Did Apple Really Kill the M6 Pro and M6 Max? A Leaked Benchmark Says Maybe Not

For months, the accepted wisdom in Apple circles has been simple: there is no M6 Pro, no M6 Max, and no M6 Ultra coming. Bloomberg's Mark Gurman, whose track record on Apple's silicon roadmap is about as good as it gets, reported back in June that Apple had quietly shelved the higher-end M6 variants entirely, choosing instead to ship a standard M6 and then leapfrog straight to the M7 family. Reportedly, no update would arrive for serious MacBook Pro, Mac Studio, or Mac Pro buyers until sometime in 2027.

That narrative has defined the Mac rumor mill since early summer. Now a leaked benchmark is reportedly muddying it.

The Cancellation Report, Revisited

According to Gurman's original reporting, Apple's plan was to pull forward major neural-processing and AI upgrades that were originally slated for the M7 generation, deciding they were too important to wait for. The reported roadmap: a base M7 chip in the first half of 2027, M7 Pro and M7 Max variants in the second half of that year, and an M7 Ultra trailing in 2028. Several outlets, including MacDailyNews and The Gadgeteer, ran with the story, framing it as the first time in Apple Silicon's history that the company would skip higher-end tiers of a chip generation outright.

It's worth noting this was never an Apple-confirmed plan — it was sourcing from Gurman's known contacts inside Apple's supply chain and product teams, which is usually reliable but is still, by definition, unofficial.

The Geekbench Twist

That's where things got complicated. In mid-September, a Geekbench 7 listing surfaced for a device identified internally as "Mac18,6," carrying an 18-core chip clocked at 4.78GHz with 48GB of memory. The single-core score, 4,150, was reportedly the highest ever recorded for an Apple silicon chip on that benchmark, with a multi-core result of 37,565.

Tech outlet Notebookcheck, which has tracked Apple's Mac identifiers closely, compared the listing against the base M6 (seen in a Mac mini under the identifier "Mac18,5") and the outgoing M5 Pro. Their read: the architecture — six "Super" cores plus 12 performance cores, versus the base M6's single 12-core cluster — looks like genuinely new silicon sharing the base M6's design lineage, not a relabeled M5 Pro chip dressed up to look new. If accurate, that's hard to square with a chip that supposedly doesn't exist.

Adding another layer, Taiwan's Commercial Times reportedly published a follow-up suggesting Apple hadn't fully closed the door on a higher-end M6 series after all — a claim that, taken alongside the Geekbench data, has some in the rumor mill reconsidering whether Gurman's sourcing caught an early-stage decision that Apple later revisited, or whether this benchmark is something else entirely.

Reasons for Skepticism

None of this is settled, and there are real reasons to be cautious before declaring the M6 Pro back from the dead. Notebookcheck flagged that no Pro- or Max-specific device identifiers or drivers have surfaced inside macOS betas, unlike the clear footprint the base M6 has already left. That absence could simply mean macOS hasn't caught up to unreleased hardware yet — or it could mean this listing doesn't represent what people assume it does.

Chinese tech site 163.com, as relayed by Born City, reported that the test device was running an internal Apple system build, consistent with early-stage hardware validation — but also noted inconsistencies in the result that make its reliability genuinely questionable. Benchmark leaks get faked, misattributed, or pulled from engineering sample units that never ship in that configuration often enough that a single Geekbench entry shouldn't be treated as proof of anything on its own.

Why It Matters

If you're holding off on a MacBook Pro or Mac Studio purchase waiting to see whether a higher-end M6 chip materializes, this is exactly the kind of signal that makes patience either smart or pointless, depending on which report turns out right. A straightforward reading is that nothing has actually changed: Apple may have validated M6 Pro silicon internally at some point, consistent with normal chip development, without that meaning it's heading to market on the timeline rumor sites now want it to.

The more interesting possibility, still unconfirmed, is that Apple's plans shifted sometime between Gurman's June report and now — not unheard of, given how fluid component sourcing and competitive pressure from the AI chip race can get.

The Bottom Line

Nothing here is confirmed by Apple, and nothing here should be treated as confirmed by anyone else either. What we have is a credible reporter's sourced claim that the M6 Pro and M6 Max were cancelled, a benchmark leak that cuts against that claim, and a secondary report suggesting Apple hadn't fully closed the door. Readers waiting on a high-end Mac refresh should treat all of it as exactly what it is: an active, unresolved rumor, not a roadmap. The next real signal to watch for is whether device-specific drivers for a Pro or Max variant show up in a macOS beta — that's usually the point where a leak stops being speculative and starts being a product.