It's been an unusually big week for Apple announcements. On this week's episode of The MacRumors Show, we discuss the new Mac mini and Mac Studio, the M6 and M5 Ultra chips, and invites to Apple's September event.


Apple confirmed on Wednesday that its annual iPhone event will take place on Wednesday, September 9 at Apple Park, starting at 10:00 a.m. Pacific Time, with select members of the media invited to attend. The event's tagline is "Surprise and Shine." Apple is expected to introduce at least six new products, including the the Apple Watch Series 12, Apple Watch Ultra 4, iPhone 18 Pro, ‌iPhone 18 Pro‌ Max, and the first foldable iPhone. Pre-orders should follow shortly after, and along with release dates for iOS 27, iPadOS 27 and macOS 27 Golden Gate.

Apple announced the new Mac mini on Tuesday, offering M6 and M5 Pro chip options. The machine gains an N1 networking chip, bringing Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 6, and moves to 2.5Gb Ethernet as standard, up from 1Gb, with a 10Gb option. Thunderbolt 5 is restricted to the M5 Pro model, which gets three Thunderbolt 5 ports while the M6 model keeps Thunderbolt 4. Genlock support over USB-C also helps to sync a display's refresh timing to a camera such as the iPhone 17 Pro. Pricing starts at $899 with 16GB and 256GB, rising to $1,699 for the M5 Pro at 24GB and 512GB. Pre-orders are now open, with launch on September 22.

The M6 is Apple's first 2nm chip. Its 12-core CPU is split into 2 super cores, 4 performance cores and 6 efficiency cores, making it the first Apple chip to combine all three core types in one design. Super cores are Apple's top tier, optimized for single-threaded speed. The 12-core GPU features a Neural Accelerator in each core for the first time in a ‌Mac mini‌. The GPU also adds an updated shader architecture, Dynamic Caching, and hardware-accelerated ray tracing, while an all-new Dual 16-core Neural Engine doubles peak compute over the previous generation, with system frameworks able to drive both engines at once. Memory starts at 16GB and tops out at 32GB, running at up to 170GB/s. M5 Pro scales further, to an 18-core CPU, a 20-core GPU and up to 64GB at 307GB/s.

The new Mac Studio arrived alongside the ‌Mac mini‌, with M5 Max and M5 Ultra chip options. The M5 Max offers an 18-core CPU with 6 super cores and 12 performance cores, an up-to-40-core GPU with Neural Accelerators in every core, and up to 128GB of memory at 614GB/s, with the GPU running up to 50% faster than the previous generation. Both configurations move to a next-generation SSD architecture on PCIe Gen 6 for up to twice the storage performance, and gain up to six Thunderbolt 5 ports at 120Gb/s, and the same genlock support as the ‌Mac mini‌. Apple's N1 chip also brings Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 6 to the ‌Mac Studio‌. Pricing starts at $2,499 for the M5 Max at 36GB and 512GB, and $5,499 for the M5 Ultra at 96GB and 1TB, with the 512GB memory option not arriving until late October.

The M5 Ultra is Apple's first quad-die chip, using a next-generation version of UltraFusion to join two dual-die M5 Max chips into a single processor. The result is a CPU with up to 36 cores, 12 super and 24 performance, delivering 1.25x the single-threaded and 1.3x the multithreaded performance of the M3 Ultra. Its up-to-80-core GPU is the most powerful Apple silicon GPU ever made and the first on an Ultra chip to feature Neural Accelerators. Second-generation Dynamic Caching, hardware-accelerated mesh shading and third-generation ray tracing lift graphics up 40% over the M3 Ultra, and the chip features a 32-core Neural Engine. Memory reaches 512GB at 1.2TB/s, which is a 50% bandwidth increase.

Other announcements this week included a new, softer Apple Polishing Cloth at $9, down from $19, and refreshed U.S. Magic Keyboards for the Mac, now featuring glyphs instead of edge text. Apple Support's 1-800-APL-CARE line is also now answered by a generative AI assistant in the U.S. and Canada.

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If you haven't already listened to the previous episode of The MacRumors Show, catch up to hear our discussion with YouTuber Michael Fisher about key rumors about the "iPhone Ultra" and how the device could compare to rivals.

Subscribe to ‌The MacRumors Show‌ for new episodes every week, where we discuss some of the topical news breaking here on MacRumors, often joined by interesting guests such as Kayci Lacob, Kevin Nether, John Gruber, Mark Gurman, Jon Prosser, Luke Miani, Matthew Cassinelli, Brian Tong, Quinn Nelson, Jared Nelson, Eli Hodapp, Mike Bell, Sara Dietschy, iJustine, Jon Rettinger, Andru Edwards, Arnold Kim, Ben Sullins, Marcus Kane, Christopher Lawley, Frank McShan, David Lewis, Tyler Stalman, Sam Kohl, Federico Viticci, Thomas Frank, Jonathan Morrison, Ross Young, Ian Zelbo, and Rene Ritchie.

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Apple TV has bought the worldwide rights to "Small Prophets," breaking with how it normally operates in acquiring an existing English-language hit rather than commissioning a show of its own from the start.



