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Apple raises prices of MacBooks, iPads

• ajitid 4mo ago
  Nano texture display option also got a price increase. Thankfully, AppleCare+ didn't.
  • simonw 4mo ago
    Hard to make a case that's related to increased RAM or SSD component prices.
    • cromka 4mo ago
      Exactly. It's the "why not" which makes you wonder whether they actually need to bump prices at all and their contracts are still in place...
• oxqbldpxo 4mo ago
  Concerned about apple. First late to Ai, having to surrender to google and now a hit to their hardware. Very unfortunate for apple customers.
• NoSalt 4mo ago
  It was only a matter of time. I wonder how long this silicon drought will last.
• jaimebuelta 4mo ago
  The configuration I’m interested in (I’m waiting until new M5 models are launched) just increased $1000 :-/
• cmdrmac 4mo ago
  The price increases are absurd for some configurations. Glad I placed my order for a new mb pro a couple days ago.
• piinbinary 4mo ago
  I have a suspicion these new prices will stick around, even after the RAM shortage ends. Speaking of which, what's the timeline of the RAM shortage ending? I have no sense for whether it is going to be (for example) 6 months or 3 years.
  • brandrick 4mo ago
    Considering what's causing it, I can't imagine it's a particularly short timeline.
  • justincormack 4mo ago
    At least 3 years maybe more.
  • mDyJzDPmBdG 4mo ago
    On supply side 3 years is about right, new plants won't come online faster. Demand might collapse faster if some AI companies go bankrupt or at very least fail next funding round.
    • thewebguyd 4mo ago
      Depends on who goes bankrupt and what happens to their IP when it happens. If OpenAI or Anthropic liquidate, and the IP gets scooped up by MS, Amazon or Google, demand will remain, the public clouds will still want to run them. Maybe some pressure will come off if they lose the appetite to train new models for a while, inference is cheaper, but they'll still finish some of the buildout.
  • revolvingthrow 4mo ago
    >what's the timeline of the RAM shortage ending? Barring unusual market forces like Taiwan invasion the timeline to ending the acute shortage seems to be mid 2028. The AI still has plenty of money to burn and is the biggest driver, but we’re also shortly before gaming consoles ought to release a new gen (although who knows whether they won’t get delayed for a while). There was even going to be a small upgrade cycle for nerds waiting for 2nm fabbed devices, same as pre-ai datacenters looking for power efficiency. Plenty of pent-up demand, too, as many people simply make do with what they have but will upgrade once the silliness stops. If you’re looking for ssd/ram prices to go back to the low of 2024/early 2025 it probably won’t happen before China catches up, which will be a while yet. There is some build up of new capcity happening from current manufacturers but it’s significantly less than what the demand increased by.
• bix6 4mo ago
  How is the mini not increased?
  • cmdrmac 4mo ago
    I think they removed the "cheaper" configurations. In essence, the barrier to entry to mac mini was increased without actually changing the original price tag. I suspect the new mac mini (if one is coming) will sport a higher price tag.
  • elicash 4mo ago
    I think when they eventually announce the M5 Mac Mini (September?) it'll just be at a higher price.
  • ndiddy 4mo ago
    It is. They previously got rid of the 256 GB, $599 configuration, and the cheapest option was the 512 GB, $799 config. Now they brought back the 256 GB base model but at $799, and the 512 GB model is $999.
    • linguae 4mo ago
      That’s terrible. I purchased my M4 Mac Mini (base 16/256 model) two months ago because I wanted an ARM Mac for a software project. I feared that the M5 Mac Mini would have a price bump, but I would’ve never guessed that Apple would dramatically hike prices for existing models. I have some choice words for Sam Altman for destroying the personal computing marketplace by cornering the memory market…
  • AndroTux 4mo ago
    Models with more ram have also increased in price around 20%. The M4 Pro base configuration went up $200. It’s just that nobody cares about Mac minis.
• cmdrmac 4mo ago
  The price increases are unsurprising considering Tim Cook said it was "unsustainable" for Apple to keep absorbing the increases. Glad I ordered a new machine a couple days ago. I suspect that these price increases will stick around permanently (or at least for a long while).
  • m4rtink 4mo ago
    Yeah, unsustainable to maintain their insane profit margins made possible by their locked down walled garden.
    • electriclove 4mo ago
      They need to do layoffs and get rid of dead weight
• brandrick 4mo ago
  The shine of the Neo just rubbed off somewhat.
  • Quothling 4mo ago
    No kidding, I was considering one to replace my 8g air m1. Which was questionable to begin with performance wise, but it's so worn after all these years. Certainly won't do it now.
  • lapcat 4mo ago
    Yes and no. Relatively speaking, MacBook Neo is still quite cheap, especially since iPad and MacBook Air received even greater price increases. And Apple's competitors are surely experiencing the same component shortages.
  • drnick1 4mo ago
    The $599 XPS13 is a better value, and it can run Linux unlike the Neo.
    • Kirby64 4mo ago
      Until they raise the price on that too. Dell has explicitly stated it's a "limited time" price, so don't be shocked if it becomes the $699 XPS13 almost immediately.
      • drnick1 4mo ago
        Maybe, but Apple has already raised it, and you can still buy the XPS (a more capable device that supports Linux) for $599.
        • Kirby64 4mo ago
          Or you could buy a MacBook Neo on various retailers who still have it for $599. Heck, it’s on sale for $589 on Amazon right now. I don’t think the market shopping for $600 laptops is the same market that wants something that runs Linux.
• seemaze 4mo ago
  Base iPad went up almost 30%, including refurbs. Was recommending one to my parents for $299 - now it’s $379.
  • leeman2016 4mo ago
    I bought one last month for $299. Now the Apple Store is showing $449
    • SirMaster 4mo ago
      Just bought a new iPad A16 128GB from Staples website a few minutes ago for $279 https://slickdeals.net/f/19653138-update-apple-price-increase-coming-buy-now-279-fs-staples-rewards-members-apple-ipad-a16-chip-11-tablet-128gb-wi-fi-only-blue https://slickdeals.net/f/19653138-update-apple-price-increas...
  • intrasight 4mo ago
    Is Apple also offering more money for trade-ins?
    • baggachipz 4mo ago
      Ha, as if.
    • weikju 4mo ago
      A few weeks ago they bumped up Mac trade-in value, and it slightly went down now but not too previous levels.
  • ares623 4mo ago
    damn I was in the market for a new iPad
• erxam 4mo ago
  Just yesterday I saw people saying that Apple wouldn't increase prices until the next refresh. And I agreed! So… holy shit. I think we're going to see even further price increases across the industry. There already were a ton, but it can always get worse, of course. Thank you, OpenAI. What would have we done without your attempts at monopolizing destroying the memory market.
  • akmarinov 4mo ago
    They didn’t increase prices on iPhones, Apple Watch and Airpods
    • MBCook 4mo ago
      I’d say they’re subsidizing them with the rest but the computers and iPads don’t sell much compared to phones so that doesn’t make a lot of sense. I happened to buy an iPad 2 days ago, dang I got lucky. I thought they’d announce before the iPhone launch but had no idea it would be this soon.
    • ErneX 4mo ago
      Those are next in line, it’s almost guaranteed.
      • deleted 4mo ago
        [deleted]
      • conductr 4mo ago
        September new versions will likely start at a price point than they would have
        • ErneX 4mo ago
          Yes, and seems they are only releasing the Pros and the foldable this year, and will release the base and e models in Spring.
      • akmarinov 4mo ago
• monegator 4mo ago
  Mediamarkt already had the neo on "special price" (launch price) until the end of this month, it was pretty obvious what would happen
  • flyingshelf 4mo ago
    That just proves that Mediamarkt are scammers. It's not special price if it's the current MRSP. "Future price hikes" are not something you can legally base your "sales" on.
• AustinDev 4mo ago
  With memory manufacturers running gross margins in excess of 80% how long until we see upstarts come online to eat away at that or is that unlikely to happen in the near future? I can't imagine a margin that large is allowed to exist unchallenged for more than a few years.
  • erxam 4mo ago
    Even the upstarts are cashing in. I believe CXMT is making some serious cash now.
    • m4rtink 4mo ago
      Yep - the incumbent memory cartel bathes in money for a bit longer - then Chinese manufacturers eat their market share while they sleep on their laurels.
    • Danox 4mo ago
      Which they will put back into the business, this will be remembered as the time when the Chinese entered the worldwide memory market in a big way.
  • m348e912 4mo ago
    The memory manufacturing industry is historically notorious for its "feast or famine" cycles, bouncing violently between periods of extreme supply gluts and crushing shortages. We're in a shortage with massive demand right now, but manufacturers are hesitant to significantly invest in new manufacturing capacity due to the risk of being left holding the bag if demand drops.
  • dylan604 4mo ago
    As has been said here every time this question comes up, years away if ever. It takes years to bring a new fab online as well as a huge amount of capital investment. Once the AI bubble pops, you now have a glut of RAM chips with prices crashing. If that new fab has been paid off while the getting was good, it's now an albatross on the books. Not something investors are eager to get into
  • 4mo ago
• functionmouse 4mo ago
  2GB ought to be enough for anyone. It's our software that is unsustainable.
  • andrensairr 4mo ago
    640k ought to be enough for anybody...
• revolvingthrow 4mo ago
  Oof, that’s a ~20% increase across the entire lineup. Ram and storage are particularly expensive, as can be expected: mbp m5 pro $1700 -> $2000, m3 ultra $4000 -> $5300. To be expected, there’s only so much margin apple is willing to lose and everybody else already increased prices. I’m surprised that iphones didn’t get a price raise while neo did. Neo seems like a clear market share attempt so that they can upsell on services, I would’ve expected either both of those or neither to get dinged.
  • elicash 4mo ago
    I think the Neo was eating into their Air sales, and not merely bringing the Mac to a new market.
  • TalkingCodeMonk 4mo ago
    They also inexplicably snuck in a 50% increase for the TV 4k, just to be extra greedy. Treat yoself Tim Apple!
    • 0cf8612b2e1e 4mo ago
      That’s infuriating. I was hovering over the buy button last week, and now that’s a deal breaker. I was already going for the premium price point for hard-to-justify reasons.
      • 0cf8612b2e1e 4mo ago
        Update: while I am terribly unhappy to give them money, there are still retailers who are listing the previous price and I was able to scoop one up before the hike went into effect.
    • fckgw 4mo ago
      The majority of the component cost in the AppleTV is likely the storage so that's a big hit.
      • Marsymars 4mo ago
• darioush 4mo ago
  Meanwhile, government will tell you inflation is some number like ~5%
  • brandon272 4mo ago
    Politicians pretend it’s much lower. Or claim that deflation is occurring through statements like “we are bringing prices down”.
  • hibikir 4mo ago
    Inflation is an average of many things. Computer components have a huge spike in demand with insufficient increase in supply, which is going to lag for years, so we might as well be buying at auction. It's not a price that flows through the entire economy, like the price of oil. So yes, inflation on average is nowhere near as high as in RAM prices.
    • sph 4mo ago
      > Inflation is an average of many things What other things have been getting cheaper in the last ~2 years? And as it's an average of many things, it's quite easy to change which 'things' it is calculated upon to show whatever number is more convenient politically.
      • treis 4mo ago
        Eggs. That was the last omg inflation is crazy story and now they're about as cheap as they've ever been.
