Apple raises prices of MacBooks, iPads • Hacker News Board

Re: Apple raises prices of MacBooks, iPads

#661

Post by aarond0623 » Thu, Jun 25, 2026, 9:08 PM UTC

Reason077 wrote: post #656

primaprashant wrote: post #465

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…

Some very steep price rises here! I would have thought with Apple’s scale they would have much of their memory purchases locked in to long-term supply contracts that would insulate them somewhat from the market, but I guess that isn’t the case. Either that or they’re just taking advantage of the situation to juice their profits!

The prices are set largely by what consumers will tolerate. If everyone else is raising prices so consumers expect that, why wouldn't you do it, too?

Re: Apple raises prices of MacBooks, iPads

#662

Post by barake » Thu, Jun 25, 2026, 9:08 PM UTC

zamadatix wrote: post #561

GeekyBear wrote: post #553

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be fair, Microsoft announced their third XBox price hike today. > The price of XBOX consoles will increase by US$100 for 512 GB models and US$150 for 1 TB models. We will also be sunsetting our 2 TB model. https://kotaku.com/xbox-price-increase-2026-tariffs-buy-now-... This is in addition to the other two recent price hikes.

1.16x simple mean on XBOX 1.22x simple mean on Apple Closer than I expected, but some products are quite the outliers. E.g. Apple TV is 1.54x. That's gotta hurt.

Apple TV is a little worrisome, surprised the A-series devices jumped so much. They're on older lines and have mostly been a way to recoup R&D for flagships. Theyre either subsidizing other products to soften the increase, or older process nodes are under serious demand suddenly.

Doesn't bode well for the industry. PlayStation and Xbox both switched to mostly-commodity hardware this gen and are years old, yet also facing the same price pressure apparently

Re: Apple raises prices of MacBooks, iPads

#663

Post by Capricorn2481 » Thu, Jun 25, 2026, 9:08 PM UTC

pyronite wrote: post #649

bluerooibos wrote: post #613

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is just pure greed Well, pure capitalism. I suppose the terms are synonymous, though.

This is unfortunately the market and “capitalism” working as it should. Price goes up, incentive to produce more goes up too.

Not necessarily. If the entire industry triples its prices and alienates 40% the market, it's still coming out ahead. It only incentivizes producing more if there are enough people unwilling to pay for the new prices, or if it were easy for a newcomer to come in (it's not)

Re: Apple raises prices of MacBooks, iPads

#664

Post by downrightmike » Thu, Jun 25, 2026, 9:09 PM UTC

jacobgold wrote: post #274

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.

That was a niche product, these are mass market consumables.

Re: Apple raises prices of MacBooks, iPads

#665

Post by downrightmike » Thu, Jun 25, 2026, 9:13 PM UTC

ChadNauseam wrote: post #629

maipen wrote: post #579

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

It might be miserable for you, but it sounds great for your customers. I am genuinely sympathetic though.

Now we have 100 fly by night vendors! Awesome!

Re: Apple raises prices of MacBooks, iPads

#666

Post by SXX » Thu, Jun 25, 2026, 9:14 PM UTC

forestingfisher wrote: post #557

revolvingthrow wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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 f…

China won’t invade Taiwan. Be realistic

Uh oh 5 years ago nobody would believe there will be a war in Europe with almost 1,000,000 dead.

And now China knows that both US and EU are weak and cant even deal with Russia or Iran.

And they also have their own semiconductors manufacturing and cut off from what TSMC produces anyway.

Re: Apple raises prices of MacBooks, iPads

#667

Post by dijit » Thu, Jun 25, 2026, 9:14 PM UTC

Grombobulous wrote: post #618

mysterydip wrote: post #304

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The computing power available today is such a double-edged sword. We can do so much more so much faster, but then we (including myself in this) waste so many cycles on abstractions and frameworks and layers of libraries to make our development jobs easier.

Something I love about this AI era is how we are going to see companies actually focus on performance optimization again. There’s a reason WWDC was all about apps launching faster on iOS. Apple doesn’t want to stuff more RAM in iPhones when it’s not even a spec sheet their users see or care about.

Apple has historically tried to avoid “spec” unless its a comparative for illustration purposes.

Apple always markets from a “what is the value to a consumer” angle.

So, they don’t usually lead woth “128Gigabytes of storage”, they’ll say “12million photos of your most cherished memories or 800 hours of video in high fidelity”.

Us techy people know what 128G will give us, so the marketing doesn’t land.

Re: Apple raises prices of MacBooks, iPads

#668

Post by davidw » Thu, Jun 25, 2026, 9:15 PM UTC

throwawaytea wrote: post #377

greenleafone7 wrote: post #327

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree. But also back then you could buy a house and support a family with one salary as a trash truck driver. Today we spend years investing in masters and PhD-s to still live with roommates and consider buying food a luxury. Especially after the COVID hikes. So even though chasing trends and always 'needing to buy' whatever new model Apple pumps out is idiotic, let's also not shill for big corporations.

I come from th blue collar world of the central valley California. Every mechanic, car salesman, construction manager if not worker, owns their own home and has two kids. It's interesting how 60 miles east is a whole new world where you need a crazy fancy job to buy a home.

It's all about housing and the rampant NIMBYism that drove prices up in the 'desirable' places.

Re: Apple raises prices of MacBooks, iPads

#669

Post by dijit » Thu, Jun 25, 2026, 9:16 PM UTC

baron816 wrote: post #333

mysterydip wrote: post #304

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The computing power available today is such a double-edged sword. We can do so much more so much faster, but then we (including myself in this) waste so many cycles on abstractions and frameworks and layers of libraries to make our development jobs easier.

The tradeoff isn’t dev job easy vs better performance. The abstractions allow devs to build faster or work on things users care about instead of unobservably better performance.

[dead]

Re: Apple raises prices of MacBooks, iPads

#670

Post by 650REDHAIR » Thu, Jun 25, 2026, 9:17 PM UTC

akmarinov wrote: post #92

erxam wrote: post #10

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.

They didn’t increase prices on iPhones, Apple Watch and Airpods

There are many rumors that the new iPhone 18 Pro will start at ~$1300.

So maybe their mobile hardware will be next.