Apple is going to raise device prices, but when?

https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/06/22/apple-device-prices-when

by tosh • 30 days ago

127 93 30 days ago

Tim justifying selling a computer for more than 10k when that Mac Studio comes out

Terretta• 29 days ago

It’s pretty incredible to get a Mac Studio that performant for only two weeks’ pay… Well, two weeks’ pay for doing what you’d need to be doing to justify that Mac Studio, of course.

qsxfthnkp23222• 29 days ago

Money aside since it’s probably getting to a used car territory pricing, but completely agree how amazing the Mac Studio is if you need it and know what you are doing

chistev• 30 days ago

September.

Insanity3• 30 days ago

I understood this as a “the next generation will cost more”. By now I am sure apple can fairly accurately predict device sales for each season and so they likely have a decent backlog for the current generation, procured at reasonable cost from hardware manufacturers.

It’s when they had to negotiate for the next generation where the price would be hiked.

Like the author I wouldn’t bet more than a beverage on this though.

lostlogin2• 29 days ago

By now I am sure apple can fairly accurately predict device sales

The Neo being an exception I beleive.

Insanity3• 29 days ago

That’s a new product line. Should have clarified but I meant mostly their existing product lines and specifically iPhone

jmyeet• 30 days ago

This is understandable given the market but part of me really wishes this would wait a year even though it won't.

Mac hardware is so close to being really useful for local LLMs and it's shared memory architecture could be a direct shot across the bow of NVidia's aggressive VRAM Market segmentation but it just can't compete with the raw FLOPS and memory bandwidth of NVidia. You can buy a Macbook Pro with an M5 Max with 128GB of RAM for $6k currently. I expect that will go up by 20-50% in the next generation.

It's safe to say that no current Apple product will get a RAM bump for the next 1-2 cycles at least.

I think this is going to impact NVidia too but in a different way. Normally in NVidia's product cycle we'd expect 50x0 Super mid-cycle refreshes. It's clear that's not happening this time around. We might expect the 6000 series late next year. I think there's zero incentive for NVidia to do that so that'll likely get delayed into 2028 or possibly 2029. 5090 prices keep going up even though it's 1.5 years old.

Anyway, as for Apple I'm keenly watching for the anticipated refresh of the Mac Studio lineup. The previous gen (M3 Ultra, M4 Max) just don't have the raw horsepower even though they had configs up to 512GB (512GB and 256GB now discontinued). It'll be interesting to see what the max config is and when these come up. Q3 2026 is widely expected but I wouldn't be surprised if it slips into 2027.

lostlogin2• 29 days ago

It's safe to say that no current Apple product will get a RAM bump for the next 1-2 cycles at least.

The Neo seems likely to.

trollbridge2• 29 days ago

I think we’re likely to see some kind of tiered storage (maybe still 8GB of GDDR5, but some additional memory running at slower speeds that’s volatile and then segmenting the SSD into a bigger, slower part and a smaller really fast part.

The technology all exists to do this and it’s ideal for the kind of local inference Apple wants to push.

Octoth0rpe2• 29 days ago

You can buy a Macbook Pro with an M5 Max with 128GB of RAM for $6k currently. I expect that will go up by 20-50% in the next generation.

That config can be had for $5100 already: https://www.apple.com/shop/buy-mac/macbook-pro/14-inch-space...

netdevphoenix2• 30 days ago

This was inevitable. The better question is if AI related hardware costs drop after the AI bubble implodes, will Apple drop the prices? My answer is negative.

Octoth0rpe2• 29 days ago

I think we might end up in a weirder situation: Apple _does_ drop their prices back down to current levels for the same quantity of ram, but ASP goes much higher, at least for the Pro tier buyers. My reasoning is that depending on how the benchmarks look, many of us may try to go big on ram on our next hardware purchases to run models locally as a way of hedging either model costs, or to ensure access.

netdevphoenix2• 29 days ago

Yep, this tracks. Open source models seem to be getting more and more attention.

RaSoJo2• 29 days ago

I also do not think they’re going to raise the prices of existing products mid-cycle

This surprised me too. I'd accepted that price hikes were coming for the new range...that's expected. But hiking prices on the existing range felt like a step too far!