      • rsanek 4mo ago
        Turns out, BLS actually lists this stuff when they release CPI figures. Used cars & trucks; butter; cheese; flour; chicken; textbooks; drugs are all down since ~2 years ago. Not an exhaustive list! https://www.bls.gov/news.release/cpi.htm https://www.bls.gov/news.release/cpi.htm
    • timacles 4mo ago
      You really believe food, gas and house prices are not increasing at the same amount? Some day we will look back and think about how dumb we were to allow them to lie to us about what inflation really is
• nalekberov 4mo ago
  > We have never seen a component price increase this much, this quickly. We have shielded our customers from these increases so far, but we have now reached a point where we need to begin raising prices on a number of products, including today’s increases for iPad and Mac. We know this is not welcome news, and we are working tirelessly to find solutions. In other words, we have to protect our billions of cash from burning. They could keep the prices down, but then again for these C-suites everything should go up, right? Who cares if the market is “ready” for price jumps? Who cares when HDD, memory manufactures prioritize Sam Atmans? Heck, half-made, buggy games now starts at $80 price point. It’s unfortunately billionaires’ world.
  • ElProlactin 4mo ago
    Apple has never been a charity.
    • nalekberov 4mo ago
      Who said that? It was Apple, who sold their iPhones at astronomic margins, created walled gardens. There could be other solutions to this problem - one being, signing exclusive deals with vendors.
      • foldr 4mo ago
        >There could be other solutions to this problem - one being, signing exclusive deals with vendors. Apple won't get an exclusive deal to buy RAM for far less than the going rate.
        • Danox 4mo ago
          The solution for Apple is move design and engineering of memory to Apple Silicon design in house and team up with TSMC on shore fab in America.
      • wat10000 4mo ago
        Why would they set prices at anything other than the level which maximizes profit? I'm sure they're doing everything they can to cut their costs as well. That means even more profit. Lower costs only translates into lower prices if that results in more profit overall.
• Aurornis 4mo ago
  I was considering a 128GB MacBook Pro earlier this week. I priced it out today. The same spec (I think) is $2,000 more expensive. I wasn’t expecting a jump that big. I can’t justify carrying around an $8,000 laptop.
  • kamranjon 4mo ago
    Damn I was considering an m5 max with 128gb just a few days ago and it was 5099 and now it’s 6699 - 1.6k increase - definitely a massive increase and has dissuaded me - this is pretty insane.
    • mirashii 4mo ago
      There are some Apple resellers that haven't quite caught up to the price increase yet. I just got a 14" M5 Max 128G, 2TB for $5100 off Amazon through Adorama, https://expercom.com/products/16-inch-macbook-pro-with-m5-pro-or-max-standard-display-space-black https://expercom.com/products/16-inch-macbook-pro-with-m5-pr... seems to have them in stock as well.
      • sixothree 4mo ago
        Already gone at least from what I'm seeing.
        • mirashii 4mo ago
          I guess I'm glad I snap bought, looks like I may have gotten the last one on Amazon for the 14" at least. I see a couple 16" options around at slightly higher than they were at retail but steal cheaper than Apple's new prices.
    • deleted 4mo ago
      [deleted]
  • theYipster 4mo ago
    Two weeks ago I purchased an M5 Max MacBook Pro 16 inch with 128GB RAM and a 4TB SSD from Microcenter for $5100. (They had a $900 discount on the machine.) Not sure if that deal is still around, or if Microcenter still has any stock, but if you're in the market, I'd make a run for it! $5100 is now $8000 on Apple (and if ordered via Apple, it won't ship until August.)
• deadbabe 4mo ago
  Holy shit, if Apple is being pushed to do this, something they never would have done before before a refresh, then it must mean there is some truth about these memory stocks eventually reaching trillion dollar market caps at this rate.
  • linguae 4mo ago
    The only other event I could remember in the history of Apple that is remotely comparable is the release of the original Power Mac G4 towers in 1999. They were originally going to have 400MHz, 450MHz, and 500MHz models, but due to issues regarding processor availability, Apple lowered the specifications by 50MHz for each model, but without lowering the prices. https://lowendmac.com/1999/power-mac-g4-yikes/ https://lowendmac.com/1999/power-mac-g4-yikes/ I have a 350MHz model that I purchased used for $40 back in 2009. I’ve never seen across-the-board price hikes from Apple that were not accompanied with some type of upgrade.
  • asats 4mo ago
    >there is some truth about these memory stocks eventually reaching trillion dollar market caps What do you mean "eventually"? Samsung $1.529 T SK Hynix $1.345 T Micron $1.343 T
• jlengrand 4mo ago
  And in a few years, all the manufacturers will be wondering why those customers don't consume as much any more.
• khurs 4mo ago
  After these increases, will Apple be maintaining the previous profit margin? Or are they also sharing the pain with the customer and partially increasing prices only?
  • TheJoeMan 4mo ago
    The ridiculous thing about profit margin, is that if RAM increases Apple's cost by $100, they have to increase the selling price by a multiple of that to maintain the same %. Same exact factory line, labor cost, shipping cost, but have to 1.5x everything at the shrine of the bean counters.
• GL26 4mo ago
  Saw a post two days ago right here about Apple raising its prices, and asking "when ?", should have bought 10 macbooks yesterday : https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48643079 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48643079
  • BigTTYGothGF 4mo ago
    What would I do with ten macsbook?
    • caboteria 4mo ago
      They would make an excellent Beowulf cluster.
    • GL26 4mo ago
      Resell them, or make a tiny hosted cloud farm to help devs that don't own a mac build an app for ios
      • deleted 4mo ago
        [deleted]
      • BigTTYGothGF 4mo ago
        Seems like an awful lot of work.
    • worldsavior 4mo ago
      Sell them.
• tristor 4mo ago
  The 128GB M5 Max MBP I ordered at launch was $7049 and is now $9849 for the same configuration, that's nearly a 30% price increase and more than $2000 bump. During the same time from launch to now, I have seen local LLMs get significantly better, to the point that I wish more people had hardware like this to be able to localize their workloads. I can't help but think society is moving in the wrong direction with this technology by further centralizing in hyperscalars and damaging the hardware market to make strong general purpose computing even more difficult for individuals to obtain, when the right direction would be democratization of both the hardware and the software to allow most workloads to be run locally.
  • kamranjon 4mo ago
    I really think this is a coordinated effort to restrict computing capacity for individuals and force adoption of centralized AI - I think there already is evidence of this from the moves OpenAI had made to lock up memory and gpu markets.
    • aroman 4mo ago
      Who exactly is “coordinating” that effort? Surely everyone except the datacenter builders and the big hosted AI models has exactly the opposite incentive.
      • angoragoats 4mo ago
        > Who exactly is “coordinating” that effort? The datacenter builders and the big hosted AI models. The person you're replying to even mentions OpenAI by name.
      • varispeed 4mo ago
        The rich.
      • fsflover 4mo ago
        https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48673500 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48673500
• c0rruptbytes 4mo ago
  [dead]
• cma256 4mo ago
  I love the "year of the linux desktop" meme but even so I feel compelled to say it. Year of the Linux desktop?? You don't need a new machine if your new OS uses 1/4 of the resources.
  • akazantsev 4mo ago
    Unlikely Linux will become mainstream until people stop saying "install Linux" and not a particular distro. I recently installed Ubuntu on a new laptop: something doesn't work because I need a more recent kernel, so... I installed the second "user-friendly" distro - Fedora. Scrolling is 10x faster in Chromium-based browsers, making it unusable. The fix - install KDE... Then I had to make hardware video acceleration work so that playback wouldn't drain the battery. That was a pain in the ass. So, Linux won't consume LESS unless you spend your time configuring different stuff. I can't imagine users want to mess with this instead of buying macs. https://www.reddit.com/r/brave_browser/comments/1qqyh2z/scrolling_with_a_trackpad_on_linux_is_way_way_too/ https://www.reddit.com/r/brave_browser/comments/1qqyh2z/scro...
    • thewebguyd 4mo ago
      Yeah, everyone always misses the little things when it comes to the masses moving to Linux. Linux is not an operating system (as people know it). Ubuntu is, Fedora is, etc. Like you said, "install Linux" is meaningless and leads you down a rabbit hole of "what distro." Just say "Install Fedora KDE" or whatever. But even saying "Install Fedora KDE" is going to alienate an enormous group of the general population. We can manage it, gamers can largely manage it, and someone relatively tech-adjacent can handle it. The completely non-technical person that does most of their computing on an iPhone? Not a chance in hell you're going to get them to download an ISO, flash a USB drive, and boot from it. Queue up the questions "Wtf is an ISO? I haven't had a USB drive in 10 years...what is an operating system?" Remember that OEDC study? About 80% of the global adult population is functionally computer illiterate when it comes to solving problems or doing tasks that aren't completely on rails. 24% of adults cannot use a computer at all. An additional 14% can only do one-step, highly guided tasks like click a single link, or delete a single email. Another 29% can use a web browser or email basically but struggle with any task that requires navigation or multiple steps. Being in tech and in tech communities its easy to assume some basic level of competency, but that level does not exist. I've experienced it first hand throughout my career in IT. Most people where I work struggle with the concept of basic file management, let alone anything more advanced than sending an email or finding a file. Year of the Linux Desktop will never happen without mass market preinstalls as the default choice.
• Kenji 4mo ago
  Inflation babyyyyyyyyyy. See if your salary also raises by 10-20% this year. You're getting priced the fuck out of everything, have fun.
  • alanwreath 4mo ago
    I mean that and the effects of multiple LLM vendors affecting supply and demand.
• deleted 4mo ago
  [deleted]
• submeta 4mo ago
  What? M5 Max MacBook Pro: $4,099 (up from $3,599) M3 Ultra Mac Studio: $5,299 (up from $3,999 How can this be explained with price increases in Ram prices? Come on Apple, don’t be so greedy. Make money but don’t bleed us.
  • flyingshelf 4mo ago
    It's not just a RAM problem. All silicon shares the same process. CPU, GPU, SSD, etc
    • Kirby64 4mo ago
      > All silicon shares the same process. CPU, GPU, SSD, etc No, no they don't. CPUs and GPUs do, broadly, but SSDs and RAM use specific processes catered only to their respective usages. You can't use a NAND flash process for anything else. Likewise for a RAM process.
• varispeed 4mo ago
  Indeed, maxed out model I've been saving to buy is now £2000 more expensive than just few weeks ago. Madness. There is also no option for instalments and bank also refused loan as asset purchase. Cool.
• rvz 4mo ago
  Cryptocurrencies never did this with the entire computing industry because it got its act together and efficient blockchains arrived without the need to constrain the supply of CPUs, GPUs and memory chips to the point with drastic price increases, and we have faster blockchains handling billions of transactions a week. Just look at what AI (in the form of LLMs) is doing to the rest of the computing industry because of throwing insurmountable levels of debt into data centers instead of researching efficient methods for running 1TN+ parameters language models locally or even to gain the same performance, intelligence equivalent without such large parameters. It just tells you that AI is at the point where personal computing is going to price out a lot of people if it doesn't get cheaper. Until there are viable efficient methods in running 1TN+ parameter models or a smaller model performing at the equivalent or better than frontier models, we will continue to see more of this in the future.
