From Newsgroup: comp.sys.mac.system
Apple is hiking the prices of MacBooks & iPads due to the memory chip
shortage <
https://edition.cnn.com/2026/06/25/tech/apple-hikes-the-prices-of-macbooks-and-ipads-because-of-memory-chip-shortage>
Apple raised prices across several major products including the MacBook
Neo, iPads, Apple TV, Vision Pro and HomePod citing an unprecedented spike
in memory-chip costs driven by the AI boom. The company says the surge in component prices has become unsustainable, even as iPhone and AirPods
prices remain unchanged.
Interestingly, the article ends with this sentence:
"Notably, prices for iPhones and AirPods remain the same."
But I doubt an AirPod has all that much memory to raise the price of.
And, since iPhones have historically used crappy memory, we could say the
same but recent iPhones have had to stop shoving that classic pole up the customer's butt because the traditional lack of memory in iPhones had
caused AI to falter appreciably.
Technically, it's likely the global spike Apple is talking about comes from DRAM (the kind of memory used for AI servers) and NAND flash (used for
device storage). But the biggest pressure is apparently on DRAM, because AI data centers consume massive amounts of it.
Internal storage (NAND flash) is also affected, but less dramatically so.
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