Might have been a marketing stunt to nudge people into upgrading. Well, if that was the plan, it worked. I just caved and bought an M5 to replace my older one. Boo.

basisword2• 29 days ago

Why is that a step too far? e.g. the PS5 price has increased like 25% and it's a 6 year old product now. Similar for other consoles. It feels much more acceptable to me on something like a Mac that's less than a year old (and going to last a long time + have good resale value).

pdpi3• 29 days ago

Macs have much shorter lifecycles than consoles, and Apple doesn’t have a history of reducing prices over that lifecycle. Consoles have much longer lifecycles and typically drop in price over time (as components get cheaper).

It seems fair to expect that behaviour to work in both directions.

close04• 29 days ago

Why is that a step too far? e.g. the PS5 price has increased like 25% and it's a 6 year old product now

Precisely because it's a 6 year old product. The $499 the PS5 cost at launch in 2020 is equivalent to ~$650 in 2026 according to the inflation calculator [1]. Within a year it's harder to justify that. Nobody believes Apple is paying the price of the day for components instead of having them negotiated at least for the whole run of a model.

It feels much more acceptable to me on something like a Mac that's less than a year old (and going to last a long time + have good resale value).

That sounds like it should be exactly the other way around? A PS5 from 2020 is substantially identical with a PS5 from 2026 except maybe for some minor HW optimizations. They are completely fungible. A Mac from this year will compete with a faster model next year, and another even faster model the year after that.

[1] https://www.usinflationcalculator.com/

philipallstar• 28 days ago

PS5's increased to compensative for the many Sony gaming flops, like the $100m Concord (closed down within a couple of weeks) and the $200m Marathon (still on life support but they had to cancel the much more popular Destiny 2 to prioritise it).

AnonC• 29 days ago

I think it would be uncharacteristic of Apple to raise prices anytime from now till new products are announced in September. It doesn’t match Apple’s brand image (like the author says). As pointed in another post by John Gruber, Apple kept selling the trash can Mac Pro for a very high price for years without any updates. So it can certainly afford to bear this pain for a couple of more months and bundle all the price hikes together.

The threat of a price hike may increase sales in the near term (especially the back to school sale) and could tamper down the drop in profits a bit. After all, the hardware bill of materials is not the only thing deciding the product price.

A bigger hike now could have a snowballing effect on “switchers” and the potential services revenues they could bring.

I’m guessing that Apple will increase the prices of all products with the iPhone and Apple Watch launches in September. The increase in prices for currently selling products will be a store update, without any press release or news or tweet or any notification. That’s the (quiet) Apple way of doing things.

MBCook2• 29 days ago

I suspect you’re right, but if they don’t do it until the new stuff is announced I suspect the price hike would drown out the news of all the new stuff. And I really don’t think Apple wants that.

If they announce it on, to pick a date, July 1 then by the time the iPhone is announced it will be somewhat old news. It will still get mentioned but it won’t be the main feature of every story at announcement time.

Like so many other companies Apple is between a rock and a hard place with this stuff.

cj• 29 days ago

I suspect the price hike would drown out the news of all the new stuff. And I really don’t think Apple wants that.

I think they could get away with it if they do something like drop the price of the lowest device tier (or minimally hold price steady) and only increase prices on their more premium line up, where the premium buyers are less price sensitive.

mikejulietbravo• 29 days ago

came to say this, there's almost zero history for this so unless their supply chain got meaningfully distorted I can't see why this would happen now

fragmede• 29 days ago

Yes, there's been a meaningful distortion in the global RAM supply chain.

hylaride• 29 days ago

It'll really depend on apple's contracts with suppliers and the types of ram used in certain products. I could see them having medium term contracts, with first right of refusal to purchase on the longer term.

Memory has been a boom/bust industry since the 1970s, so I imagine people are careful with long-term agreements, but that's just me spitballing.

adolph• 29 days ago

As pointed in another post by John Gruber, Apple kept selling the trash can Mac Pro for a very high price for years without any updates. So it can certainly afford to bear this pain for a couple of more months and bundle all the price hikes together.

It seems unlikely that Apple created a rainy day fund from offering an legacy product at niche prices almost a decade ago. Equally unlikely that Apple will continue to sell at a loss today out of a traditional disregard for decreasing component costs.

WhyNotHugo• 29 days ago

Maybe that's why the 512GB RAM models are gone: they opt to pull a model without further announcement rather than increase its prices.

giancarlostoro• 29 days ago

It was probably two birds one stone: they could use that RAM for other more likely to be purchased models, and the loss from selling 512GB of "pre-RAM-AI-tax" costs would have been too high. They would have certainly sold those models though.