  • wat10000 4mo ago
    Cryptocurrencies never did this because they were never popular. They were a big deal in tech spaces but the average person never really worked out what a bitcoin was or how they'd get one. AI, on the other hand, is seeing widespread use among ordinary people.
  • mrbungie 4mo ago
    Ah, come on. I remember the scalping of GPUs due to crypto-mining and then all the things Nvidia did to market segment crypto out of the regular (gaming) consumer space. AI is much worse because the scale is OOM greater, but crypto/blockchain effects on the market weren't harmless either.
    • rvz 4mo ago
      > I remember the scalping of GPUs due to crypto-mining and then all the things Nvidia did to market segment crypto out of the regular (gaming) consumer space. This happened when Ethereum was a proof-of-work (PoW) blockchain and then switched to an environmentally efficient method of consensus (Proof of Stake) which the demand for GPUs fell sharply afterwards. > AI is much worse because the scale is OOM greater, but crypto/blockchain effects on the market weren't harmless either. AI on the other hand has done the exact opposite and has little to show to make things efficient. Instead, companies are buying up the world's supply of GPUs and building hundreds of data centers because that is the laziest way to scale up and then laying you off to pay for it all.
• reenorap 4mo ago
  Wow the top end MacBook Pro with 128 GB memory went up $1600 overnight!
• lapcat 4mo ago
  Can we now all admit that AI is bad? The technology itself may be neat, but the side effects are killing us. How can AI make computing easier when ironically it's now significantly harder to get computers? AI is driving price increases, unemployment, economic inequality, illiteracy, misinformation, slop on the internet, possibly global warming and water shortages, etc. Is this really the future we wanted?
  • cpursley 4mo ago
    Farming implements and looms are bad, I miss having to scratch my own food from the earth and knit my own clothing from whatever fibers and animals I could find...
    • lapcat 4mo ago
      This is not a serious response to my comment. Did farming implements and looms make food and clothing more expensive and scarce? No, they did the opposite, making both more readily available. So your comment is a disanalogy.
      • aroman 4mo ago
        The point you’re making is that AI is an intrinsically bad technology, but that does not follow from this news story, which merely evidences that AI is in demand and supply has not caught up.
        • lapcat 4mo ago
          > The point you’re making is that AI is an intrinsically bad technology Not really. I said, "The technology itself may be neat." There's a larger societal question: how many resources should we devote to this technology? The current answer appears to be "unlimited resources". > AI is in demand and supply has not caught up. The point is that we're currently suffering the many negative side effects of AI production, some of which I listed. Will there be a utopian future when the negative side effects are all eliminated? Maybe... or maybe not. In any case, it sucks right now, and relief does not appear imminent. Indeed, the Apple price increases are a sign that the component shortages are not just temporary, and even the wealthiest corporation in the world can't ride out the storm.
• brandon272 4mo ago
  Was looking at upgrading my M1 Air (16/1TB) to an M5 Air (24/2TB). This price increase changes the time horizon of that upgrade from “now” to “let’s try and get 18-24 more months out of this thing”.
  • electriclove 4mo ago
    Prices have not updated at some retailers yet (Amazon, Best Buy, Costco). Get a move on! Prices are not going to come down anytime soon
    • brandon272 4mo ago
      Unfortunately the configuration I need is not available through any of those retailers. The way I approach these purchases is amortized cost over time. I do not expect prices to be lower in 2 years but if I can keep using my older hardware for longer, I am more open to absorbing the blow of the higher cost down the road.
  • sirbutters 4mo ago
    Honestly the M1 Air still has many years of life still. It's an amazing machine.
• rchaud 4mo ago
  Apple soaked up all the good press about the PC-killer Macbook Neo's price point, waited until those articles seeded search results, influencer videos and AI queries, then jacked up the price by 17%.
  • groundzeros2015 4mo ago
    I went looking for a comparable PC product a few months ago and nothing is even close in price for the same feature set.
    • rchaud 4mo ago
      You're proving my point. It's no longer at the same price.
      • pseudalopex 4mo ago
        A plausible interpretation of their comment was they found nothing close to the new price.
• jl6 4mo ago
  Welcome to the era of thinking more carefully about computer resource usage!
  • wrxd 4mo ago
    I wish but I am not hopeful that's actually going to happen
    • jl6 4mo ago
      It certainly wasn’t going to happen while compute kept getting cheaper. A sustained period of rising compute costs is unprecedented, so who knows what might be possible.
• deleted 4mo ago
  [deleted]
• fcoury 4mo ago
  I am usually terrible at timing my purchases, but a couple of weeks back I bought a maxed out MacBook Pro M5 Max with 8TB SSD 128GB RAM. I think this one paid off for all my other bad timings. Edit: I paid $6,400 after taxes and the same setup is now at $9,850 before taxes. Whoa!
• diebillionaires 4mo ago
  Apple was already on the edge of "too expensive". Now it's obscene. I think this really opens the door for the new intel framework 13 pro.
  • petesergeant 4mo ago
    > the new intel framework 13 pro Do they have a source for RAM that’s insulated from the global market?
    • throawayonthe 4mo ago
      no but you could even bring your own but what i think they meant is framework is looking like a better deal now that macs are more expensive
• steve-atx-7600 4mo ago
  If you don’t need the lastest models, I recommend https://eshop.macsales.com/ https://eshop.macsales.com/ for refurbished that I can trust. Their prices seem reasonable to me. I have been buying from them since I was a kid in the 90s and it was a (the) mail order catalog for the Mac ecosystem. I bought a beefy 3 year old mini for a home server earlier this year from them.
• discopicante 4mo ago
  Quite convenient outcome for the AI labs + hyperscalers that the barrier of entry to running (usable + performant) open source models on your own hardware is getting higher, not lower.
• fckgw 4mo ago
  If you were planning on buying a Mac, do it right now through a third party vendor like Best Buy or Costco. They have not yet adjusted their pricing and in fact, have sales currently running. Both have the Macbook Air on sale for $949, for example.
• aurareturn 4mo ago
  I was planning to upgrade my 16" M1 Pro to the M6 Pro 16" MBP later this year. But as soon as I heard Cook say they're planning price increases last week, I ran out and bought a 15" M5 Air 24GB/1TB for $1444 at MicroCenter. The M6 Pro/Max MBP generation is going to be super expensive given the RAM and storage costs, brand new design, OLED, and TSMC N2 node.
  • senordevnyc 4mo ago
    I supposedly just snagged the exact same model on Amazon for $1549, as opposed to $1999 on Apple’s site today!
    • aurareturn 4mo ago
      I doubt these discounts will last much longer.
  • aroman 4mo ago
    I'm confused why you would replace your 16" M1 Pro with a 15" M5 Air... on which axes is that an upgrade over your M1 Pro?
    • metaltyphoon 4mo ago
      The M5 air is much faster than M1 Pro (I have the same setup as OP)
      • aroman 4mo ago
        For sure, on paper - I'm curious, do you actually notice that difference in your day-to-day? I struggle to think of times in my usage of my computer where I think "this feels slow", but maybe I'm blind to it.
    • aurareturn 4mo ago
      The biggest reason is I move around a lot and the 16" MBP has weighed on me. It's a really chunky and heavy laptop. Sometimes I don't even want to carry it anywhere. The M5 is also significantly faster than an M1 Pro. I definitely feel the snappiness on day to day use. I'm also upgrading from 16GB/512GB to 24GB/1TB. The screen is quite a downgrade and the battery life, surprisingly, is only marginally better than my 5 year old M1 Pro with only 79% capacity left. Other than that, I don't miss anything else about the M1 Pro. I hear rumors that they're making a smaller MBP in the M6 Pro/Max generation which is why I wanted to wait originally.
• Thomaschaaf 4mo ago
  > The average price increase is $269.23. How is that calculated?
  • ramon156 4mo ago
    Markov chains
  • deleted 4mo ago
    [deleted]
  • deleted 4mo ago
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  • accrual 4mo ago
    [dead]
• rpgbr 4mo ago
  Devs reading this, please start making your apps less memory hungry. All the people running any computer appreciate.
  • as1mov 4mo ago
    Realistically this will just be used to force people into even more subscriptions. Want to edit a video? Pay a subscription for a Microslop Pro Max Windows $50/mo, then pay another $50 the NVidia Pro GPU add-on (the gaming version is slightly cheaper, but we can't let you use that since it's against the ToS), then another $50/mo for Adobe Premiere + $20 extra for the 4K export option. But you've already used up your monthly quota for it, so you pay another $50 for reset the limit. Then your machine doesn't have enough storage, I guess it's time to upgrade the cloud storage subscription too, that will be another $50 please. Thank you and have a nice day!
  • bigyabai 4mo ago
    Message recieved, porting my webapp to Electron ASAP.
  • protoster 4mo ago
    Don't get your hopes up. The industry is well underway in migrating everything possible away from native apps to Electron.
    • nxc18 4mo ago
      People for some reason forget that for most election apps you can run it in a browser tab and avoid almost all of the overhead. You can run slack, teams, outlook, Spotify, figma, and just about everything else in a browser tab; you get Linux support for free and you are only running one browser instance.
      • cosmic_cheese 4mo ago
        Doing that helps some, but it doesn’t help the fact that web engines and the balls of mud they’re so often tasked with running are quite heavy even with just one browser instance.
• codazoda 4mo ago
  The Studio I looked at yesterday jumped from $2600 to $3400 (30%). I was saving for it and was about 1/2 way there. I was expecting these increases in 2027, so planned to buy late in the year. Apple moved faster than I expected after the price increase announcements. On the flip side, this makes PC options with GPUs more attractive. I’m interested in running local AI models.
• cryo32 4mo ago
  I suspect that these prices are going to seriously dent sales. RAM is getting crushed. I bet the next step is going to be dumb terminals and centralisation onto all the hardware that the cloud companies bought up for AI and found wasn't possible to get any ROI out. Bezos was all over that already. We are truly entering the dark ages of personal computing.
  • overgard 4mo ago
    GPU farms aren't that useful for general purpose work
    • cryo32 4mo ago
      Yeah but there's a huge amount of generic estate to support those GPUs.
  • varispeed 4mo ago
    I know some organisations were already moving to thin clients last year. Citing cutting costs and improving security (the data doesn't stay in employee's laptop and all access to virtual desktop is thoroughly centrally logged). Massive pushback (lagging, accessibility issues, slow) from workers was ignored and many people quit.
    • thewebguyd 4mo ago
      We aren't quite there yet where I work but those conversations are starting. We've already pushed refresh cycles out for the non-tech folks from 3 years out to 5 years with justification (basically has to be broken or battery shot, otherwise its run it til it dies or no longer gets updates, no more automatic refresh). Sucks, but can't say I disagree with the fresh times though. There hasn't been a compelling need to upgrade all knowledge workers every 3 years anyway. An M2 air from 2022 is still fine today and will likely continue to be fine for at least another 3 years or more.
      • rahkiin 4mo ago
• sylens 4mo ago
  The Macbook Pro jump is probably the most meaningful, as it now puts the 16GB/1TB configuration of the 14" at $1999. That is now more than a Framework 13 Pro with Intel Core Ultra 3, 16 GB/1TB, whereas the Framework looked more expensive when it was originally announced.
• thomascountz 4mo ago
  RAM impacts engineers' machines. We learn to build smaller again. More breakthroughs happen around less-memory intensive local inference. Model provides' bottom lines are impacted. They bail on RAM contracts. The market floods. Private inference becomes flush with resources. The third-wave of local models begins, but RAM trauma keeps things lean. Nature heals?
