On this week's episode of The MacRumors Show, we discuss potential price rises for the iPhone 18 lineup following Apple's wave of hikes yesterday, as well as plans for the Apple Watch Ultra 4 and camera-equipped AirPods.
Apple yesterday raised prices across most of its lineup, including HomePod mini, HomePod, Apple TV, the entire iPad line, the entire Mac line, and Vision Pro, following CEO Tim Cook's warning to The Wall Street Journal that hikes were "unavoidable" due to soaring memory and storage chip costs. Apple's online store was briefly taken offline before returning with the new pricing, with increases ranging from $30 on the HomePod mini to $1,300 on the high end Mac Studio, averaging $246.67 across the affected products.
The iPhone, AirPods, Studio Display, Apple Watch, and accessories such as the Apple Pencil appear to be the only product lines left unaffected. Separately, the 256GB Mac mini has returned to the lineup after disappearing earlier this year, now priced at $799, which is a $200 increase over its earlier price.
The same pressure is likely to hit the iPhone 18 Pro and iPhone 18 Pro Max, which were already speculated to cost more than their predecessors before yesterday's increases. Speaking with the Wall Street Journal, Cook acknowledged Apple isn't immune to these cost pressures, and said clarity on iPhone pricing would come with the lineup's September launch.
Citing research firm TechInsights, the Wall Street Journal reported that DRAM and flash storage costs are projected to roughly quadruple by fall, pushing the iPhone 17 Pro's bill of materials from about $582 up 25% to around $726 for its successor. TechInsights has said Apple would need to raise the iPhone 18 Pro's price by about $270 to preserve current margins, though Apple's preference for standardized pricing makes a $1,299 starting price more likely on its own.
Factoring in the new camera system, which analyst Ming-Chi Kuo says could cost about 50% more than the previous generation, the Wall Street Journal estimates Apple could ultimately set the iPhone 18 Pro's starting price at $1,399 or higher, a $200 to $300 jump over the current model, with the iPhone 18 Pro Max likely starting $100 above that.
The iPhone 18 Pro is rumored to keep the iPhone 17 Pro's aluminum build, with four new colors including Dark Cherry, a muted wine-red expected to be the signature shade. As with last year, there's likely no true black option. Weibo leaker Fixed Focus Digital recently warned the new colors could be prone to the same chipping and surface issues seen on last year's Cosmic Orange and Dark Blue, which Apple reportedly treats as a material characteristic rather than a defect.
The iPhone 18 Pro and iPhone 18 Pro Max are expected to launch in September alongside Apple's first foldable iPhone, the "iPhone Ultra." Shipping could slip slightly later for the foldable. A Chinese leaker recently said any gap would be at most a month, and Bloomberg's Mark Gurman has reported the device remains on track for September, after Barclays analyst Tim Long earlier suggested shipments could slip to December. The foldable is expected to feature a 7.8-inch inner display, 5.5-inch cover display, the A20 chip and C2 modem, Touch ID instead of Face ID, two rear cameras, and a starting price of at least $2,000.
Gurman recently reported that the Apple Watch Ultra 4 and Apple Watch Series 12 will launch alongside the new iPhones. Little is known about the devices, though a faster chip seems highly likely given that both the Series 11 and Ultra 3 stuck with the S10 from the previous year. watchOS 27 will likely add new watch faces, including a variant of the Modular Ultra face.
For 2027, Apple is developing camera-equipped AirPods. The cameras, embedded in the AirPods' stems, are not designed for taking photos or video, and will instead feed information about the wearer's surroundings to Siri, which will be able to answer questions about objects and whatever the wearer is looking at, alongside contextual reminders and improved turn-by-turn directions. An included light will indicate to people nearby when the cameras are active. The AirPods were originally targeted for a 2026 launch, but Apple's broader AI struggles and the need to develop reliable object-identification models apparently pushed the timeline back.
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