Lalabadie• 29 days ago

It's also a financial optimization: Even with the very expensive RAM upgrade prices, it's way better to use the same memory chips to manufacture and sell four Mac Minis or two Mac Studios, rather than a single high-RAM unit.

hajile• 29 days ago

Demand for 512+gb hasn't gone away though. I suspect we'll see M5/M6 Ultra later this year with 512gb-1tb of ram going for the biggest premium we've ever seen from the company.

mathgeek2• 29 days ago

This sure seems like the Apple way to do it. "The old stuff is now more expensive" is a worse marketing announcement than "the new stuff is awesome, and with it comes a higher price just like most years".

layer8• 29 days ago

Apple doesn’t increase prices most years, so that doesn’t really make sense. The iPhone Pros this year also look to be a minor update.

ksec• 28 days ago

The best path and most likely path will be Apple stop the 256GB price point.

Customers will be forced to buy the higher capacity iPhone. So iPhone 17 512GB start at $999.

Effectively Apple hasn't really up the price, customer just don't have the lower storage option.

ChrisArchitect• 29 days ago

[dupe] Discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48580466

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48576901

PaulHoule7• 29 days ago

Aren't their storage prices so inflated that they could just eat the difference?

For years with every other OEM I have bought the laptop with the minimum amount of memory and saved $800 or so buying the largest memory sticks that work with the machine from Crucial (R.I.P.) Doesn't work if the memory is soldered to the board though!

rock_artist• 29 days ago

Aren't their storage prices so inflated that they could just eat the difference?

Yes but to a point. Like Microsoft raised their Surface series prices. There's internal threshold of what they can tolerate before raising prices.

You can see the price and trend here: https://www.pcpartpicker.com/trends/price/memory/

Yet, remember that costs are more complex with currencies and shipping prices.

FireBeyond• 29 days ago

Hah, yes, with my cheesegrater Mac Pro 2019, Apple wanted $3,000 for 160GB of memory (to go from 32 to 192GB).

I bought it with 32 and OWC sold me the exact same sticks of memory (manufacturer, timings) for $1,050.

Same. $3,000 for 8TB of SSD. $1,200 for 4 x 2TB Samsung 990 Pros and a 4xM.2 NVMe PCIe enclosure. Which actually ran about 500MB/s faster than the Apple SSD.

ndiddy4• 29 days ago

They already did, to an extent. The base Mac Mini used to be $600 with a 256 GB SSD, but they got rid of that and now the cheapest option is the $800 512 GB model. The typical Apple strategy is to make the base model of a given computer the price competitive version, and price gouge on additional storage and RAM to build up their margins. I guess the RAM price increase made the margins on the $600 model too low for Apple to want to sell.

cockpump• 29 days ago

I said “$600” in a comment about the Neo. You said “$600” twice here about other things.

One thing is for sure, people consider that Apple hardware starts at $600.

They are not raising prices. They are keeping them low (in marketing) to outcompete others like Microsoft (aka Valve).

Gabe Newell worked at Microsoft for 15 years - people need to start considering Valve an extension of Microsoft. Their unofficial App Store for games.

ClikeX• 29 days ago

Gabe Newell worked at Microsoft for 15 years - people need to start considering Valve an extension of Microsoft. Their unofficial App Store for games.

This is a really weird take, considering Valve's push into Linux.

shevy-java• 29 days ago

I don't have apple-issued devices, so no money flows from me into apple, but it should be pointed out that with an increase in RAM prices, many of us already paid more in general, and apple may benefit here indirectly when they can add their own extra-cost onto devices on TOP of that increased RAM prices. So this should be considered rather than merely focus on (only) "Apple is increasing device prices". They are all milking us.

I also think now, with RAM prices increased, ALL hardware manufacturers should be considered an illegal mafia aka cartel. It can not be that they steal money that way. That is not how capitalism and free market work. This is a de-facto monopoly. States need to do something; the USA under Trump is just a corporate disguise right now. They are doing nothing about it. The EU is not much better, slow and like a behemoth focusing on "data privacy" (but then handing over all of our data to the USA anyway and on top of that mandating age sniffing soon). They don't protect consumers from exploding RAM prices.

trollbridge2• 29 days ago

The EU should have figured out how to open a RAM factory and make sure it stays cutting edge and relevant.

freediddy• 29 days ago

They might add it as a surcharge the way Ubiquiti is doing it. I recently bought a bunch of stuff and it all comes with a memory or tariff surcharge that is annoying but it's hard to argue it.