• enmerk4r 4mo ago
  Wow, I guess no one is immune from supply chain issues. To Apple's credit, I remember the time (a while back) when people overpaid for the Apple brand while not getting as much performance for their money as they would have with other laptop / smartphone manufacturers. Things have really changed over the recent years. Thanks to all the vertical integration, Apple is about as cost-effective as you can get for top-of-the-line hardware. So the fact that they are raising prices is an alarming sign.
  • thewebguyd 4mo ago
    What surprised me was that they increased across the current lineup. When Cook announced that they'd have to raise prices, I had assumed he was referring to new launches, as is Apple tradition I did not expect such a large and widespread bump across the whole line up.
    • accrual 4mo ago
      Same, I was reading discussion just yesterday that these were expected to go in place with the September releases.
• joshstrange 4mo ago
  > M5 Max MacBook Pro: $4,099 (up from $3,599) $500!! I mean that's not crazy surprising given price increase in the components I'm trying to buy (ram and hard drives, maybe an SSD) but damn. The M6 is probably the next laptop I'll get, I can only hope that component prices have calmed down by the time it's released but I'm not holding my breath.
• hodder 4mo ago
  Forgive me because I do not understand the supply chain for memory. With Micron et al effectively scalping their customers with an oligopoly on probably the lowest intellectual IP in the chain, does this not guarantee 10 years from now a) We are either overbuilt as hyperscalers cut capex, or b) hyperscalers vertically integrate. Or is it truly that hard to make memory? And if that is not true, perhaps it isn't really a commodity at all.
  • matwood 4mo ago
    It's not that it's hard, it's that it requires a large up-front investment. The last time prices were higher, some made that investment, prices cratered and many companies never recovered the investment/went out of business.
• CobaltFire 4mo ago
  Well I guess that changes the keep vs sell calculation on my 128GB Studio. Have already been thinking about downsizing; seeing what the prices are now I may go ahead with that. Absolutely awful timeline where the value of a PC goes up with time.
• deleted 4mo ago
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• john-titor 4mo ago
  I was eyeing a 24GB macbook air configuration that used to go for ~1250 USD in my region, which was a fairly good deal. This went up by 500. I guess I'll be going with a frame.work instead. Was willing to pay the premium for repairability anyways and now this has made the price difference a no-brainer.
• tavavex 4mo ago
  Anyone else here enjoy living in the future? Look at us, we get AI megacorporations ruling the world and bestowing us with the power to use their servers for just $20-200/month. It's practically charity, and all we had to give up for it is all consumer hardware, the quality of the internet and our own jobs. I love it here!
  • Theodores 4mo ago
    Sometimes I look at dystopian futures from literature and wonder what the problem is. I suspect some might prefer 1984 for the stability, some might prefer Brave New World for the Soma and some might prefer Wall-E because life looks good with B+L.
  • throwaway-11-1 4mo ago
    Wish I could shake the hidden hand in gratitude
  • maipen 4mo ago
    The "worst" part of this comment, is that it's not even exaggeration. In the last 6 months, my competition increased 5x. People that didn't have the skills to compete, now do. My margins will keep shrinking while hardware and servers gets more expensive. It's a fucking miserable future for us software people. Architecting and "good taste" won't be good enough to put food on the table next year...
    • sajithdilshan 4mo ago
      [flagged]
      • hijodelsol 4mo ago
        While I understand both of your perspectives, please think about how frustrating it can be to have poured years into building a product genuinely solving a problem and building a relationship with clients only for a dozens AI copy cats to come in. Even if your product is clearly better, the SEO slop alone will raise your marketing cost, price cutting will affect you as not all clients are able to tell quality before purchase or will know of your project, etc. And in the end, everyone is worse of. We get less for the products we build. Customers in many cases get a worse solution. And the AI copy cats multiply until none of them can make a living from it.
• bazzmt 4mo ago
  "Apple has increased the price of MacBooks and iPads by about 20 per cent worldwide, one of the broadest price rises in its history, as the iPhone maker blamed memory chip shortages caused by the AI infrastructure boom."
• subarctic 4mo ago
  Damn it, I was just about to buy a mac mini with 24gb ram yesterday, but waited until today to figure out some shipping logistics. Definitely didn't expect the price would go up so much in one day.
  • jkman 4mo ago
    Check costco/another third party, they still have yesterday's pricing right now
• ungovernableCat 4mo ago
  2026 computing, brokies need not apply.
  • kalleboo 4mo ago
    Computers are the new cars - only rich people (or people assuming debt) buy new ones, everyone else gets to buy used.
• juancn 4mo ago
  Apple doesn't like to be held hostage, it has the cash coffers, so it wouldn't surprise me if they're somehow buying dedicated production capacity for the future. Not that they will start making memory themselves, but they have bankrolled production expansions in their suppliers before in exchange for guaranteed supply. In any case, if my guess is right, it would take years to take effect.
  • thewebguyd 4mo ago
    Wouldn't surprise me, but Cook did rule out building their own anyway > Cook said Apple is willing to deploy its balance sheet to help secure supply and called for all options to be examined, including a review of national security restrictions on Chinese memory suppliers. He ruled out building Apple's own memory factories. Above all else, any focus to corner supply for them will be focused on the iPhone. It's their cash cow, nearly half of their revenue. They'll sacrifice other products to save the iPhone.
    • Danox 4mo ago
      They don't need to just design and engineer the memory and partner with TSMC in America somewhere why the Chinese are coming into the market.
• DiabloD3 4mo ago
  This is a weird way for Apple to admit the Mac is dead.
  • iAMkenough 4mo ago
    If this is your interpretation of “Mac is dead” you might as well say “personal computers are dead.”
    • DiabloD3 4mo ago
      If it wasn't for Linux and open source, I very much could!
• deleted 4mo ago
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• darreld 4mo ago
  I put a iPad Air in my bag on Apple's store yesterday. It went up $135 overnight. Cancelled. I'm not sure I do specifically iPad things on it (YouTube, web). Will look at some Android tablets I think. I don't think an iPad Air is worth 835.
• avgDev 4mo ago
  Personal computing is in shambles right now. It has been for a bit. It was hard to buy video cards for a while, now other components are affected too.
  • Scroll_Swe 4mo ago
    My pre-built desktop PC is as cheap today as last year at the same store... Dont get the panic. :) ryzenn 9800x3d 32GB ram 9070xt about 2k
    • shadowfacts 4mo ago
      Then you overpaid a year ago. A 2x16GB DDR5 kit was around $90 a year ago and is over $400 today.
      • Scroll_Swe 4mo ago
        For DDR sure, now add all the other components :)
  • toddmorey 4mo ago
    Well, I think from the technology side, the performance and capacity you can get in a personal computer (especially a laptop) is absolutely incredible. It's just component suppl and that supply is being eaten up and re-diverted to data centers. Prices and availability will be in poor shape. Though I am wondering if GPU compute and memory start to diverge enough that AI companies begin using such specialized chips they stop threatening consumer devices. Maybe that's just wishful thinking.
    • tverbeure 4mo ago
      When fabs are full, you produce silicon with the highest margins.
    • vlovich123 4mo ago
      I think you have it backwards. Personal computing was a huge market driver in the 80s and 900 and 2000s. In the 2010s this became less so with the ramp up of cloud computing, mobile computing, and death of Moore’s law. Now personal computing is a footnote that generally takes the left overs from mobile or server and will continue to get squeezed due to lack of meaningful market demand. Prices must come down not because AIs switch to accelerators - they still need huge amounts of ram for inference* AND training - but because if RAM isn’t a pricing cartel then supply will increase. * Technically there’s at least one company I know of burning models into ASICs but you still need the RAM to store the weights. SRAM is too power and heat heavy but RAM will only get a reprieve if Cerebras pans out and given OpenAI is the company that partnered with them and then cornered the DRAM market it suggests there’s challenges scaling that approach.
• jdiff 4mo ago
  Man, if there was anyone that could weather the storm with their thick memory margins (at least on upgrades), it should have been Apple.
  • cyanydeez 4mo ago
    capitalism needs its profits. also, apple is a luxury brand first and foremost.
    • spwa4 4mo ago
      Indeed. Although it's investment that's the problem here, not profit.
    • kingleopold 4mo ago
      "luxury brand" that offers best base models for bucks than any other windows machine is my favorite luxury. if you compare same $$ priced macbook air to windows laptops, speed and long term reliability difference is few times big.
  • baal80spam 4mo ago
    If they could, they would.
    • rtkwe 4mo ago
      They definitely /could/ it's a question of do they need to. I think they'd just rather maintain their margins rather than eat the cost increase for an unknown amount of time for a potentially minor difference in sales. There's not much you /can't/ do when you're sitting on the amount of cash Apple is.
  • whatever1 4mo ago
    Utter planning failure. At the same time they have a quarter trillion in cash sitting.
    • spandrew 4mo ago
• tra3 4mo ago
  I've been dragging my feet on upgrading my M1 Air, guess now I'm just going to wait a bit longer. Truth be told, it's still sufficient for web dev but I figured at ~5 years old I should upgrade it..
  • stodor89 4mo ago
    Pfft. It's been 6 years, they just introduced a shittier version, and it's a smash hit. Most ahead-of-its-time computer ever made.
  • gyomu 4mo ago
    I have a 8GB M1 that still worked great, until macOS 26 severely degraded its performance. Thankfully the macOS 27 beta somewhat improved things (although Xcode is more of a slog than it used to be). I’d like to not upgrade until they offer OLED on the Air (I use it solely as a travel machine), but I might be waiting for a while…
  • jurmous 4mo ago
    You can also buy something now that not all shops have adjusted to the new pricing.
    • dofm 4mo ago
      Though this window is very short. Apple don't leave much in retail channels.
  • dofm 4mo ago
    I think it is fully likely that Apple will extend the life of the M1 in OS support terms because of this problem. They don't have much choice but to phase out Intel support, but they absolutely can make the choice to extend support for anything they make themselves, and they may well judge that deciding not to abandon support for the more price-sensitive to tide them over is worth the extra engineering cost. I personally will work on the assumption one more price rise is coming this year.
    • 4mo ago
• frankus 4mo ago
  If you're in the US, Costco has certain models at the old price through Saturday (or while supplies last). Just pulled the trigger on a 24GB/1TB 13" MbA for $250 off the new price.
  • iammiles 4mo ago
    Appreciate the tip. Just ordered the 24GB/1TB M5 Pro at $50 below the old price point.
  • GeekyBear 4mo ago
    Amazon has Prime Day discounts off the old price today.
    • hoten 4mo ago
      Thank you!
  • sudokatsu 4mo ago
    Same with Best Buy!
• khriss 4mo ago
  I thought Apple usually locked in contracts with TSMC and Samsung for years in the future? They should be best positioned to weather this storm. If they are getting buffeted enough to raise prices by this much, things are going to be dire for smaller manufacturers. Or, this could just be a convenient excuse to get even more margin.
  • Analemma_ 4mo ago
    RAM prices started climbing more than 18 months ago. Apple’s contracts are long-term but not that long-term: they probably just expired. (If you assume a 3-year contract, 18 months is how long it would take on average for a specific market shock to hit you)
    • dofm 4mo ago
      Right — if we can know how long ago the contracts were agreed we can predict how much more the price will have to rise, because 20% sounds like the beginning of the problem.
