Apple Hikes MacBook and iPad Prices by Up to 25% as AI’s Memory Monster Triggers Global “RAMageddon”

If you have been eyeing a new MacBook or iPad, you may want to sit down for this. Apple has raised prices across its entire MacBook and iPad lineup by approximately 20 per cent, marking the most sweeping Apple MacBook and iPad price increase in 2026 and one of the broadest overnight price revisions in the company’s modern history. The trigger is a ferocious global shortage of memory and storage chips, one caused not by any pandemic or natural disaster, but by the sheer, insatiable hunger of artificial intelligence data centres eating up the world’s chip supply at a rate that even the world’s most valuable tech company simply could not absorb any longer.

Apple CEO Tim Cook had previewed the pain last week, telling the Wall Street Journal that the situation was nothing short of a “hundred-year flood” and that he had “never seen anything like it in any area in over 40 years.” Price increases, he warned, had become “unavoidable.” On Thursday, June 25, 2026, Apple made those words official by quietly updating its online store with the new prices. The site briefly went offline during the changeover, perhaps pausing to collect itself before delivering the bad news.

What Has Got More Expensive and by How Much

The price revisions span Apple’s laptop and tablet ranges with almost clinical consistency. The 512GB MacBook Air has climbed from $1,099 to $1,299. The MacBook Pro 1TB now starts at $1,999, up from $1,699. The iPad Pro 256GB has moved from $999 to $1,199, the iPad Air from $599 to $749, and the entry-level iPad from $349 to $449. Even the iPad mini is up by $100, now priced at $599.

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Perhaps the sharpest sting is reserved for the MacBook Neo, Apple’s budget-friendly laptop launched just months ago in March to challenge affordable Windows machines and Chromebooks. It has jumped 25 per cent, from $599 to $749, making it a considerably less budget-friendly proposition almost overnight. The Apple TV has also gone from $129 to $199, and the HomePod from $299 to $349. The Apple Vision Pro headset has ticked up by $200 to $3,699.

The one product Apple has deliberately shielded is the iPhone, which still accounts for roughly half the company’s total revenue. Apple is clearly protecting its most critical product line, even as everything around it gets pricier. For now.

What Is “RAMageddon” and Why Should You Care

Industry analysts and tech observers have taken to calling the current crisis “RAMageddon,” and the name is entirely earned. Prices of DRAM, the type of memory that sits inside virtually every laptop, tablet, smartphone, and modern gadget, surged by as much as 98 per cent in the first quarter of 2026, according to industry tracker TrendForce. Another 58 to 63 per cent increase is expected in the current quarter. A Morgan Stanley study found that memory prices have increased roughly sixfold over the past year. JPMorgan analysts have estimated that DRAM and NAND flash memory could jump from around 10 to 15 per cent of an iPhone’s total component costs to over 45 per cent by 2027.

The mechanics behind the shortage are straightforward but punishing. The three companies that collectively control around 95 per cent of global DRAM production, Micron, SK Hynix, and Samsung, have been systematically redirecting their factory capacity toward artificial intelligence. AI data centres require enormous volumes of high-bandwidth memory, and companies such as Google, Meta, Amazon, and Microsoft are willing to pay a significant premium to secure it. Micron alone has locked in $22 billion in long-term supply commitments from AI customers. Every silicon wafer going into an AI server is one fewer wafer being made into the RAM chip inside your next laptop.

Micron underscored just how handsomely this trade-off is paying off for chipmakers when it reported that quarterly revenue had quadrupled, with gross margins reaching nearly 85 per cent. Its shares jumped 16 per cent in pre-market trading on Thursday. For consumers, those extraordinary chipmaker profits are the other side of a very uncomfortable coin.

Apple Held Out Longer Than Most

To be fair to Apple, the company has shown remarkable resistance before finally raising its hand. It kept prices flat during the COVID-19 pandemic, a period when factory shutdowns and supply chain chaos brought the global economy to its knees. It held off again during the turbulence of the US tariff wars. It is one of the world’s most powerful buyers of memory chips, with supply chain leverage that its rivals genuinely envy. But even that leverage has its limits.

“We have never seen a component price increase this much, this quickly,” Apple said in its statement. “We’ve been working tirelessly to find solutions,” it added, acknowledging the situation had become “unsustainable.” The company’s March quarter hardware margins actually rose to 38.7 per cent, up from 35.9 per cent a year earlier, but the forward pressure is only building.

Apple has also reportedly explored sourcing memory from Chinese suppliers YMTC and CXMT as an alternative, but has faced significant pushback from US policymakers citing national security concerns, leaving that route complicated at best.

Nobody Is Immune

Apple is far from alone in feeling the squeeze. Samsung raised the price of two of its new S26 smartphones in the US by $100. Dell, HP, Lenovo, and Asus have all flagged comparable price increases across their PC and laptop ranges, with analysts noting 15 to 20 per cent hikes as the new normal. Research firm IDC now projects the global smartphone market will see its biggest-ever annual decline of nearly 14 per cent in 2026, with the PC market expected to contract by 11.3 per cent. The crisis has even reached gaming, with Nintendo and Sony reportedly reconsidering hardware pricing, and Valve’s much-anticipated Steam Machine launch pushed back due to memory shortages.

Apple’s share price dropped more than 5 per cent on Thursday, its worst single-day fall since April 2025. Investors tend to get jumpy when Apple makes sweeping, visible price moves outside its normal product refresh cycle.

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The Great AI Irony

There is a certain dark comedy to all of this. Artificial intelligence was sold to us as the technology that would make everything smarter, faster, and more efficient. What it has achieved in the short term is making your next MacBook or iPad around $200 more expensive. The infrastructure being built to power AI tools you may or may not be using is, indirectly, driving up the cost of the devices you already need to use them.

Analysts at IDC have framed this as potentially more than a temporary cycle, describing it as a strategic reallocation of the world’s silicon capacity that could persist well into 2027. ASUS has noted that the shortage should “start to normalise” by 2027, but pointedly observed that “nobody wants to be the first one to lower prices.”

For Apple buyers, the upgrade calculus just changed. If you were sitting on the fence about replacing an older MacBook or iPad, the fence just got a lot less comfortable to sit on.