Apple Raises Mac and iPad Prices on the AI Memory Crunch

Apple raised prices on Macs, iPads and several home devices on June 25, an unusual mid-cycle move it blamed squarely on a shortage of memory and storage chips. The starting price of the MacBook Air climbed to $1,299 from $1,099, the MacBook Pro rose to $1,999 from $1,699, and the iPad Air went to $749 from $599. HomePod speakers and Apple TV boxes also went up. iPhone pricing, for now, was left untouched.

The cause is the AI boom — specifically, the race to build out data centers. Memory makers such as Micron have spent recent months prioritizing the enormous, long-term orders placed by AI chipmakers like Nvidia, leaving far less supply for consumer-electronics manufacturers. With AI accelerators needing vast amounts of high-bandwidth and conventional memory, the components that go into laptops and tablets have become both scarce and expensive.

The numbers behind the squeeze are stark. According to industry tracker TrendForce, prices for DRAM — the dynamic memory used in virtually every modern device — rose as much as 98% in the first quarter of 2026 and are projected to jump another 58% to 63% this quarter, a run some analysts have nicknamed “RAMageddon.” Micron has reportedly locked in around $22 billion of long-term commitments from data-center customers, underscoring how thoroughly AI demand has reordered the supply chain.

Apple framed the increases as unavoidable. “We have never seen a component price increase this much, this quickly,” the company said, adding that it had shielded customers from the rises “so far” but had reached an inflection point. CEO Tim Cook warned that the impact would be “significantly higher” beyond June, a signal that today's hikes may not be the last — and that the iPhone's reprieve could prove temporary.

The episode is a vivid illustration of how the cost of training and serving AI models is no longer confined to the companies building them. As hyperscalers and AI labs vacuum up memory to feed their data centers, the price of that scarcity is now landing directly on consumers buying a laptop or tablet — turning an infrastructure story into a checkout-line one.