      • stouset 4mo ago
        Apple is notorious for their prices being extremely stable for a given SKU. If anything, this is Apple getting out ahead of where they expect memory prices to be long-term, so they can rip off the band-aid once and don’t have to do it again.
        • dofm 4mo ago
          Well, hopefully :-) I am personally working on the assumption that prices will go up again this year or say in January, though as I have an M1 Max here it's not massively urgent.
          • stouset 4mo ago
            This kind of broad mid-cycle price update is essentially unprecedented for Apple. Their price points are extremely reliable, and even only occasionally do they tweak an individual product price up or down during a refresh. I’d wager the odds of another price hike like this over the next two years is essentially zero, and past that extremely unlikely for the next several years. Barring of course some new and as-yet unknowable seismic shift like we’ve just seen with memory prices. They would never do something like this only to pull the rug again on customers half a year later if there was any possible way to make this kind of change once. If anything, the most I would expect to see is individual products getting re-tweaked up or down $50, $100, or $200 over the next few years as demand adjusts and component prices settle.
• kamranjon 4mo ago
  How does something with 232 comments and 207 points over just 2 hours get pushed to the 3rd page in hacker news? I’m just really curious how it works, like why would something with so much engagement be push down so quickly?
  • as1mov 4mo ago
    It's the flamebait detector. Any post which gets a lot of comments in a short time gets pushed down quickly. Though the mods usually push it back up if it doesn't involve touchy topics like politics.
    • kamranjon 4mo ago
      Oh interesting! Thanks for the context I had no idea that was a mechanic - also it seems like the mods merged it with another thread and now it’s back on the front page.
• akulbe 4mo ago
  WOW. I'm glad I bought the beast yesterday. The same spec machine I got yesterday is now $2800 more.
  • archvile 4mo ago
    Mac Studio? I'm on an M2 Max and looks like I'll be holding onto this thing for a few more generations.
    • efficax 4mo ago
      my M1 mac studio from 2022 is still going strong and i can't see a reason to replace it in the next few years anyway
    • akulbe 4mo ago
      No, M5 Max MBP with all the options. I wanted a Studio, but if I was going to get a Studio, I'd get something older because they crippled the current models. I have an M2 Max, as well, and I wonder what I could get for it on resale... or maybe I should just keep it.
      • sneak 4mo ago
        Crippled how?
        • ojbyrne 4mo ago
          Only available with 1 memory config - 96 gb. They used to have 512 and 256.
          • simondotau 4mo ago
            Apple probably didn’t have enough memory supply contractually secured to satisfy the unforeseen demand for those models.
  • dgellow 4mo ago
• resters 4mo ago
  Expect this trend to continue -- firms have delayed price adjustments to avoid retaliation from Trump as doing so would draw attention to Trump's many inflationary policies. Now all of the businesses who use Apple products as an input are more likely to raise their own prices, etc. This is how inflation happens across the economy. Trade war leads to price increases on Apple's inputs, Apple has to raise prices, etc.
  • gchamonlive 4mo ago
    As much as I despise trump's administration, isn't this more because of AI farms pressure onto the semiconductor forges?
    • resters 4mo ago
      You're right it's not only trade policy, but I think most of the fab contracts on current models were already negotiated and Apple ate $3.3B of tariffs as a COGS increase (delaying passthrough avoids spotlighting tariff-driven inflation). Increasing DRAM prices are a factor, but would not be a 20% BOM price increase at all (much less on the total price) for most of the impacted devices. The magnitude and the simultaneous across-the-line timing look more like margin recovery than a component passthrough.
  • api 4mo ago
    One of my 2024 predictions was that Trump would push through the biggest tax increase in history, and that his anti-tax base would cheer it. (Deficit spending doesn't exist and tax increases aren't tax increases if a Republican is in office.) I thought the scenario would be "we're going to abolish income tax and implement a national sales tax or VAT!" but then the abolishing of income tax part never happens and we just get income tax plus national sales tax plus VAT. Instead he did it with tariffs. Don't know if it's the biggest tax increase in history but it's pretty sizable, and of course it's regressive.
    • snootypoot 4mo ago
      maybe in our lives people will start to realize there is really only one political party and its always going to be them vs us until we are all serfs earning below subsistence wages.
• hk__2 4mo ago
  Different article, but accessible to non-subscribers: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c3ryj81ywlro https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c3ryj81ywlro
• hodder 4mo ago
  Forgive me because I do not understand the supply chain for memory. With Micron et al effectively scalping their customers with an oligopoly on probably the lowest intellectual IP in the chain, does this not guarantee 10 years from now a) We are either overbuilt as hyperscalers cut capex, or b) hyperscalers vertically integrate. Or is it truly that hard to make memory? And if that is not true, perhaps it isn't really a commodity at all. Honestly Jassey, Zuck and Tim Apple are prob on the phone with Donnie. If oil companies are “gouging,” what is 85% margins on memory, threatening the whole bull run and raising compute, Killing AI, and raising iPhone/computer pricing? Countdown to DOJ antitrust case is ticking. To be clear: I understand how markets work, Im just quoting Donald Trump's tweet from yesterday calling oil companies gouging, and I predict government intervention and polital pressures regardless of economic realities.
  • HPsquared 4mo ago
    It all depends on how much they're investing in increasing capacity.
    • philipkglass 4mo ago
      Quite a bit: https://www.micron.com/us-expansion/ny https://www.micron.com/us-expansion/ny https://www.micron.com/us-expansion/id https://www.micron.com/us-expansion/id The first Idaho project is starting soon: "Micron has already achieved key construction milestones on its first Idaho fab with DRAM output scheduled to begin in 2027."
    • porridgeraisin 4mo ago
      https://www.wsj.com/tech/apple-raises-prices-on-macs-ipads-by-200-or-more-on-some-models-a7463f99 https://www.wsj.com/tech/apple-raises-prices-on-macs-ipads-b... Micron executives, who typically offer cautious projections about the boom-bust memory business, said on their earnings call that “tight conditions” will persist beyond 2027. Just three months ago, they had projected tight conditions going only beyond this year. In an interview Wednesday night, Micron Chief Business Officer Sumit Sadana said the company couldn’t make investments during the memory market’s last downturn, when Micron’s gross profits went negative, in part because certain customers took advantage to pay rock-bottom prices. “We told a couple of the customers who were being very aggressive with pricing at that time that this is not constructive,” he said, without naming Apple, adding that low prices discouraged capital investments. “A lot of the industry investments got shut down in 2023 because of really poor pricing and really poor margins.” The iPhone-maker is well known for using its huge memory and storage purchases as leverage to secure the lowest prices, say analysts and former memory company executives.
• HlessClaudesman 4mo ago
  As an app developer, having to eat an ever increasing Mac hardware cost upfront may push people like me to just focus on Android.
  • gruez 4mo ago
    You think the situation is better on Android? The margins for Android OEMs are even thinner.
  • robertoandred 4mo ago
    Except you only need to eat that hardware cost once a decade.
    • HlessClaudesman 4mo ago
      You would think, but My 2019 MacBook can barely run an older xcode that doesn't emulate newer phones / tablets. Some of these responses to my above post are a bit haughty. I'm just reporting from the trenches that the Apple tax is real, not everyone can afford to keep paying up, and a 20% cost increase is huge.
      • kanwisher 4mo ago
        what brand isnt going to raise prices with ram hikes? there is no other choice
  • meindnoch 4mo ago
    Hold on! Even people like you? Omg. Going short AAPL 10x leverage!
• busymichael 4mo ago
  Still no 256GB or 512GB Studio models at any price. 96 is the max for any Studio configuration on apple.com right now.
  • dwaite 4mo ago
    I suspect this is because the next models are more imminent. Not imminent per se, but Apple doesn't want to be left holding the bag on most of a factory run of 512GB Studios.
    • Danox 4mo ago
      Absolutely no point selling those now with the M5 or M6 coming up.
• lastofthemojito 4mo ago
  This feels like the car market during COVID. In December Best Buy had a $1999 configuration of the M5 MacBook Pro on sale for $1749 and I scooped one up. Now that model is $2199. I suspect I could sell the computer I've been using for 6 months at a profit, which is just bizarre. But then of course it would cost a lot if I wanted to replace it.
  • websap 4mo ago
    Naaah, no way anyone buying that for profit
    • rogerrogerr 4mo ago
      Why not?
    • Danox 4mo ago
      Sounds like hope...
  • mcv 4mo ago
    I just received my new MacBook yesterday. Today it's more than €700 more expensive than what I paid.
  • dgellow 4mo ago
    Yep, I had the exact same (but in euros), also a discounted m5 in December. I feel pretty lucky with that timing, not that it benefits me in any way but that feels like getting one of the last ticket for a concert
    • tempoponet 4mo ago
      I bought an irresponsible pile of homelab equipment in 24/25. Hard drives, SSD, memory, GPUs. I feel bad for people locked out right now, since it's become more interesting and important than ever. At the time it seemed wasteful, but I'm happy to report that I'm putting it all to use now.
  • 4mo ago
• jfrbfbreudh 4mo ago
  The M5 Max 128GB RAM MBP I was eyeing went up by $1600. Thankfully Amazon and some other retailers haven’t updated their prices yet, so I immediately picked one up this morning.
  • yokoprime 4mo ago
    14 or 16 inch?
• dweekly 4mo ago
  Mac Studio M3 Ultra: $5299 (+$1300) Oof. That and October delivery. I wonder if the intent here is basically just to signal to the market where the M5 Ultra Studio is going to start.
  • DocTomoe 4mo ago
    Has Apple ever lowered the price of a product line? This is just the new normal.
    • topgrain2 4mo ago
      Yeah, they did it quite a bit in the 20-teens. Wasn't uncommon to see an event where they finished announcing an upgraded model of something, then had a slide where the current price fell away to reveal one $100-$150 lower.
    • hiddendoom45 4mo ago
      They did increase the base Ram for mac configurations in late 2024 from 8GB to 16GB. While it wasn't a strict price decrease it was an improvement to the base model. The 24GB m3 air I bought a few months earlier would've been cheaper due to that if I held off for a few more months. Now w/ the price hikes the price I paid is now cheaper than buying a 24GB m5 air.
      • mortenjorck 4mo ago
        While these new Mac prices are probably here to stay, the upside is that once the AI market saturates and RAM prices fall, future Macs will likely get a significant memory boost at all price tiers. A base-config 2028 MBP could be running local LLMs at a level unthinkable today.
    • dwaite 4mo ago
      Sure, quite often. They usually have a price target in mind, but their costs and margins mean they can't always hit it. What's rare is that this is a price adjustment on existing shipping models, without a corresponding new model. I remember them doing price drops with a few Intel Macs in 2023, but otherwise the only example that comes to mind is the original iPhone.
• yegle 4mo ago
  Oh the bright side they do offer $AAPL with a 5% discount today.
  • intrasight 4mo ago
    And I'll happily take that discount!
  • reverius42 4mo ago
    Oof.
• claudiacsf 4mo ago
  So this is how Apple makes up for the margins on the Neos.
• post_break 4mo ago
  The increase to the old Apple TV or Homepod is egregious.
  • idolofdust 4mo ago
    the 4 year old Apple TV getting a price doubling makes it a horrible value compared to any other TV streamer, quality be damned.
