AI Data Centers Claim Another Victim: Apple Hikes Prices Across Mac, iPad, and More

The AI-driven flash memory shortage has claimed yet another victim: the Apple MacBook Neo’s extremely aggressive price. It’s not just the Neo, either, as Apple has increased the prices of all its Macs, iPad models, and even the already-pricey Vision Pro.

As Bloomberg‘s Mark Gurman reported this morning, this is an “extreme measure” for Apple, a company that very rarely does price hikes. Apple has resisted this for a while, as Apple CEO Tim Cook told The Wall Street Journal last week.

“Unfortunately, price increases are unavoidable,” Cook said. “We’re doing our best to mitigate the huge increases that are being passed to us, and we’ve been trying to shield our customers from the increases, but the situation has become unsustainable.”

Apple

AI companies have been buying up as much flash memory, including RAM and SSDs, as they possibly can to build their water-hogging, environment-destroying data centers. Beyond the well-demonstrated environmental costs of the surging AI data center race, it has also created a memory shortage as AI companies outbid each other for a finite memory supply, crowding out technology companies that cannot incur skyrocketing manufacturing costs.

If even Apple, a massive, wealthy company, cannot absorb all the increased costs to maintain its market position, well, that’s a sobering look at the situation.

There’s no question Apple would want to keep its prices where they were, especially for something like the MacBook Neo, which previously started at $599 and now starts at $699. The MacBook Neo reportedly shipped 1.1 million units in just its first few months, an unprecedented Mac success for Apple.

Tough day for the Mac Studio with M3 Ultra, as its price jumped $1,300. | Photo by Jeremy Gray

Some other prices have gone up even more. The iPad Pro, which used to start at $999, now starts at $1,199. The iPad Air has gone up $150 to $749. The MacBook Air is up a couple of hundred bucks, now starting at $1,299. The MacBook Pro has increased by $300, from $1699 to $1,999. iMac is up from $1,299 to $1,499. The Mac Studio with M4 Max increased by $500, now starting at $2,499. The biggest leap of all is the Mac Studio with M3 Ultra, which has gone from $3,999 to $5,299.

The MacBook Pro’s starting price jumped $300 this morning. | Photo by Jaron Schneider

Even HomePod is costlier now. The HomePod’s starting price jumped $50 this morning, and the HomePod mini went from $99 to $129. Apple TV went from $129 to $199. Apple Vision Pro, which is already really expensive, increased from $3,499 to $3,699.

It is impossible to predict when this memory shortage will end, or what will even happen to prices when it does. However, IEEE Spectrum speculates that relief could arrive in 2028. That’s an awful long time from now in the technology space.

It will be very interesting to see what happens with Apple’s next iPhone lineup, expected to arrive in September, as is tradition. They rely heavily on flash memory, just like everything else in Apple’s lineup.

Image credits: Apple unless otherwise noted.