‌Apple TV‌ has typically developed or, at the very least, commissioned shows in-house and given them their premiere on the service, regardless of where they may eventually end up. This was the model behind the BBC's "Trying," which ‌Apple TV‌+ produced first and later licensed to the BBC once its own run had finished.

Apple has also picked up individual foreign-language titles in the past, such as the French-Japanese drama "Drops of God." "Small Prophets" marks new ground since it is an English-language series and it had already become a broadcast hit elsewhere before Apple stepped in.

The acquisition, reported by Deadline, follows a run on BBC Two that produced the strongest 28-day launch numbers for a comedy on the channel since 2022, a 100% score on Rotten Tomatoes, and the International Panorama award at this year's Series Mania festival.

"Small Prophets" will stream on ‌Apple TV‌ worldwide starting on October 7, with the exception of the UK, where the show debuted on BBC iPlayer and BBC Two earlier this year. Viewers in the UK will be able to continue watching it on iPlayer before it eventually moves to ‌Apple TV‌.

The show is written, created, and directed by Mackenzie Crook, best known for appearing in "The Office" and "The Detectorists."

Small Prophets follows Quigley as the eccentric Michael Sleep, an ordinary man who, since his darling Clea disappeared seven years ago, has worked in a DIY store, while visiting his elderly dad Brian and hoping for Clea to return. One day, Brian shares an old recipe for a potion so a skeptical Michael can create homunculi – magical spirits that can predict the future – to learn if he will see Clea again.

Michael gets help from his young DIY store co-worker Kacey and their unlikely friendship blossoms through a dislike of store manager Gordon, while his nosy neighbors obsess about what Michael is doing in the garden shed.

The show, set in and around suburban Manchester and is seeped in Crook's trademark gentleness... includes animated elements to show the more magical elements of the story.

Deadline compared "Small Prophets" to "Ted Lasso," which recently began its fourth season as ‌Apple TV‌'s biggest premiere ever, favoring a gentler, more serialized storytelling style over a traditional sitcom.
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Pre-orders of Apple's iPhone 18 Pro may not open until Saturday, September 12, a day later than the company's usual schedule, according to a new report.


Apple is set to hold its annual iPhone event on Wednesday, September 9, where the ‌iPhone 18 Pro‌ models, its first-ever foldable iPhone, and the Apple Watch Series 12 and Ultra 4 are all expected to be announced.

Under Apple's typical launch plan, pre-orders begin the Friday immediately following the event, with devices shipping the following Friday. This year, that would place pre-orders on Friday, September 11, but Macworld reports that its German sister publication, Macwelt, has heard from a reliable source that Apple will instead push pre-orders back to Saturday, September 12.

There is precedent for this as the shift is reportedly tied to the date itself. September 11, 2026 marks the 25th anniversary of the September 11 attacks, and Apple has moved pre-orders away from that date before. In 2015, when the standard pre-order Friday also landed on September 11, Apple delayed iPhone 6S and 6S Plus pre-orders to Saturday, September 12.

The timing within the day is also said to be changing. Apple's pre-orders traditionally open at 5 a.m. PT, but the source says this year's window will instead start at midnight PT on Saturday.

The delayed pre-order date is expected to apply to the ‌iPhone 18 Pro‌, Apple Watch Series 12, and Apple Watch Ultra 4, alongside any other hardware Apple introduces at the event. Apple's foldable iPhone could follow at a later date, with pre-orders potentially not opening until late September.

Earlier this year, Macwelt reported that Apple would announce the iPhone 17e on Thursday, February 19, but that announcement didn't actually come until March 2. That being said, Saturday, September 12 looks like a solid bet for the ‌iPhone 18 Pro‌'s pre-order date, though the reported midnight PT start time is worth taking with a pinch of salt for now. Apple's iPhone event takes place in just under two weeks, on September 9.
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Apple CEO Tim Cook today pledged that the company will make a donation toward relief and rebuilding work in Nepal and Tibet, where flash floods and mudslides have killed hundreds of people.


On Wednesday, part of a Himalayan glacier collapsed, briefly damming a river before a surge of water and mud hit communities downstream. Many people are dead or missing, and roads, bridges, and homes near the Nepal–Tibet border have been destroyed.



This marks Apple's fifth disaster relief pledge in just over two months, after the company supported Indonesia's earthquake recovery earlier this month and previously stepped in for crises in Venezuela, Southern Europe, and Japan.

Cook makes this pledge in the final days of his tenure as CEO. John Ternus takes over the role on September 1, when Cook will shift into the newly created executive chairman position, where he is expected to continue representing Apple on policy matters.
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Volvo this week confirmed that Spatial Audio support in CarPlay, powered by Dolby Atmos, is now rolling out to EX90 models via a software update.

Volvo first detailed Spatial Audio for the EX60, EX90, and ES90 in July. It requires the optional Bowers & Wilkins sound system.
This article, "Spatial Audio in CarPlay Now Rolling Out in Volvo Vehicles" first appeared on MacRumors.com

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