• theturtletalks 4mo ago
  I wonder if they will give more for trade-ins now or keep the old rate and just resell it at these higher prices.
  • crest 4mo ago
    That's cute.
  • qingcharles 4mo ago
    My sweet summer child.
  • deleted 4mo ago
    [deleted]
  • bochoh 4mo ago
    I just checked this. I bought a secondhand 15" M4 Air last weekend and the trade-in value is still $630. So no, trade-in values didn't go up 20%.
• jacobgold 4mo ago
  Some unc perspective: I paid ~$6,000 in inflation-adjusted dollars for a computer in 1996. Today, I can get the same power in a $6 single board computer. A powerful modern mini PC starts at ~$600. However painful these price hikes are, and they are painful, it is worth remembering that computing has become incredibly ubiquitous and cheap.
  • SoftTalker 4mo ago
    I'm still using ~10 year old PCs at both work and home. Running linux, still doing fine.
    • nosioptar 4mo ago
      My 2012 thinkpad still works well. I've got access to a couple newer laptops, but they just dont stack up to the old one.
    • hamburglar 4mo ago
      Same. And my current daily driver laptop cost me $400 9 years ago. You can still do a lot for incredibly cheap.
      • LeFantome 4mo ago
        I bought a 2013 MacBook Air for $50 two years ago to take on a backpacking trip. It runs Linux and I use it all the time. I had a video meeting on it this morning. You run OpenCode with Big Pickle on it with decent performance. So you can even vibe code on it for free.
    • dominicrose 4mo ago
      Compared to current computers, the ones from 10 years ago are not that different, especially with all the software updates, unless you want an edgy graphics card or Apple processor. In terms of durability I guess the battery is the less durable part but the rest should be fine if handled with care
      • 4mo ago
• Scroll_Swe 4mo ago
  My pre-built desktop PC is as cheap today as last year at the same store... Dont get the panic. :)
• nu11ptr 4mo ago
  Glad I bought a fully loaded MBP a few weeks back and not now. The price on my exact configuration just went up a whopping 29%!
  • pants2 4mo ago
    Yep, I knew this was coming and did the same. Can't believe my MBP is now an appreciating asset!
• draginol 4mo ago
  So this is probably not good news for the MacBook Ultra with 512GB of RAM rumors being..affordable. What's worse is that this is probably going to get worse. My angel investment group is getting inundated with pitches that amount to building an RX-6000 with 96GB of RAM and installing a local model to do "thing X". So even if the OpenAI's of the world stop trying to use up all the RAM, you're going to have thousands of start-ups pushing local models.
  • thewebguyd 4mo ago
    Makes me really wonder about that new Surface Ultra pricing with the nvidia chip in it. If Apple can't pull it off with their supply chain weight they can throw around, what is that thing going to be priced at? Microsoft/Nvidia are either going to be subsidizing it or it's gotta be close to $8,000+ at launch.
  • drnick1 4mo ago
    > So this is probably not good news for the MacBook Ultra with 512GB of RAM rumors being..affordable. Why would anyone need that much RAM in a laptop?
    • bitmasher9 4mo ago
      512GB unified memory is targeting local inference of large models, or local training of non-frontier models.
      • drnick1 4mo ago
        I doubt you can run a model that requires hundreds of GB of RAM at an acceptable speed (tok/s) on a MacBook.
        • aroman 4mo ago
          What would be the bottleneck?
          • 4mo ago
• ChicagoDave 4mo ago
  I was literally ordering an M5 MacBook Pro tomorrow. The total is $900 more now. Might have to hold off and just live with my M4 Mini.
  • jghn 4mo ago
    I came very close to pulling the trigger on an M5 Air the other night to replace my venerable M1 Air. Wound up deciding I'd wait until M6. Doh!
    • ihateolives 4mo ago
      I replaced my M1 Air with M1 Max 64GB few weeks ago, not the biggest upgrade, but memory was that made me decide. It's hard to find even 64GB models nowadays.
    • honeycrispy 4mo ago
      I mean the writing was very clearly on the wall.
    • freediddy 4mo ago
      Go to Amazon, they still have old pricing.
  • sleepybrett 4mo ago
    My niece graduated and is headed off to college in the fall and I picked her up a macbook as a graduation present, knew that apple's prices were still artificially low and a price hike was coming and ordered it the day before they announced that prices were going to go up. This ram/storage ai datacenter bullshit is bullshit, we are going to spin up these massive datacenters and someone is going to invent a way out of the current thinking before half of them are even built. What's the over/under on apple spinning up their own fabs for their own needs in the consumer market? It seems almost suicidal to not start trying to take on that part of their vertical.
    • dwaite 4mo ago
      > What's the over/under on apple spinning up their own fabs for their own needs in the consumer market? Darn close to 0%. They generally go after multiple manufacturers for a part rather than trying to become a manufacturer themselves. They are trying their decades-old playbook of funding creation of new factories. The problem is the manufacturers are already neck deep in trying to expand out capacity, and the demand/price increases likely weakens both of Apple's negotiating factors (guaranteed sales and a source of capital to build out the facility).
• int32_64 4mo ago
  Does somebody have a price increase by currency table? A lot of losers vs. USD since apple last set their prices.
• paxys 4mo ago
  FYI - other retailers still have the old prices. Some even have discounts. The cheapest MacBook Air is now $1300 on Apple and $950 on Amazon and Best Buy. I imagine this will change soon, so grab them while you can.
• NichoPaolucci 4mo ago
  I bought an M4 Air about a year ago for under 1000$, it beat out my 2019 Intel MBP by quite a lot. I fully expect the air to last me at least another 6 years or so for my use case. The thing is a beast. Compare this to a Dell laptop I bought when I started college, that thing was 850 dollars and died on me within 3 years. For Apple, I could justify spending more (maybe even 20% more) considering both Apple computers I’ve had feel extremely fast. The only reason I dropped the 2019 MBP was battery fatigue (and I probably could have repaired it for 100$ and gotten another 3-4 years out of it. But the new air was just too attractive).
• asveikau 4mo ago
  With all the inflation going on and the AI boom affecting things like memory prices, I was surprised that eg. MacBook neo was priced where it was.
  • bluescrn 4mo ago
    Yeah, for a few short months Apple had a really nicely priced entry-level machine. Now so much with a 20% price hike on an 8GB machine with soldered RAM
• drchiu 4mo ago
  My prediction is that the semiconductor price increases is going to cause a lot of demand destruction. The semiconductor companies revenues is not based on new products but rather on the fact that there is scarcity. Once that scarcity is removed then I suspect that we're going to have some reckoning happening across the industry. Just bought a MacBook Air that I didn't need to hedge in case my current laptop breaks down. Won't be buying it at the higher price.
• GeekyBear 4mo ago
  If you wanted to buy in the near term, Amazon is offering Prime Day discounts off of the old prices today. > M5 MacBook Air - $949.00 (now $1,299.00 at Apple) M5 MacBook Pro - $1,549.00 (now $1,999.00 at Apple) https://www.macrumors.com/2026/06/25/beat-apples-price-hike/ https://www.macrumors.com/2026/06/25/beat-apples-price-hike/
• archontes 4mo ago
  Wild that they increased the ipad prices as well; the entire point of the ipad is that it's a handicapped tool to avoid cutting into macbook marketshare.
  • apetresc 4mo ago
    How does that contradict the price increase? iPads still have RAM, yeah? If anything, not increasing the prices on iPads would undermine Macbook marketshare, would it not?
  • davepeck 4mo ago
    > the entire point of the ipad is that it's a handicapped tool amusing nonsense
• zackmorris 4mo ago
  Catering to the top of the k-shaped economy is indistinguishable from evil
  • ipsum2 4mo ago
    Apple has always done this.
• qsxfthnkp2322 4mo ago
  What a beautiful way for Tim Cook to end his career at Apple. supply chain genius can’t overcome market forces so they can keep a healthy profit margin. Outsourcing was a great idea for making America, your home, lose. Oh well. Ternus can’t come fast enough to revamp their corrupt management system and actually innovate again.
  • throwfaraway4 4mo ago
    Tell me who can overcome market forces. Literally no one. I'm starting to think bots are writing these low-quality inflammatory comments.
    • qsxfthnkp2322 4mo ago
      Maybe those bots should send micron or Samsung a gold bar and some glass to get them to care about consumers again. In all seriousness this timeline we are on sucks. I hate it. Send me to another multiverse.
• bilsbie 4mo ago
  They seem to confuse hard drive and ram memory on these articles
  • fckgw 4mo ago
    Flash storage prices have also risen substantially, just not as exponentially as RAM
• bluescrn 4mo ago
  Bring back upgradeable RAM and storage.
• cynicalsecurity 4mo ago
  They simply couldn't cut into their fat margins, could they?
  • bluescrn 4mo ago
    The huge markup on memory/storage upsells are were they make all their money
• mnls 4mo ago
  The personal computer is getting more and more expensive. Here we are, where it's getting harder and harder to get a computer to create your art but you can get a subscription to any AI company for a fraction of the computer's cost and get your "prompt" art. And that's ridiculous. Also, leave the multi-trillion company alone
  • voidfunc 4mo ago
    [flagged]
    • mnls 4mo ago
      > be left behind Left behind on what exactly?
      • isoprophlex 4mo ago
        Mediocrity
    • pesus 4mo ago
      It's funny seeing this kind of comment get made over and over. I don't think those regurgitating this line realize that getting "left behind" (whatever that even actually means) is appealing when the direction the future is heading is very unappealing.
• drnick1 4mo ago
  What is the point of posting a paywalled article? If you aren't going to paste the content somewhere else, please don't bother.
• Marsymars 4mo ago
  Some of the price increases seem disconnected from the component cost increases. e.g. The HomePod and HomePod Mini share the same amount of RAM, but the HomePod is up $50 while the HomePod Mini is only up $30.
• jingw222 4mo ago
  memory and storage companies are like oil oligarch right now
• haritha-j 4mo ago
  > We have shielded our customers from these increases so far Shielding is one way to describe it. Another is that you were overcharging so much earlier that you could absorb it.
• haritha-j 4mo ago
  Buy out all the hardware to price me out and sell me back the compute at $200 a month. well played.
• NSUserDefaults 4mo ago
  Now tell me again how the Steam Machine is “overpriced”..
• pizzaballs 4mo ago
  [flagged]
• jonplackett 4mo ago
  Weird that it’s the Neo that is affected why it famously has hardly any ram.
• arcticbunny 4mo ago
  Just stop buying new gadgets for 18 months and then see what happens
• post_break 4mo ago
  Xbox just increased prices this morning. I think Apple was the canary, expect large increases in tech soon. If you need something remotely in the future buy it now.
  • drnick1 4mo ago
    Just don't buy an Xbox. It's hot garbage and requires a pricey yearly subscription to play online. A PC pays for itself quickly once you factor the subscription in and cheaper games.
