M6 MacBook Pro: Everything Rumoured, and Why It's Not the Redesign You're Waiting For

There are, confusingly, two separate MacBook Pro stories running in parallel right now, and it's easy to conflate them. The one arriving soonest — an updated base 14-inch model with Apple's new M6 chip — is a relatively modest refresh landing this fall. The one people are actually excited about — a genuinely redesigned MacBook Pro with an OLED touchscreen — has been pushed back to 2027. Here's what's actually happening with each, based on reporting from Bloomberg's Mark Gurman, MacRumors, and Macworld.

The M6 MacBook Pro: A Modest Refresh, Late 2026

Apple is reportedly planning to launch an updated base 14-inch MacBook Pro with an M6 chip before the end of 2026, most likely during its usual October Mac event. Crucially, this is expected to be a standalone M6 chip only — no M6 Pro or M6 Max variants this cycle. Apple is reportedly skipping those higher tiers entirely to accelerate its move to the AI-focused M7 generation, which multiple reports now place roughly six months earlier than it otherwise would have arrived.

The headline hardware change is Apple's first 2-nanometer Mac chip, built on TSMC's N2 process — the same manufacturing milestone Apple is separately pursuing with the iPhone 18 Pro's A20 chip. Early estimates suggest a 10–15% raw speed improvement over the M5 at equivalent power draw, or up to 30% lower power consumption at equivalent performance. Gurman has also reported an updated memory architecture, with bandwidth potentially reaching 200GB/s — a 31% jump over the M5's 153GB/s — alongside an updated Neural Engine for on-device AI workloads.

Beyond the chip, don't expect much to change. The 14-inch-only sizing continues (the 16-inch remains reserved for Pro and Max configurations), and there's no reliable evidence of a thinner or lighter chassis this generation. This is a chip refresh, not a redesign.

The Real Redesign: OLED, Touchscreen, Now Delayed

The MacBook Pro most people are actually waiting for — Apple's first touchscreen Mac, with an OLED display, a thinner chassis, and a Dynamic Island replacing the notch — has had a complicated year. It was originally rumoured to launch with new M6 Pro and M6 Max chips. In June 2026, Gurman reported that Apple had revised its roadmap: the redesigned model will now ship with M5 Pro and M5 Max chips instead, effectively reusing last generation's higher-end silicon in the new chassis, while Apple redirects its M6 Pro/Max engineering resources toward getting M7 to market faster.

The practical effect is a further delay. Supply-chain constraints — the same global DRAM and NAND shortages that pushed Apple to raise Mac and iPad prices in June 2026 — had already been reported in April as a factor pushing the redesigned model toward early 2027 rather than late 2026. The June chip-roadmap change appears to be at least partly a response to keeping the project on schedule despite those constraints, rather than the primary cause of the delay.

When it does arrive, expect a substantially thinner design, ProMotion-enabled OLED, a punch-hole camera replacing the current notch, and — for the first time on any Mac — support for touchscreen input.

Then M7, Within Months

Apple's roadmap reportedly doesn't stop there. A revamped base 14-inch MacBook Pro with an M7 chip is expected in the first half of 2027, sharing the same redesigned chassis as the OLED touchscreen model. A second-generation OLED MacBook Pro with M7 Pro and M7 Max chips — built specifically for AI workloads — is then expected roughly a year after the first OLED model ships, likely late 2027 to early 2028. If Apple holds to this roadmap, the base and higher-end MacBook Pro lines will converge on the same redesigned chassis within about a year of each other, a notably faster cadence than Apple has used for major Mac redesigns in the past.

Pricing: Already Higher, Likely to Stay There

MacBook Pro pricing has already moved twice in the past year. The M5 model launched at $1,599 in October 2025. When the M5 Pro and M5 Max variants arrived in March 2026, the base model rose to $1,699 alongside an increased base storage tier. Then, in June 2026, Apple raised the entry price again to $1,999, citing supply-chain constraints. Apple executives have since indicated on earnings calls that those constraints will continue affecting iPhone, Mac, and iPad production costs into the September quarter and beyond — which suggests the $1,999 starting price is likely to be the new normal for the M6 model, rather than a temporary spike.

Apple has not confirmed any details in this article. Everything above is based on supply-chain reporting and analyst estimates, primarily via Bloomberg's Mark Gurman, and remains subject to change.