Apple announces M6 iMac, with sales starting November 6

Apple announced a redesigned-in-place iMac powered by its M6 processor, with preorders opening October 28 and sales beginning November 6. The 24-inch all-in-one desktop retains its existing design and comes in seven colors. Apple set a starting price of $1,499. The company says the new iMac delivers up to five times faster on-device AI performance than the M4 model. Apple also claims performance up to 18 times faster than its most popular Intel-based iMac. Those comparisons are based on Apple’s own benchmarks; independent testing has not yet established how the gains translate to real-world use. Apple says the M6 includes a CPU and GPU with up to 12 cores each, two more than the previous generation, and a dual 16-core Neural Engine. The company cites up to twice the graphics performance for demanding work such as photo editing, compared with the M4, and says memory bandwidth reaches 170 GB per second. It also claims SSD read and write performance is up to twice as fast as in the previous model. The computer keeps a 24-inch 4.5K Retina display and includes Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 6. An optional 2.5-gigabit Ethernet connection is described by Apple as up to 2.5 times faster than...