• primaprashant 4mo ago
  These are the price changes mentioned in the article: Macs MacBook Neo: $699 (up from $599) 13-inch MacBook Air: $1,299 (up from $1,099) 15-inch MacBook Air: $1,499 (up from $1,299) M5 MacBook Pro: $1,999 (up from $1,699) M5 Pro MacBook Pro: $2,499 (up from $2,199) M5 Max MacBook Pro: $4,099 (up from $3,599) iMac: $1,499 (up from $1,299) M4 Max Mac Studio: $2,499 (up from $1,999) M3 Ultra Mac Studio: $5,299 (up from $3,999) iPads iPad: $449 (up from $349) 11-inch iPad Air: $749 (up from $599) 13-inch iPad Air: $949 (up from $749) 11-inch iPad Pro: $1,199 (up from $999) 13-inch iPad Pro: $1,499 (up from $1,299) iPad mini: $599 (up from $499) More products: Apple TV 4K: $199 (up from $129) HomePod: $349 (up from $299) HomePod mini: $129 (up from $99) Vision Pro: $3,699 (up from $3,499)
  • ulfw 4mo ago
    $200 up for an in years barely changed iPad Pro. Who would buy these things and for what? In fact I wonder that about the majority of the product palette nowadays
  • slantedview 4mo ago
    Looking at a few retailers, it seems like prices haven't increased yet. Maybe in a few days?
    • seviu 4mo ago
      Impulse bought a Pro with 48Gb ram on a retailer with old prices Was waiting for the next generation but I think I will sit it out
      • z2 4mo ago
        Same here, reserved a 48GB M5 Pro shortly after seeing the news, and now I see the same retailer raised the price by over $1000. If they honor the sale, then this will be the most short term value I've gotten out of an HN submission ever.
        • 4mo ago
• protoster 4mo ago
  Uh oh. Should I grab an iPhone now before those prices are raised?
• maxignol 4mo ago
  I guess it was inevitable. Is it only RAM related ?
• balls187 4mo ago
  I guess the days of engineers getting to be so casual about memory footprint and CPU cycles is over.
  • aenis 4mo ago
    Nope. 1: most of them dont use their own products 2: someone else pays for their laptops
    • balls187 4mo ago
      1: true. 2: that someone else has to get approval for the cost
      • aenis 4mo ago
        Fully loaded costs for an engineer where I live are anout 15-25 a month, plus a maybe 2-3k in token consumption. Whether the laptop costs 9k or 6k makes no difference and apple knows this.
• mugivarra69 4mo ago
  [dead]
• mullingitover 4mo ago
  Obviously AI hardware crunch will get blamed for this, rightfully, but there's another story here: inflation is back.[1] I'm betting that Apple is betting that the fed isn't going to get it together and whip it in time. [1] https://www.nbcnews.com/business/economy/may-inflation-report-interest-rates-oil-rcna351636 https://www.nbcnews.com/business/economy/may-inflation-repor...
• throwaway613746 4mo ago
  [dead]
• segmondy 4mo ago
  What we want to really know is the cost of Ultra Mac Studio 512gb if that will happen or 256gb.
• zchrykng 4mo ago
  Dodged that bullet. Heard Tim Cook's comments and decided to pull the trigger on the machine I was debating as I didn't think Gruber was right on them waiting until new models to change prices.
  • natch 4mo ago
    Yes Gruber's comment about not making Ternus debut with a shit sandwich was right on the money, so I wondered why that alone didn't sway him to think that Apple would do the price increase sooner.
• mark_l_watson 4mo ago
  I was expecting this. Glad I just upgraded my wife and myself in December. One fix for this problem: Allow US companies to buy memory chips from China. I saw an article about a month ago, that if my memory is correct in this, said that China is ramping up high-end memory manufacturing. Fix number two: my country (USA) should cease and desist with the craziness that is data center buildouts for AI. Clearly ‘BIG MONEY’ always needs a new thing (cloud -> crypto -> AI) and the powerful get what they want. If the US Congress acted to benefit regular people rather than special interests (both party's are corrupt, disbelieve that if you want to live in a fantasy land) then anti-dumping laws would be passed. If all companies and individuals paid the real price for tokens, then we collectively would work more efficiently. As is, the filthy rich get even filthier, and regular people will get screwed.
• lanthissa 4mo ago
  3 months ago "mac mini, neo, and air prices are to good to be true" and then the monkeys paw curled
• ghaff 4mo ago
  Just got a new MacBook Air. The thing I'm keeping my eye on is iPhones. I destroyed my iPhone on a multi-day hiking trip a few years ago and, for international travel, I really like having a workable backup which, if I could even find it, my iPhone X isn't at this point. Could buy something used I suppose but probably better just biting the bullet and getting something new.
• ErneX 4mo ago
  I got a Mac Mini on Amazon in July 2025 for 575€, the exact model is currently 969€ in the Apple Store.
• sxates 4mo ago
  [dead]
• akulbe 4mo ago
  I bought a full spec M5 Max MBP. Yesterday. I'm relieved.
• znpy 4mo ago
  > M3 Ultra Mac Studio: $5,299 (up from $3,999) I knew i should have bought a maxed one when i had the chance...
• locallost 4mo ago
  To be honest, Apple's pricing has been up to a point pretty user friendly the last few years. Two years ago I bought an iPad for around 400 because everyone thought they'll announce a new one. That didn't happen until last year where they announced the new one but for 350 or so. Macbooks are also "cheap" considering what you get for them with the M chips.
• poolnoodle 4mo ago
  Back to old expensive apple pricing
• stego-tech 4mo ago
  I had just drafted a report to leadership that we should buy what we needed for everyone through August ASAP. My advice didn’t make it a week before the price increases. Look, this is going to suck for several more years. The western memory cartel was never truly dismantled or punished after their price fixing in the early 2000s, and now this is the result. With Chinese DRAM and NAND makers on the entity list, western countries don’t really have an alternative but to suck it up and ride out whatever this market is, be it bubble or blessing. That said, China isn’t stupid and is gladly steering their domestic firms to produce more kit not just for data centers and AI customers, but to shore up domestic electronics manufacturing in general. If China can make a device that appeals to Americans en masse, western companies are arguably at their most vulnerable in the face of sky-high part costs and supply chain issues. Combined with rising public sentiment against data centers and a general “fed-up” attitude towards tech in general, and this could be quite the explosively expensive powder keg depending on how things end up shaking out.
  • rescbr 4mo ago
    > With Chinese DRAM and NAND makers on the entity list, western countries don’t really have an alternative American companies, you mean. Thankfully there's Taobao and AliExpress for the rest of us.
    • stego-tech 4mo ago
      That’s a fair critique of my limited, Ameri-centric perspective in my comment, but also a stinging rebuke of the decline of American hegemony abroad. As recently as last year having those Chinese DRAM and NAND makers on the entity list meant that those memory modules were unsellable outside of China and a handful of other countries that rebuked American power; the fact even American companies are now openly courting them for parts shows how weak the Empire’s power really is just two years later. So yeah, you’re more right than you may realize.
    • fmajid 4mo ago
      You mean the 2TB SSDs for $2 that flourish on AliExpress? I actually like AliExpress and trust them more than Amazon, but their failure to police these obvious scams is a blot on their record.
• kwanbix 4mo ago
  Thanks AI!
• game_the0ry 4mo ago
  Damn, this might trigger a hoarding + buying frenzy, further driving up prices. I have a macbook pro wit m1 pro and I was waiting for the mac mini m5 pro, but I might pull the trigger on the macbook pro m5 pro. Ugh.
• sajithdilshan 4mo ago
  This is just pure greed. There is a memory chips shortage and it’s partly due to high demand, but at the same time the manufacturers trying to squeeze as much profit they can while the demand last without investing on increasing the manufacturing capacity. Apple already have such high profit margins and I’m pretty sure the next iPhones would be priced 100-200$ extra
  • bdangubic 4mo ago
    best way to handle this is to stop buying/upgrading
    • sajithdilshan 4mo ago
      Agree, us consumers should respond with our pockets
    • billmaya 4mo ago
      [dead]
  • bluescrn 4mo ago
    Prices are never going down, even if the shortage eases. The era of cheap high-end computing is likely over. And it'll be used to pressure people into switching to thin clients and ever-more subscriptions High-end desktops were already a niche market, with many home users just using phones+tablets as their main devices. The entire games industry is already in a big crash too, and with consoles approaching $1k for 6yr-old hardware (Xbox just had another price hike) it might not bounce back this time. A new generation of consoles isn't going to find such a huge market with 4-figure price tags, especially when there won't be a giant leap in visuals/capability.
    • daedrdev 4mo ago
      Or in a few years time memory chip production will meet demand, and prices will decrease.
• MoonWalk 4mo ago
  And "analysts" flip out on the stock, when these products are < 15% of Apple's revenue. Clowns. Breakdown by segment (FY 2025): Mac: $33.71 B — 8.10% of total revenue iPad: $28.02 B — 6.73% of total revenue
  • acchow 4mo ago
    MSFT is also down 3.5% today, so there's just lots of volatility in big tech.
  • Danox 4mo ago
    Buying opportunity.
• martinjc 4mo ago
  Matter of time before they where hit by the market prices. If you take the day of today, and calculate back. You can see how long apple locks in the prices for their hardware supplies. Interesting note to make. Wonder if they will increase the duration in the future or become more risk averse.
• Chandra507 4mo ago
  [flagged]
• mvdtnz 4mo ago
  Did any sci fi books predict an AI world where computer hardware was soaked up by AI mega corps and compute was undemocratized?
• tonic_note 4mo ago
  You just know that upcoming OLED Macbook Pro is going to start at 3k for the base configuration.
• agnosticmantis 4mo ago
  Would MBP M5 32GB RAM be adequate for small model post-training and small RL experiments? Planning to snatch one from BB/Amazon.
• buybackoff 4mo ago
  I had plans to buy two Airs, was not sure if I needed 13 or 15, 24 or 32, which was better for my wife and what's the best strategy to buy one for her first and then understand my needs test-driving it. Maybe I actually needed Pro. Lot's of procrastination as none of us had a real need for an upgrade. It's all in the past tense now. I've just bought a 16GB model with 1TB on Amazon at 480 EUR cheaper that the new price, and it seems cheaper than the official old price. I will forget about MacBooks until a real need comes, or maybe good ARM laptops happen sooner. It's funny that if they did not have the dichotomy between 13 and 15, I would have thought less and bought M4 as soon as it was out with the support for 2 external displays + built-in.
• yalogin 4mo ago
  So Apple did not ge the benefit of the AI hype (in stock price) but caught the bad repercussions of the AI aftermath
  • Danox 4mo ago
    You didn't think it would be any other way? Smile...
• JKFSOM 4mo ago
  Mac Studio Desktop, M3 Ultra Processor, 96GB RAM, 1TB SSD, Silver up by £1100 (£4,199.00 -> £5,299.00)
• MagicMoonlight 4mo ago
  [dead]
• Oras 4mo ago
  Hikes coming soon to AWS/Azure/GCP bills ...
• davkan 4mo ago
  Tell me again how AI is a benefit to actual people?
• gck1 4mo ago
  I asked this ~6 months ago and I'm going to ask again - if AI is supposed to make creating digital things easier, where are we going to publish these digital things? On rocks? Is AI industry essentially eating its own tail?
  • satvikpendem 4mo ago
    What do you mean where to publish? On a website?
    • gck1 4mo ago
      Website runs on a server, which requires components that AI labs are buying years in advance, driving component prices to astronomical levels. What happens when only AI labs can afford to have a server? I know I'm already priced out for many server providers, including more budget-oriented ones like Hetzner.
      • satvikpendem 4mo ago
        There are many, many free hosts, like GitHub Pages, Cloudflare, Railway etc.