Also we know that it's coming soon, that's why Cook is running cover for the new CEO. They don't want the new CEO to be the one taking the fall on higher prices, so before September 1 will be my guess.

Thank God I made the right decision and I bought a max'ed out Macbook Pro 5 Max with 128 GB of memory a couple of months ago. I think prices will continue to keep going up.

qurren• 29 days ago

You can avoid the Ubitiquiti tariff surcharge and shipping fees if you buy via B&H. They don't stock all Ubiquiti products but they have most of the common stuff.

zaphoyd• 29 days ago

Unfortunately, a lot of B&H's Ubiquity stock has the memory surcharge built into the base price, so it can't avoided it just isn't labeled as obviously. Shipping, usually can be avoided. But also note that (annoyingly) UI curtails the warranty period on all gear purchased third party.

lolive• 29 days ago

my father in law bought a samsung with gemini for 350€. at what moment shall we pay more for what has become simply a portal to the almighty AI?

bgnn• 29 days ago

I have been buying an Asus laptop with Intel for our employees in the last 1.5 years, an ASUS ExpertBook P5 90NX0861-M007X0 to be precise, and it did not see even a cent of price increase.

I suspect this is because of its CPU, Intel Core Ultra 7 258V with 32GB RAM directly soldered on the CPU package, being overstock or something, or Intel secured the RAM supply upfront. I don't know but it's wild that this laptop is still early 2025 prices.

TechRemarker• 29 days ago

Can't imagine increases to existing products. Would seem almost certain it would be for new product/refreshes and they may simply continue to remove the entry level configs in the meantime. That is all still significant for Apple for whom pricing is part of the brand. Been waiting for a maxed out new MBP coming later this year/early next, which already is about 7K, so with the prices increases, scared to think what the 8GB SSD and max ram will come in at.

insane_dreamer2• 29 days ago

Still getting a MacBook Neo for my teen now rather than wait.

HDBaseT• 29 days ago

Assuming a refreshed Macbook Neo, the second generation of Macbook Neo should have 12GB of RAM

insane_dreamer2• 29 days ago

I'm assuming they'll stick with 8GB RAM to keep from increasing the price much

aurareturn• 29 days ago

I was planning to wait until the M6 generation to replace my 16" MBP M1 Pro. But after Cook said they will have to increase prices soon, I went out and bought an M5 15" Air with 24GB/1TB.

I think the M6 Pro/Max generation will have a substantial price increase given the new design, OLED, N2 TSMC node, and memory prices not coming down.

whatever12• 29 days ago

Well Apple has no excuse for this. They literally had a quarter trillion dollars sitting, they could had bought an entire ram manufacturing company along with its entire supply chain (sand included).

The argument “the market cornered us” is ridiculous for a behemoth like Apple. They had the opportunity to end, android, pc, consoles overnight.

Tim blew this.

StrLght• 29 days ago

they could had bought an entire ram manufacturing company along with its entire supply chain

And then what, sell it for cheap? Right, Apple is well-known for subsidising their hardware.

whatever12• 28 days ago

Just keep selling when everyone else will not be able to find a single dimm.

Grombobulous2• 28 days ago

Apple’s services make more revenue than all Mac and iPad revenue combined, at a higher profit margin.

I could absolutely imagine Apple buying or creating a new DRAM plant, with a strategy of Apple being the primary customer and being able to undercut the rest of the consumer electronics industry.

If they had extra capacity they could sell chips at market rate as a bonus, but they’d be able to prioritize themselves as a customer.

Seems like a strategic slam dunk to me. Apple has only been getting more vertically integrated over time. With the way Apple subscription services work they have much more of an incentive to prioritize market share over hardware margins than in the past.

blackcatsec• 27 days ago

All of these comments aged well.

ralphc2• 27 days ago

Um did something happen? I'm pondering an M5 make to replace my perfectly-working-but-won't-be-able-to-get-software-for i9 MBP.

ralphc2• 27 days ago

Never mind, I saw the story on the front page. wah-wah sad trombone for me.

Apple is going to raise device prices, but when?

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