After unveiling a new iPad mini yesterday, Apple is continuing its staggered "Pro and Tell" product release with the launch of its latest iMac model. Powered by Apple's shiny new M6 processors, it promises a "major boost" in performance and AI capabilities thanks to extra cores and new Neural Accelerators in each core. The M6 first arrived in the Mac mini and Mac Studio, but it's now available in Apple's entry-level iMac desktop machines. As we saw before, the M6 chip offers not only more performance per core, but more cores in total with up to a 12-core CPU, 12-core GPU and Dual 16-core Neural Engine. That processor, along with faster 170GB/s memory bandwidth, will make the iMac twice as fast for graphics performance compared to the previous iMac M4 model, accelerating intensive tasks like photo editing and gaming, Apple said. Models start with 16GB of unified memory, with options for 24GB and 32GB.

Getting Technical with Mashable Look Up Mashable's Best: E-readers, robovacs, laptops, earbuds, smart home and more Mashable Selects Gift Ideas For Everyone On Your List Say More Versus Trending Now In My Bag Mashable @Home Top creators, ranked Creator Playbook All Series Lauren Allain is a freelance journalist covering deals at Mashable. She graduated from Western Washington University with a B.A. in journalism and holds an M.B.A from Webster Leiden. You can find more of her work online from publications including Reader's Digest, U.S. News & World Report, Seattle Refined, and more. When she's not writing, Lauren prefers to be outside hiking, bouldering, swimming, or searching for the perfect location for all three. All products featured here are independently selected by our editors and writers.

In case there was still any doubt about Meta's commitment to open models, the company is open-sourcing Muse Spark with a new open-weight model called Muse Spark Open. The 800-billion parameter model was optimized for Apple Silicon, but you'll need a staggering 1TB of RAM to run it locally. Meta, which has said it believes the US should not allow Chinese labs to lead on open-source AI, calls Muse Spark Open "the most capable US open-weight model to date." Benchmarks released by the company suggest Meta's model outperforms two leading Chinese models, GLM 5.3 and Kimi K3, on agentic tasks and visual reasoning. It's also the first model optimized to run locally on Apple's M5 Ultra-equipped Mac Studio machines.

Which Mac Desktop Should You Buy? Apple's Mac desktops have become some of the most sought-after computers this year, driven by surging interest in agentic AI. Here's which model to buy depending on your use case. MacBooks have taken most of the spotlight away from Mac desktops in recent years. Now that mobile performance and battery life have improved so much, there's less of a reason to buy a desktop that chains you to your office. But Mac desktops are getting a resurgence.

The Mac Studio can run frontier-level AI language models locally. It's only a preview of what's to come. There are cheaper AI boxes out there. The Mac Studio has a new calling in life. For awhile, it seemed like overkill for just about anyone, regardless of profession.

Mashable Selects Mashable's Best: E-readers, robovacs, laptops, earbuds, smart home and more In My Bag Look Up Creator Playbook Say More AI at School Safety Net Versus Trending Now Back to School Good Connection: Uplifting stories for a digital age All Series Nothing's new flagship headphones are for listening and taking to the studio Bethany Allard is a Los Angeles-based shopping reporter at Mashable covering beauty tech, dating, sex and relationships, and headphones. That basically means she puts her hair through a lot, scrolls through a lot of dating apps, and rotates through a lot of different headphones. In addition to testing out and rounding up the best products, she also covers deals for Mashable, paying an especially obsessive amount of attention to Apple deals and prices. That knowledge comes in handy when she's covering shopping holidays like Prime Day and Black Friday, which she's now done for three years at Mashable. All products featured here are independently selected by our editors and writers.

There's no question that Apple's Mac Mini is a great desktop computer, offering a surprising amount of power in a shockingly small size. However, it tops out at an M5 Pro processor and 64GB of RAM, with 307 GB/s of memory bandwidth. That's enough for many demanding situations, but AI and content creation power users may need more. The "base" version (starting at 2,500) has an M5 Max processor with an 18-core GPU and 32-core GPU, and up to 128GB of unified memory, depending on the option chosen. That goes up to 5,899 for the 18-core CPU and 40-core GPU version with 128GB of RAM and 2TB storage.

The odd M4 Max and M3 Ultra offerings Apple had with the previous Mac Studio were due to Apple skipping a generation with its Ultra chips . This time around, Apple decided that the M5 series would have an Ultra chip, so you can get either an M5 Max or M5 Ultra. The $2,499 M5 Max Mac Studio comes standard with an 18-core CPU (6 super cores, 12 performance cores), a 32-core GPU, 36GB of unified memory, and a 512GB SSD. However, this CPU is essentially fixed at 36GB of RAM; if you want more, you must upgrade to the 18-core CPU/40-core GPU, which technically costs $300 but actually adds $600 to the price when the cost of the 48GB RAM upgrade is factored in. It can further be upgraded to 64GB ($400) or 128GB ($2,000). This review looks at the M5 Max option with an 18-core CPU, a 40-core GPU, 128GB of RAM, and a 4TB SSD, which adds $4,400 the price of the Mac Studio.

Mashable Voices Look Up Trending Now Mashable's Best: E-readers, robovacs, laptops, earbuds, smart home and more Say More Mashable Selects Safety Net Versus Gift Ideas For Everyone On Your List Switch Off In My Bag VidCon with Mashable All Series Looking for a spoiler-free way to find a connection? Looking for spoiler-free NYT Connections hints or just wondering why Connections is trending today? We've got what you need to understand the clues for today's puzzle without spoiling any of the answers. Of course, Mashable has also provided daily hints and answers for Connections, Wordle, and Strands for years, so we can help you if that's also what you need. While we are focused more on meanings than hints in this story, sometimes learning that many of the words have completely unrelated meanings is a clue in and of itself.

Mashable Voices Look Up Trending Now Mashable's Best: E-readers, robovacs, laptops, earbuds, smart home and more Say More Mashable Selects Safety Net Versus Gift Ideas For Everyone On Your List Switch Off In My Bag VidCon with Mashable All Series Everything you need to solve'Connections' #1172. The NYT Connections puzzle today is not too difficult if you're gifted. The game is all about finding the common threads between words. And just like, resets after midnight and each new set of words gets trickier and trickier--so we've served up some hints and tips to get you over the hurdle. If you just want to be told today's puzzle, you can jump to the end of this article for today's solution.