Apple raises prices across the board, MacBook Neo now $699 while MacBook Pro sees a $300 increase

It was only a matter of time. Apple has raised prices across its Mac and iPad lineups, effective immediately. The MacBook Neo now starts at $699, up from $599, while the MacBook Air jumped from $1,099 to $1,299. The MacBook Pro saw the largest increase among the laptops, rising by $300 to start at $1,999.

The Mac Studio also took a significant hit, with the M4 Max version now starting at $2,499, up from $1,999. The M3 Ultra version of the Mac Studio went up from $3,000 to $5,299, the largest single price hike in this round.

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On the tablet side, the base iPad now starts at $449 (up from $349), the iPad Air jumped from $599 to $749, and the iPad Pro rose from $999 to $1,199. The iPhone, Apple Watch, AirPods, and accessories are the only product lines left untouched, for now. The average price increase across affected products sits at $246.67.

Apple was clear about why it was raising the prices. In a statement, the company pointed to steep component costs and said that, while it had shielded customers from them, the situation had become untenable. CEO Tim Cook had telegraphed this moment a week earlier in a Wall Street Journal interview, calling the situation "unsustainable" and saying he had never seen anything like it in over 40 years.

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The root cause is the global memory crisis driven by AI demand. Apple had done well to hold prices steady until now, but the rising DRAM prices were eventually going to catch up to the tech giant. When the MacBook Neo launched at $599 in March, it was already clear the price point was precarious, and our earlier reporting flagged exactly this risk.

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As for the iPhone, the reprieve is likely short-lived. Price increases for the iPhone are surely coming, but Apple is likely to wait for the iPhone 18 to implement them. Analyst estimates for iPhone 18 Pro pricing range from $50 to $270 higher than current models. The iPhone 18 Pro is expected to launch in September, coinciding with Tim Cook's planned handover of the CEO role to hardware chief John Ternus.

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Several industry insiders have speculated that RAM prices won't normalize until 2028, and we've covered extensively how the memory crisis is projected to last well beyond that. Apple's price increase today is one of the clearest signals yet that the consumer tech industry has officially run out of runway to absorb these costs.