The site went down on Thursday.
Briefly. But when Apple’s store came back up, the numbers on the screen had changed. Not slightly. Significantly.
MacBooks, iPads, HomePods, the 4K Apple TV. Almost everything. Except iPhones, it seems. That feels like a lifeline for now, but maybe don’t bank on it lasting.
Why now?
Right in the middle of Amazon Prime Day. The back-to-school rush. The perfect time to hit shoppers where it hurts, assuming you have the nerve to do it mid-sale. The Wall Street Journal saw the moves first.
Apple didn’t even pretend it was a mistake.
“We have never seen a component price increase so much, so quickly,”
That was the official line. Memory. Storage. The insatiable hunger of AI data centers eating up RAM before we could touch it.
CEO Tim Cook called it “unavoidable” just last week. He even named the demon. RAMageddon. Fits right in, doesn’t it?
The math is uglier than expected
Let’s talk about the MacBook Neo. This was the device that pretended to be the friendly alternative. The $599 gateway drug for casual users.
It’s gone.
Now it’s $699.
That is a 100-dollar jump. Roughly 17% more expensive for what should have been the bargain bin item. A $1,000 hike on a Pro model you can stomach if you’re a professional. Hiking up the entry-level price by this margin? It changes the story. It admits there is no budget tier anymore. Just tax.
Scott Stein, CNET’s editor at large, called it stunning. He said most things look like they went up, even if some didn’t. Perception is reality here.
So what do you do?
Wait.
Stein suggests waiting. Or buying only what you actually need. Or checking if Amazon’s cache hasn’t refreshed yet.
Because right now? Glitches exist. The iPad Mini lists at $499 on Prime, but the original MSRP still shows the old $599 number in the code somewhere, while Apple’s own store demands $699 (if the trend holds for that model too). You can grab that MacBook Neo on Amazon for $589. Less than what it was before Apple blinked and raised the flag.
But those prices are evaporating. Like ice.
It’s not just Apple
Samsung raised prices on laptops. Microsoft touched up Surface gear. Meta made headsets cost more. Everyone is screaming about RAM shortages. AI wants chips, so we pay the ransom.
You want that MacBook Air? You’re paying for a data center’s GPU.
The question isn’t really if the prices will go up more.
They already did.
