Hartley Charlton, reporting for MacRumors:

After temporarily taking it down earlier today, Apple’s online store is back up with a series of product price increases. The changes are as follows:

  • HomePod mini: $129, up from $99 (+$30)
  • HomePod: $349, up from $299 (+$50)
  • Apple TV: $199, up from $129 (+$70)
  • iPad: $449, up from $349 (+$100)
  • iPad mini: $599, up from $499 (+$100)
  • iPad Air: $749, up from $599 (+$150)
  • iPad Pro: $1,199, up from $999 (+$200)
  • MacBook Neo: $699, up from $599 (+$100)
  • MacBook Air: $1,299, up from $1,099 (+$200)
  • MacBook Pro: $1,999 up from $1,699 (+$300)
  • iMac: $1,499, up from $1,299 (+$200)
  • Mac mini (M4 Pro): $1,599, up from $1,399 (+$200)
  • Mac Studio (M4 Max): $2,499, up from $1,999 (+$500)
  • Mac Studio (M3 Ultra): $5,299, up from $3,999 (+$1,300)
  • Vision Pro: $3,699, up from $3,499 (+$200)

I am humbled to admit I was wrong in my post earlier in June about these price increases: I predicted they wouldn’t take effect until new products were announced and that the iPhone (and Apple Watch) would be the first to take the hit. The iPhone and Apple Watch did not receive price increases on Thursday, perhaps in anticipation of the new models in September. Every other product, however, saw preemptive double-digit percent increases. I’m not willing to bet anything on it, but I feel like this indicates that none of these products — including the Apple TV and HomePod mini — will be updated until late in the fall, or maybe even next year. I don’t believe the (somewhat sensible, if not credible) theory that Apple is increasing prices to “get people used to” the higher price tags before new models are released later this year. (I’ll return to product cycles in a bit.)

Apple makes exceptional margins on its products, close to 40 percent excluding Services revenue. (Including Services, it makes about a 45 percent margin.) Some memory prices have increased by 100 percent year-over-year, but Apple has locked-in contracts with RAM manufacturers dating back years. It’s undeniable that despite that, Apple’s margins have taken a severe hit in recent months due to the RAM shortage — so much so that it may hinder research and development — but Thursday’s news seems to indicate that the company wants to return its margins to those industry-leading levels, not meet somewhere in the middle. I think that’s highly unrealistic, and Wall Street seems to agree, at least preliminarily: Apple’s stock dropped 6 percent after the news broke.

There are two sides to this coin if you’re Apple’s chief executive. If Apple raises prices, people will save their money and keep their existing Apple products, which work reliably for years, causing the company’s profit to tank in the upcoming quarters. But if Apple doesn’t raise prices, or raises them less heavily, its profits would also fall, and it might have to raise them even more aggressively in the future anyway just to maintain any profitability. Apple’s C-suite evidently opted for the short-term blow, hoping that people would accept the price increases in the months ahead. Wall Street, however, did not run Apple stock into the ground whenever the market rate for RAM increased (i.e., when Apple’s margins declined) — it believed, somewhat convolutedly, that maintaining prices and taking a (perhaps temporary) hit on margins would still be more profitable in the long run. It instead tanked the stock on Thursday.

I tend to agree with Wall Street here. These price increases are genuinely unconscionable. $250 for an Apple TV with Ethernet, whether it runs Apple Intelligence or not, is ludicrous. The iPad Pro is not worth $1,200. And Apple simultaneously increased prices on its refurbished products — which it does not have to pay to manufacture — while maintaining trade-in values for customers who wish to upgrade. On the surface, especially to anyone not well-versed in RAM supply-and-demand economics, these price increases look like the most blatant cash grab in Apple history. Especially for a company known worldwide for its historic profit margins. An M5 Max MacBook Pro now costs $4,100 without any memory and storage upgrades — that’s a $500 price delta overnight. Apple products, for a short while, were the most price-competitive on the market, but they are no longer.

I think even Apple knows hardly anyone is in the market for a $7,000 MacBook Pro with a modest amount of memory and storage. From Mark Gurman at Bloomberg, just a while after the news broke:

The company, currently on its M5 series, plans to debut a base M6 processor as early as this year for entry-level Macs, according to people with knowledge of the matter. But in a first, the company will skip higher-end versions of that chip, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the plans are private.

Apple instead aims to introduce its next Pro and Max chips with more advanced computing and graphics power in 2027 as part of a new M7 generation, according to the people.

Apple was, and maybe still is, heavily rumored to announce new high-end MacBooks Pro with organic-LED touchscreens in the fall. But it appears Apple has either gotten into a fight with Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company over pricing and/or determined it won’t be able to ship enough units at these updated prices for manufacturing them to be worth it. Either Apple fully delays the new MacBooks Pro to late 2027, which would be truly remarkable as it would be over an 18-month gap between revisions, or it will ship them with M5 Pro and M5 Max processors this fall anyway. It could depend on how the next quarter treats Apple: If people accept the price increases fairly quickly, Apple could ship soon; if not, it may kick the can down the road to next year. The same applies to the base-model M6 MacBook Pro, M5 Ultra Mac Studio, and updated Apple TV and HomePod mini, which Gurman says could come “as early as” this year.

One final note on this debacle: The RAM problem will likely get worse before it gets better, and I can see this sparking massive backlash to artificial intelligence development. It is hard to describe an aspect of modern life that AI-powered chatbots have not shattered: price increases for computers and video game consoles, a horrible job market, and a loss of creativity in media are all notable consequences of AI companies’ incompetent (and uncharismatic) leadership and inflated valuations. If this isn’t the final nail in the coffin for the AI industry, I’m not really sure what is.

A correction was made on June 25, 2026, at 9:10 p.m.: An earlier version of this article stated that the M5 Max MacBook Pro’s price increased by $600. It was actually $500. I regret the error.