Apple raises prices on MacBooks, iPads and other products citing surging memory costs

Apple raised prices on MacBook and iPad models Thursday, saying it could no longer shield customers from soaring memory and storage chip costs driven by the AI industry's datacenter buildout. The company said in a statement that it had shielded customers from increases so far but had reached a point where it needed to begin raising prices on a number of products, including today's increases for iPad and Mac. It added that it had never seen a component price increase this much, this quickly. Apple hiked the price of the MacBook Air with 512 gigabytes of storage to $1,299 from $1,099 and the MacBook Pro with 1 terabyte of storage to $1,999 from $1,699, according to its website. The iPad Air with 128 gigabytes of storage rose to $749 from $599. The entry-level MacBook Neo increased to $699 from $599. Prices also rose for both versions of the HomePod smart speaker and Apple TV set-top box. The iPhone lineup was not affected. Apple's shares fell nearly 5 percent. Dynamic random access memory prices rose as much as 98 percent in the first quarter of 2026 and are set to jump another 58 percent to 63 percent in the current quarter, according to TrendForce. CEO Tim Cook said in late April that the company expected significantly higher memory costs beyond the June quarter.