And people wonder how Apple has "record profits" every quarter! They're like a restaurant charging $80 for a $17 bottle of wine.
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Apple Expects 'Significantly Higher Memory Costs' in June Quarter and Beyond
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Well yeah, that's how it works. You charge people as much as you can get away with unless you're a charity. There are other choices. People even have the option of buying the cheapest phones from either Apple or other companies, but on the whole they CHOOSE to buy the more premium ones. As a consumer I wish they were charging less just to be nice but I know that's not how ANY company works.
oxjox
macrumors regular
Dear Apple,
www.macrumors.com
Apple Reports Record-Breaking 2Q 2026 Results: $29.6B Profit on $111.2B Revenue
Apple today announced financial results for the second fiscal quarter of 2026, which corresponds to the first calendar quarter of the year. For the quarter, Apple posted revenue of $111.2 billion and net quarterly profit of $29.6 billion, or $2.01 per diluted share, compared to revenue of $95.4...
www.macrumors.com
Don't wait.
It's inevitable that apple will adjust prices for ssd and ram upgrades.
This week I changed a 48gn 512GB Mac Mini M4 pro order to 64gb 1TB. 😎
I will use it as an AI employee there not connected to a screen. I might order two more next month.
That’s not really how things work. Apple may design a lot of their chips, but someone else (typically TSMC) manufactures them. Technically Apple already does design its own RAM as it’s integrated directly in the A and M series SOCs.
Now, if Apple could start manufacturing their own chips, that’d be amazing - but that would also take a really, really long time for Apple to make happen.
FattiesGoneWild
macrumors 6502a
You’re only as strong as your weakest link. It doesn’t matter how great Apple Silicon is if production if bottlenecked by RAM. Apple have huge cash reserves. Time to get creative with those funds even if impact would take 3-5 years to materialise.
For all we know Apple is looking at building their own fabs, but it’ll take more than 3-5 years for something to come out of it. Look how long it took Apple to develop its own modem after buying Intel’s modem division. Hardware is, well, hard.
Hard but worth it if you judge by apple silicon. Designing your own chips provides a clean slate for tackling problem rather than being constrained by legacy x86 ways of thinking.
Again, Apple already designs its own chips. Designing and manufacturing are very, very different things. Using a 3rd party manufacturing fab is hardly a legacy x86 way of thinking.
robertosh
macrumors 65816
I know that I’m a bit paranoid on this but I think that the memory issue is here to stay. Consumer memory is condemned to disappear, also the fact of having a full fledged computer at home. Memory modules, even if AI bubble explodes, will be owned by 4 or 5 companies and the end user will be limited to use just terminals that run everything in the cloud, both processing and storage and of course under a nice monthly subscription. Paranoid mode OFF.
JPack
macrumors P6
Apple doesn’t integrate RAM into any of its chips. RAM merely sits on top or beside the SoC. And, no Apple certainly does not “design” its own RAM.
This is correct. GPUs run large language models in high bandwidth memory. The more memory, the bigger bigger model and more workloads you can serve. Over the next 5 years, demand for AI compute will 50-100x.
Basically, demand for RAM will not drop and prices are therefore unlikely to fall.
They will either increase prices or cut costs elsewhere.
My wife and I had a 15 and 15 Pro, respectively, which I upgraded to a 17 and 17 Pro for that reason. Maybe unnecessarily, but I don't see a world in which the next few generations aren't either more expensive or worse in some ways.
It's inevitable. Microsoft Surface and Legion Go Z1 Extreme handheld have recently been price hiked by a few hundred dollars.
Apple might keep base prices low to make products look "cheaper" in headlines, but I can envision upgrades for higher storage capacity increasing by $150-200. Enterprise customers will off course pay for the hike because it's a business expense.
Jfc here’s a guy who thinks the profit margins are over 60 percent and that production costs, supplier costs, wages, energy, taxes and rents remain stagnant.
Probably Apple will increase prices of next models, not current ones, because they keep prices stable during the year, in both ways. They don’t lower prices even if the market is down during the cycle of a product
Yep I'm very curious about the price of the MBP 14 OLED. It starts at 2500€ currently, wondering if they'll price it at 3000, and whether it'll replace the pro or be another option
knappeduivel
macrumors 6502
It would be really weird if Apple did not talk about ballooning memory prices.
Greenmeenie
macrumors 68020
I remember those days as an artist in the 90s and early 2000s. We’d buy the Apple Power Mac with the basic ram and then buy more ram at much cheaper prices from CRUCIAL. I miss those days! 😂
Not just the Power Macs, you could even upgrade Apple laptops fairly easy. I put more RAM into my iBook at the time.
Good old days.
Because you're paying not just for the bottle, but all the restaurant's running costs -- staff, rent, electric, etc -- before they add any margin for profit. Wine is where restaurants make their money, certainly, but if they charged wine at retail price, they'd have to raise the cost of the food.
Apple certainly adds in a sizeable margin on their RAM, but "bill of materials" is not the only cost involved.