Apple announces significant price increases for MacBooks, iPads, more

Apple has officially cranked up prices on a bunch of products, including the MacBook Air, MacBook Pro, MacBook Neo, iPad, and iPad Air, while leaving iPhone, Apple Watch, and AirPods untouched for now. The company says it had no choice: the parts inside these devices, especially memory used for storing and handling data, have gotten dramatically more expensive because of a supply crunch tied to the ongoing artificial intelligence boom. Translation for normal people: Apple says the guts got pricier, so now your checkout total does too.

But in the comments, sympathy was in very short supply. The loudest reaction was pure sticker shock. One reader groaned that the setup they want jumped by $1,000, which is the kind of number that turns casual browsing into a full-on budgeting crisis. Others were practically victory-lapping because they bought just in time, with multiple commenters posting versions of “glad I ordered a few days ago” like survivors who escaped a disaster movie seconds before the explosion.

The real drama, though, is the suspicion that this is not temporary. Several commenters think Apple will happily keep these higher prices long after the shortage ends, whenever that may be. That sparked the mood of the thread: less “we understand” and more “sure, but these prices are never coming back down, are they?” There was also some side-eye over odd exceptions, with one person asking why the mini escaped the price hike at all. In other words: Apple says “unavoidable,” but the crowd is hearing “get used to paying more.”