• ToughAd1534 4mo ago
  Is there anything new actually worth paying for?
• glass1122 4mo ago
  [dead]
• whatever1 4mo ago
  Apple did not have to be in this situation. Begging for capacity lost to startups. Everyone else can complain, but not Apple. They had a 250B warchest, exactly for such situations. Now somehow openAI has capacity and Apple does not. And think about it Apple is not in a better position than Valve for example. A teeny tiny company in comparison. It is an unprecedented managerial failure.
  • kshacker 4mo ago
    Begging? Component price goes up, they increase their prices. Where's the begging? Just like US had oil but as the world prices went up, US oil prices went up. No one will sell it cheap inside the country for patriotism. Same thing here. Of course they likely had / likely have some issues, but we should explain it as market forces rather than any struggle they are facing.
    • whatever1 4mo ago
      Is your thesis that Apple is planning for the same number of sales as the previous price? If not, they ordered less chips. Hence lost capacity.
      • kshacker 4mo ago
        No I don't have a thesis. About pricing, Netflix is constantly raising its prices and making more and more money (their stock is broken for last few months only) because they learned how to maximize profit by serving less customers but more profitable customers. Thats just one example. All I am saying is that price stability is not guaranteed and is not a corporate goal so whether they failed here, whether they regret something, it is not possible to judge that just from price increase. Maybe they did, maybe they did much better than we know today and will find out next year (or quarter).
        • goodluckchuck 4mo ago
          The difference is that Netflix isn’t facing a situation where they have run out of product to sell. If Apple wants to sell 10k laptops, they need to have 10k laptops. If 10k customers sign up for Netflix, Netflix gets that revenue and they can worry about optimizing their selection / service later.
• caycep 4mo ago
  The bigger sign to me is that this is a pressure against democratized personal computing; there is a push from who-knows-who to shift the balance of power back to (essentially) mainframes and corporate computing. Need another up and coming person to flip the proverbial "IBM" the bird
  • danans 4mo ago
    > The bigger sign to me is that this is a pressure against democratized personal computing Tough to break it to you, but the war on general purpose computing started a long time ago - primarily app stores and mass market managed OS's (iOS, Android). Why did it happen? Some will say it was necessitated by security in the Internet era, and they are right, but it was also a convenient way to transfer control from the personal computer user to the personal computer maker.
  • thoughtpeddler 4mo ago
    I feel the same, but then I have to be honest with myself that the MacBook Neo is still a sub-$1,000 solid personal computer that's broadly available. Now... if that starts going out of stock, yeah, tin foil hat time!
• brcmthrowaway 4mo ago
  Total failure by Apple supply chain! Reflected in $AAPL right now.
• gzer0 4mo ago
  A small but notable change: Apple now appears to require university verification through UNiDAYS for EDU pricing. Previously, at least in the U.S., you could just use the education store and get the discount without much (if any at all) verification.
  • stevage 4mo ago
    That's a big change!
• sexy_seedbox 4mo ago
  As Anakin Skywalker once famously said, "We need to build more Data Centers, AI needs it."
• omgwtfbyobbq 4mo ago
  The refurb M3 Ultra with 512gb of ram went from $8k+ to $14k+.
• ankurdhama 4mo ago
  No price increase in iPhone to save the sales number, this clearly shows that Apple is iPhone first company.
• thoughtpeddler 4mo ago
  So, it finally happened. The Project is so thirsty for RAM that not even the world's most well-capitalized computer company could have the final word any longer. There's only so many more powerful organizations in the world than Apple. Well... we'll find out soon enough if such a thing could be built, or should I say, summoned.
• zzyzxd 4mo ago
  I think nowadays the Apple TV is more about smart home than TV. But as long as they keep calling it a "TV", most of the people will compare it with the built-in apps in their smart TVs and think it's unnecessary. Even if you tell them that it can do much more than watching TV, they will think the money they spend on the TV related functionalities is a waste. The old price was already hard for them to justify, the new price is almost impossible. Every friend I asked about why they don't buy Apple TV, "I don't need TV apps" was the reason. Guess what, many of them still wanted smart home integrations so they brought smart home hubs from Google/Amazon or other vendors for not much lower price, even when they already use and like iPhone and other Apple devices.
  • jm4 4mo ago
    What smart home features does Apple TV have? All I've ever used it for is to watch TV. To be fair, I pretty much dismissed Apple for anything smart home after they launched that ridiculously priced Pod thing.
    • zzyzxd 4mo ago
      It's a thread border router and matter controller, providing Remote access to local-only devices, scheduling, automation... with better track records on security and privacy than competitors.
• yurimo 4mo ago
  I was considering getting M5 Max mbp with 128GB, but at that price it is just ridiculous, 64 version costs now roughly what 128 was before and that was a stretch for me. At this point might as well stick to my ol reliable M1 Pro mbp. Edit: I'll say that now it seems also very hard to justify buying top of the line apple hardware for the enterprise. Getting top laptops for just a team of 10 people now means extra $20k just for RAM on top of already a higher base price.
• a9ex 4mo ago
  Oh wow, now I‘m even happier I got my M5 Pro last month.
• compounding_it 4mo ago
  Fabs are notoriously costly and time consuming to setup by which time you become obsolete, assuming you even have access to equipment which will take years to reach you. I wouldn't be surprised though if Apple was considering becoming a fab at this point regardless. Apple has a history of not letting its suppliers toy them around. Given the political and AI pressures going on, I think apple could just decide to make its own SOCs and memory at some point in America. Unfortunately the person who could can pull this off is retiring.
• MinimalAction 4mo ago
  It is insane to me that Apple couldn't build its own source of RAM given its 250B war chest. Could have bought some RAM company at an opportune moment.
• sevenseacat 4mo ago
  Both my personal and work machines are M1 Max - guess I’ll be holding onto them for a few more years
• Danox 4mo ago
  Fighting words, it’s Apple’s fault (doesn’t he know that Apple can actually (in House for good) replace them? Maybe not today, but certainly in three years) https://9to5mac.com/2026/06/25/micron-exec-suggests-apples-aggressive-purchasing-tactics-helped-fuel-memory-shortage/?utm_source=spotim&utm_medium=spotim_recirculation&spot_im_redirect_source=pitc https://9to5mac.com/2026/06/25/micron-exec-suggests-apples-a...
• khurs 4mo ago
  Apple Share price fell 6.12% yesterday. Perhaps indicating that expectations are of a reduced demand in response to the price rather than buyers accepting it.
  • subarctic 4mo ago
    Also investors seeing this announcement as an indicator that their margins have reduced
• edb_123 4mo ago
  These "hidden" costs of AI/LLM driving up IT (and energy) related price inflation are starting to feel more and more as a kind of an inescapable, AI-imposed tax. We should start calculating these increased hardware costs (that at this point basically affects any product with storage and RAM inside) into the real price we for our AI/LLM usage, and not only think of the price in terms of a monthly subscription or $/tokens. How much have you, both personally and at your workplace, in reality spent extra on equipment and on price increases of services per year since the LLM-boom started?
• xavortm 4mo ago
  I was considering an upgrade this fall. I think I can do another year or two without. who knows, I might the same spec for even more $$. Just as the trend goes....
• fosron 4mo ago
  Bought my CTO M5 Pro just a month ago, i was a little bit skittish, thinking i should wait for the OLED one, but i think i'll be happier with the 64GB of RAM rather than that overpriced monitor.
• henry2266 4mo ago
  This is sudden, I thought of buying macbook air, but now i have to hold it
• Weered 4mo ago
  Definitely not justified. You think Apple doesn't have warehouses of hardware. It's climate inflation based on a narrative they can exploit because of data centers being in the headlines. Smart, obvious, move because no one will jump ship. Kinda like MAGA. Their hair could be on fire and everything is fine.
  • gcanyon 4mo ago
    They absolutely don't have warehouses of hardware. Tim Cook is a supply-chain-efficiency hawk from before he was CEO -- he was famous for reducing Apple's inventory.
• dboreham 4mo ago
  Old enough to remember several memory price boom cycles. In the late 80s at the place I worked we bought a bunch of DRAM for a production run that became delayed because the CPU needed wasn't ready. The DRAM was in a large cardboard box under my desk for a while, acting as a foot rest. I remember the price of DRAM spiked and we calculated that box/foot-rest was now worth more than...one million dollars.
• the-mitr 4mo ago
  I was planning to take a Mac Book Air next month, should have taken it this month. :(
• james33 4mo ago
  I feel sick to my stomach. Been saving up all year for a new 16" M5 Max to replace my M1 Max in July (I do indie game dev, so I routinely use everything it can give). It was already a was already a big stretch at $6k, now it's completely out of reach at $8k. There's no world where I can justify that price even if I could afford it.
  • ricardobayes 4mo ago
    You know what's extremely good value right now? The old "space bin" Mac Pros. You could get a maxed out one for less than 1k - 128GB RAM and with the dual D700 GPU's those produce around 12GB VRAM too. I've been eyeing these for local LLM purposes. To be fair the jump between the M1 Max and M5 is not that big in real usage, unless you're absolutely memory bound on the M1 - the M1 is likely to be supported for a few years more...
    • james33 4mo ago
      I have to have a laptop with how I work, unfortunately. And yeah, I really need more RAM and particularly GPU power, so the M5 Max would have been a very big improvement for my workflow.
• wookmaster 4mo ago
  Wonder how long this can continue. Wages are stagnating while consumer items are going up double digit percents.
• playorizaya 4mo ago
  [flagged]
• zakki 4mo ago
  Let's see if they increase the new product next September.
• masonwan 4mo ago
  When Apple made MacBook Neo with a reasonable, and then destroy it with the price...
• HSO 4mo ago
  i just realized that i could sell my (almost to the day) year old mac mini for a profit that never happened before :)))
• medvidek 4mo ago
  Just got a MacBook Neo (512GB model) for CZK 19 990 (roughly US$950) from a local reseller, which was the original list price back when the model entered the market. Models with US keyboards currently still sell for CZK 19 990, Czech keyboard models sell for CZK 21 990 ($1050), probably someone forgot to update the price on the US models.
• ant-kinesthetic 4mo ago
  Stock is not going brrr.
• deleted 4mo ago
  [deleted]
• jaycarter 4mo ago
  Ordered a refurb M3 two weeks ago specifically because I had a bad feeling about Q3. Now refreshing the refurb store to see if the prices there tick up too. The thing about "absorbing tariff costs" is that it's a great sentence to say when you also want to reset price anchors upward permanently.
• muddi900 3mo ago
  I bought a base iPad 2 qeeks ago. At least with the cheaper models, you get deals at Best Buy and Amazon. I wonder whether this will also inflate the used market. I could have gotten more for my trade-in.
• cliglot 3mo ago
  > So your family would prefer to be illiterate subsistence farmers dying in war at age 40 in 1960s Algeria? Or maybe they'd prefer to be illiterate subsistence farmers in two-tier French colonial Algeria, working as landless servant day laborers in the 1920s? Or maybe illiterate subsistence farmers in pre-colonial Algeria? Perhaps genuinely. It’s at the very least regularly observable that less educated, less ambitious individuals living closer to traditional lifestyles are happier and more content.
  • Parae 3mo ago
    Being African doesn't mean being less educated or less ambitious, nor living closer to "traditional lifestyle" whatever it is supposed to mean.