Apple's M5 chips currently power its Macs. The company plans to ship an M6 base chip for entry level machines this year and jump to an M7 family built around AI workloads, the first time it has skipped its own Mac chip release cadence.
Apple is planning to skip the high-end tier of its next Mac processor (the M6 Pro, M6 Max, and M6 Ultra) and move directly to an AI-focused M7 generation, according to people familiar with the company's plans. The company currently ships Macs powered by its M5 chip family and had been expected to roll out the M6 generation across the lineup. Instead, it intends to debut an M6 base chip for entry-level machines this year, then jump to a new M7 family of Pro, Max, and Ultra variants positioned around AI workloads.
It would be the first time Apple has truncated its own Mac silicon roadmap mid-generation, bypassing a planned upgrade tier rather than delaying it. Bloomberg, which first reported the plan, characterized it as "one of the biggest-ever changes to Apple's Mac silicon strategy." Apple does not comment on unannounced products.
The move reframes what Apple's chip cadence looks like when AI sits at the front of the product calendar. Apple's silicon releases have, since the M1 debut in 2020, followed a tight pattern: a new generation across base, Pro, Max, and Ultra tiers roughly every year and a half. Splitting the lineup so the base tier ships while the high end waits for a redesigned chip, and redesigning that high end around AI workloads specifically, is a structural break, not a routine refresh.
"AI-focused" is the framing used by people close to Apple's plans, not a benchmark claim. The reported M7 Pro, Max, and Ultra are positioned around AI workloads, but no public performance numbers, neural engine counts, or workload benchmarks have been disclosed. The story today is the roadmap break; the silicon itself remains unseen.
The cadence change has a real cost signal for recent Mac buyers. Apple is still shipping M5 Pro, M5 Max, and M5 Ultra machines, and those chips will effectively be one tier closer to end-of-life than buyers typically expect from a high-end Mac. A faster move to M7 also raises fair questions about what the M5 high-end actually delivered versus what M7 will promise. Apple historically talks up generational gains, and a shorter M5 window shortens the time those claims need to hold up.
What to watch next: any first-party Apple signals that confirm the split. WWDC follow-ups, Xcode or macOS beta hints about unannounced hardware, or developer documentation changes that surface neural engine or accelerator support the M5 generation does not already provide would all be worth flagging. Until then, this is a single wire report based on anonymous sources, and Apple's silence is consistent with its long-standing policy of not commenting on unannounced products.