Apple raises prices of MacBooks, iPads • Hacker News Board

Re: Apple raises prices of MacBooks, iPads

#111

Post by cassianoleal » Thu, Jun 25, 2026, 2:00 PM UTC

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.

Didn't they literally say they would, just a few days ago? Why would you all say they wouldn't? What would they gain by lying about price hikes?

Re: Apple raises prices of MacBooks, iPads

#112

Post by jorvi » Thu, Jun 25, 2026, 2:00 PM UTC

tristor wrote: post #67

tristor wrote: post #31

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…

Related, I just realized that Apple uses the same numeric price in multiple regions but just changes the currency. At current price, you'd save $3149 USD flying from London to New York City (minus travel costs) to buy a maxed out 14" MBP vs buying it in London, since the price is 9849 GBP vs 9489 USD...

The EU price includes the warranty, which is at least 2 years but is officially for "the expected life of the product", which in the case of an $10,000 laptop would probably be a decade plus.

Re: Apple raises prices of MacBooks, iPads

#113

Post by groundzeros2015 » Thu, Jun 25, 2026, 2:00 PM UTC

TalkingCodeMonk wrote: post #35

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.

The fact that a dozen companies are allowed to buy up the entire global supply of core components, and increase the cost of living for every human on Earth, is full blown dystopian.

The cure for high prices is high prices. This increase in demand is encouraging economization. Factories which make components are trying to operate for more hours. Producers who haven’t gotten into RAM may try it out. Large companies like Apple may test alternative suppliers. Consumers who don’t really need an upgrade will wait, allowing others who need it to buy one.

Re: Apple raises prices of MacBooks, iPads

#114

Post by groundzeros2015 » Thu, Jun 25, 2026, 2:02 PM UTC

rchaud wrote: post #84

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%.

I went looking for a comparable PC product a few months ago and nothing is even close in price for the same feature set.

Re: Apple raises prices of MacBooks, iPads

#115

Post by lapcat » Thu, Jun 25, 2026, 2:02 PM UTC

cpursley wrote: post #106

lapcat wrote: post #63

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?

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...

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.

Re: Apple raises prices of MacBooks, iPads

#116

Post by rpgbr » Thu, Jun 25, 2026, 2:02 PM UTC

qaq wrote: post #59

TalkingCodeMonk wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fact that a dozen companies are allowed to buy up the entire global supply of core components, and increase the cost of living for every human on Earth, is full blown dystopian.

If people were not consuming their services they would not be buying inference hardware at this rate so it's pretty much on consumers.

Ask every Windows 11 or Google consumer that doesn't give a damn for AI and, yet, has been almost forced to use Copilot and Gemini…

Re: Apple raises prices of MacBooks, iPads

#117

Post by wat10000 » Thu, Jun 25, 2026, 2:03 PM UTC

nalekberov wrote: post #47

ElProlactin wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple has never been a charity.

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.

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.

Re: Apple raises prices of MacBooks, iPads

#118

Post by BigTTYGothGF » Thu, Jun 25, 2026, 2:03 PM UTC

GL26 wrote: post #77

BigTTYGothGF wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What would I do with ten macsbook?

Resell them, or make a tiny hosted cloud farm to help devs that don't own a mac build an app for ios

Seems like an awful lot of work.

Re: Apple raises prices of MacBooks, iPads

#119

Post by dwa3592 » Thu, Jun 25, 2026, 2:03 PM UTC

piinbinary wrote: post #4

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.

Until China floods the market with their memory which is starting

Re: Apple raises prices of MacBooks, iPads

#120

Post by aroman » Thu, Jun 25, 2026, 2:04 PM UTC

kamranjon wrote: post #56

tristor wrote: post #31

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…

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.

Who exactly is “coordinating” that effort? Surely everyone except the datacenter builders and the big hosted AI models has exactly the opposite incentive.