalyst” for the creation of Instagram’s teen accounts.

One feature that repeatedly came up during Mosseri and Fogu’s testimony was Instagram’s “take a break” tool that can remind users to stop scrolling. Only 1.8 percent of Instagram users initially opted into the feature after it was introduced in 2021, according to data from Meta. Fogu, who still works at Meta, repeatedly said he was unsure about the accuracy of that statistic.

At one point, Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers asked Fogu whether he knew what the highest adoption rate for the feature had ever been. Fogu said he didn’t. “You’re the head of this and you don’t know what the highest it’s ever been,” she asked. “I do not create the dashboards for collecting data. I do not read data. That’s not my job. I just trust my team,” he said. “And yet, even though you have to trust them, even though you have to design things, you have no idea what those numbers are as you sit here today,” Rogers said.

Fogu wasn’t the first witness to testify about “take a break.” The jury also heard from a former data scientist at Meta, George Volichenko, who said the feature had a “very low and disappointing” adoption rate among teens after it was introduced in 2022. Volichenko said that early findings showed only .165 percent of teens opted to take a 10-minute break from Instagram, though adoption later increased to .2 percent. He described the feature as “easy to dismiss.”

Mosseri was also pressed about “take a break” and its adoption rate. The Instagram chief seemed to be frustrated with the focus on the feature. “This is one feature with a disappointingly low usage rate, which has been significantly improved,” he said. Instagram’s teen accounts, which are now mandatory for teens under 16, have time limits enabled by default, Mosseri pointed out. “There are many features that are effective, there are many features that are ineffective,” he said. “One in 50 people today will post a photo or a video to Instagram. That’s a 2% participation rate.”

Mosseri is the first high-profile Meta executive to testify in the trial, which could have a lasting impact on Meta. Lawyers for the states are seeking penalties as high as $1.4 trillion and hoping to force the company to change aspects of how its apps are designed. CEO Mark Zuckerberg is also expected to appear, along with other current and former employees. Mosseri’s testimony will continue Wednesday.