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Apple<\/a> on Thursday announced price hikes on MacBook and iPad, its first formal move to pass higher memory and storage costs<\/a> on to consumers after CEO Tim Cook<\/a> said increases had become unavoidable.<\/p>\n Here are the latest changes from Apple:<\/p>\n MacBook Neo entry $599 increasing to $699 MacBook Air 512GB $1099 increasing to $1299 MacBook Pro 1T $1699 increasing to $1999 iPad Air 128GB $599 increasing to $749 iPad Pro Wifi 256GB $999 increasing to $1199<\/p>\n Apple’s online store briefly went down Thursday morning and updated with the price changes.<\/p>\n “The consumer electronics industry is facing an unprecedented challenge,” the company said in a statement. “The rapid expansion of AI data centers has created an extraordinary surge in demand for memory and storage. We have never seen a component price increase this much, this quickly.”<\/p>\n Apple added that it has “reached a point where we need to begin raising prices on a number of products,” leaving the door open to more increases down the line.<\/p>\n “We know this is not welcome news, and we are working tirelessly to find solutions,” the company said.<\/p>\n Cook told The Wall Street Journal<\/a> last week that Apple could no longer fully shield customers from a spike in component costs tied to the artificial intelligence<\/a> boom. <\/p>\n “This is a hundred-year flood,” Cook told the Journal. “I’ve never seen anything like it in any area in over 40 years.”<\/p>\n Memory and storage prices have quadrupled in the past three quarters, according to Counterpoint Research, as suppliers steer more production toward the high-bandwidth memory used in AI servers.<\/p>\n The memory crisis has been a major boon for suppliers like Micron<\/a>, which just reported a quadrupling in revenue and said its gross margin<\/a> jumped from 39% a year ago to 84.9% in the most recent quarter, surpassing Nvidia<\/a> and Meta<\/a>. <\/p>\n Apple’s pricing playbook has historically involved removing the lowest-cost option, making higher storage or memory the new starting point, or steering buyers toward Pro models and higher-capacity versions.<\/p>\n The Mac mini offered an early sign of that approach. In May, Apple stopped selling the lowest-priced configuration, removing the $599, 256GB option from its lineup. The remaining entry model started at $799. Apple has also long used storage upgrades to lift the price consumers pay for its devices. <\/p>\n Tarun Pathak, research director at Counterpoint Research, estimates the higher cost of components could add roughly $200 per iPhone for Apple. He expects price increases of about $150 to $200 across the lineup, weighed more heavily toward higher-memory configurations than base models.<\/p>\n The AI push gives Apple another reason to emphasize higher-memory configurations. <\/p>\n IDC expects all new iPhone models to move to 12GB of RAM, as Apple looks to avoid selling new devices without access to the full suite of Apple Intelligence features. <\/p>\n More advanced on-device AI features require more memory, and Apple’s new Siri experience will only work on newer hardware. IDC estimates roughly 54% of iPhones shipped since 2022 will not support the full new Siri experience.<\/p>\n That gives Apple a potential way to frame higher prices around more capable hardware, rather than simply passing along component inflation. IDC sees Apple’s average selling price rising 12% this year, helped by a richer product mix and the expected launch of a foldable iPhone.<\/p>\n WATCH: Apple to pass memory cost increases on to consumers<\/a><\/p>\n
![\"Apple](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/108323962-17817961551781796153-46623389603-1080pnbcnews.jpg\")