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Apple boss Tim Cook says prices to rise due to memory chip costs

bbc.com

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Re: Apple boss Tim Cook says prices to rise due to memory chip costs

#31

Post by Frieren »

rjzzleep wrote: post #4

I'm not sure how much of it is just an unintentional side-effect of greed from promises of international capital based in NY, and Dubai, and how much was intentional malicious behavior to destroy home compute to force people to pay for openai subscriptions, but the role of a functioning government typically is to keep corporations from doing exactly this. Regardless of which one it is, I absolutely despise the cartel…

> malicious behavior to destroy home compute

It is part of the global trend to "rent everything, own nothing".

High inequality means that everybody wants to sell to the hyper-rich individuals and corporations. And selling products and services to the working class is a losing money endebour.

So, money accumulation means asset accumulation, that means more renting, that means more money...

Re: Apple boss Tim Cook says prices to rise due to memory chip costs

#32

Post by frollogaston »

cm2187 wrote: post #22

There was a very interesting podcast that went into all the details of the AI supply chain shortage [1] The key takeaway for smartphones isn't so much that iphones will cost $150-200 more, which apple customers have shown they can stomach. But that cheap $200 chinese smartphones will need have to hike prices by about the same amount, which will decimate that market. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mDG_Hx3BSUE

I'd expect the iPhone price hikes to be less even in absolute $ than with the cheap phones. iPhones already had relatively large margins (as a %) for the newly increased costs to partially eat into.

Re: Apple boss Tim Cook says prices to rise due to memory chip costs

#33

Post by anon373839 »

herodoturtle wrote: post #9
noobermin wrote: post #3

Tbf, this current era of capitalism really is a lot where absolutely no one wants to enter the market and take advantage of a clear overpricing of memory for consumers but simply wants to charge the same amount as everyone else. So much for "efficient markets."

Could you please expand on this? Aren’t prices sky rocketing precisely because of excess demand? And they’d collapse in turn if demand disappeared. My understanding of economics is entry level so please forgive my ignorance. I’m just curious what you mean.

> Aren’t prices sky rocketing precisely because of excess demand?

Not exactly. The RAM crisis was sparked by OpenAI contracting with multiple vendors to take vast quantities of raw, unfinished wafers off the market. Wafers which OpenAI had no use for -- they just wanted to starve competitors.

This is different from an "AI is so popular that manufacturers can't keep up with demand" story.

OpenAI and Anthropic are the sleaziest companies that have come out of Silicon Valley in a long time, and that's really saying something.

Re: Apple boss Tim Cook says prices to rise due to memory chip costs

#34

Post by prmoustache »

noobermin wrote: post #3

Tbf, this current era of capitalism really is a lot where absolutely no one wants to enter the market and take advantage of a clear overpricing of memory for consumers but simply wants to charge the same amount as everyone else. So much for "efficient markets."

You don't want to build a huge factory if you believe the market might deflate suddently.

A lot of industries got bitten by greed and the sudden deflation of demand and huge unsold inventory post COVID. The reality is the market was overly and abnormaly inflated and consumers who bought the stuff during COVID period were equipped for the next ~10 years in stuff like sporting goods and had no reason to buy new items in the subsequent years.

I do believe we will always need more RAM even if there is a market correction or AI bubble burst whatever you want to call it. It will not destroy AI completely, just cleanup the market. But how much will we need? I guess the chip makers makes their own guesses but don't want to make their company in peril either.

Re: Apple boss Tim Cook says prices to rise due to memory chip costs

#35

Post by cryo32 »

prmoustache wrote: post #34
noobermin wrote: post #3

Tbf, this current era of capitalism really is a lot where absolutely no one wants to enter the market and take advantage of a clear overpricing of memory for consumers but simply wants to charge the same amount as everyone else. So much for "efficient markets."

You don't want to build a huge factory if you believe the market might deflate suddently. A lot of industries got bitten by greed and the sudden deflation of demand and huge unsold inventory post COVID. The reality is the market was overly and abnormaly inflated and consumers who bought the stuff during COVID period were equipped for the next ~10 years in stuff like sporting goods and had no reason to buy new items i…

And that’s exactly what it’s going to do because the dependency chain on actually using this RAM is unlikely to succeed.

Re: Apple boss Tim Cook says prices to rise due to memory chip costs

#36

Post by steve1977 »

jl6 wrote: post #21

There’s probably a big marketing opportunity for anyone who can make more memory-efficient alternatives to some of the bloated apps that have normalized the need for >16GB RAM in a desktop computer. Alongside dark mode, apps should have a “slim mode” that turns off some of the more wasteful features in order to run on older/smaller hardware.

It's called native applications and has been around since before the days of web app wrappers. Just stop using Electron and you're halfway there already.

Re: Apple boss Tim Cook says prices to rise due to memory chip costs

#37

Post by frollogaston »

jannes wrote: post #5

Props to them for making it this far into the crisis without raising prices. It had even led to some anomalies where Apple machines were a better price than similar Windows machines.

It's nothing special, high-margin product prices are less sensitive to the costs.

Re: Apple boss Tim Cook says prices to rise due to memory chip costs

#38

Post by frollogaston »

prmoustache wrote: post #34
noobermin wrote: post #3

Tbf, this current era of capitalism really is a lot where absolutely no one wants to enter the market and take advantage of a clear overpricing of memory for consumers but simply wants to charge the same amount as everyone else. So much for "efficient markets."

You don't want to build a huge factory if you believe the market might deflate suddently. A lot of industries got bitten by greed and the sudden deflation of demand and huge unsold inventory post COVID. The reality is the market was overly and abnormaly inflated and consumers who bought the stuff during COVID period were equipped for the next ~10 years in stuff like sporting goods and had no reason to buy new items i…

But they are building huge datacenters for AI. The investment appetite is there. So there must be some worse bottleneck when it comes to memory itself.

Re: Apple boss Tim Cook says prices to rise due to memory chip costs

#39

Post by yreg »

ThePhysicist wrote: post #12

Apple RAM prices always had quite a bit of margin though, I think they charged around 4x the going market rate per GB (that said you can't fully compare their RAM to a loose DIMM stick). I was planning to pick up a new Mac Studio this autumn, now I'll have to see if I can afford it, though I have been spending 1,000 USD on LLM subscriptions in some months so I guess even a 10,000 USD Studio Mac amortizes quite fast i…

The funny thing is that currently Apple's RAM upgrades are cheaper than the loose dimm sticks.

I've just got a new MBP this month, because I expect the prices to rise significantly with the new macbooks in the fall.

Re: Apple boss Tim Cook says prices to rise due to memory chip costs

#40

Post by lostlogin »

frollogaston wrote: post #37
jannes wrote: post #5

Props to them for making it this far into the crisis without raising prices. It had even led to some anomalies where Apple machines were a better price than similar Windows machines.

It's nothing special, high-margin product prices are less sensitive to the costs.

Is that it, or did Apple negotiate long term contracts with suppliers?

Tim Apple has never been one to shy away from squeezing out another dollar.

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