My work involves the purchase for client archives of dozens of hard drives a month. Prices have more than doubled in the last 6 months. These prices increase were inevitable and are going to track through any device or company that uses memory. Frankly I am surprised the price increases were not larger.
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Top Stories: Massive Apple Price Increases, iOS 27 Beta 2, and More
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Digital Dude
macrumors 68000
I saw the tide shifting and started buying from the other guys. I still love the iPad and even picked up a new M5 last year, but I’m gradually moving on. This is just one more reason why. 🤷
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pdaholic
macrumors 68020
From what other guys are you buying? I recently bought some used MS Surface devices for really cheap. They are far from perfect, but it's awesome to have a full desktop on a tablet.
robertcoogan
macrumors 6502a
Well, Apple just nerfed my purchase of an Apple TV.
You won't find me me 'cheering' capitalism.
Pricing is more complex than that. Companies usually see costs and pricing as a whole, across the entire business, not just on a product by product basis. It's why the iPhone prices have not raised yet even though it absolutely has been directly affected by component price increases. If Apple is greedy for raising prices of old refurbished items, then they're conversely generous for not raising prices for brand new iPhones. You can't pick and choose. The truth is they're raising prices as a whole to bring in more money to the company in response to the raising costs of doing business, and they're strategically choosing which products to apply the price increases to and at which times. That's not good or evil, it's just business.
What was Cook's bonus increase? How much of an effect would declining it have actually had on the price hikes? I can't imagine more than pennies. Maybe you're more taking about optics.
Just for a different perspective in 2000 an iBook G3 was $1599 and that was the entry mac at the time.
DrewDaHilp1
macrumors 6502a
Which is $3,174.54 in today dollars.
AriaAmaris
macrumors regular
Apple had no problem ripping us off with memory upgrades and now they are passing on the increased costs on to us in order to keep their gravy train. Apple deserves every bit of this criticism. Sales should plummet.
Flight Plan
macrumors 65816
Yep, you're probably right.
And that's how it's SUPPOSED to work. I can afford a new car if it's a small Honda, Toyota, Nissan, or Hyundai. Or I can get a Acura, Lexus, Infiniti, Genesis, or Tesla if it's used and a few years old. But even though it's not beyond me, I'll never buy a Cadillac, Corvette, or pretty much a new anything.
The same goes for computing products. I don't buy used iPhones, Macbook Pros, Apple Watches, or iPads, but I lower my cost of ownership by keeping them longer. I've kept phones and watches for 3 to 4 years. If the prices go up enough, I'll extend my use of them for 5 years or more.
Hey, I already do that with my MBP (it's a 2021 model, and I'll keep it until the M7 comes out) and all of my Windows computers, which date back to 2012, 2018, and 2020, respectively. So I make 'em go another year or two. Or I only upgrade if I have one or more blockers to keeping an old device.
You think of it as a 400 euro increase (about $450 for us in the US), and you KNOW that's a lot of money.
But really, it's only a 16% increase over your old price of 2500 euros.
I say "only" because a lot of people won't even blink an eye at carrying a credit card balance with finance charges annualized at 20% to 24%. That's more than a one-time 16% increase in something. Or taking out payday loans for even more than that.
A lot of people won't be fazed at all by paying 40% to 80% more for groceries delivered by Instacart or for fast food delivered by Uber Eats or DoorDash.
More than 7 out of 10 people between the ages of 18 and 44 regularly order food for delivery, and think NOTHING of paying for the upcharges and the delivery fees. But 400 euros (or $450) causes you heartburn.
People not yet in their 50s are the people MOST impacted by the rising costs of everything. These are the people who are not yet in their highest earning years, which is typically your 50s and early 60s.
But yet, they don't see at all just how much money they waste on things like service fees and finance charges. Not saying this is you...but 70%....that could include you.
You're right more than you know. Here's a fun math exercise.
Let's say Apple decided not only to NOT PAY Tim Cook for his last full year, but to also somehow confiscate the approximate $1.5 B that he's worth right now just to be mean and leave him penniless, then to give that money away to everybody in the world who currently have at least one Apple device in their home (about 1.3 billion), everybody would receive the equivalent of about 92 cents USD.
There's a lot less money in the world than we all realize.
I don't remember the collusion and price fixing. But I also don't think there's evidence of that happening in the current era. After all, the whole AI thing just blasted off since Covid...so maybe from 2021 or 2022-ish. That's about 4 years ago when the growth began in earnest. That's not enough time to build even one fab plant. Passing the regulatory hurdles alone can take a dozen years, depending on where in the world you want to build it.
This is absolutely FALSE. "Almost zero", I would say might be less than 1%-2%, or 1 or 2 out of every 100 people.
A lot of people want it. I want it. There are probably hundreds of MacRumors members who also want it.
Demand might be anywhere from 10% to 40%. But that's a lot more than "almost zero".
I don't know what you're getting at for this comment.
I use Alexa, Siri, and Google dozens of times each day, and most of those queries come back flagged as AI responses. I love it. My searches for information have never been more useful to me and to others than they are with even the most rudimentary form of AI that we have available right now!
lol on the Vision Pro quip! But yeah, I'll definitely think twice on bigger purchases. I'll probably move ahead with my M7 plans next year. But then, that will be a 6-year period that I will have had my M1 MBP in service, which is almost as long as I keep windows machines running.
I doubt that's true.
Money grabbing? I've had Apple products ever since I bought the iPhone 5 years ago. I'm pretty sure that Apple has never reached in my pockets and just "grabbed" my money. Yes, they do charge me for iCloud, but I kind of gave my permission for that, lol!
They WERE doing the opposite of "Pure Greed (TM)". But as the saying goes, "no good deed goes unpunished."
This would be interesting.
The price increases could actually push me toward doing a trade-in of my old gear for new stuff.
If that's true, then their market cap of $4.17 Trillion as of Friday's market close would make that a decline in market cap of about 6%. Not fun, no. But also not all THAT unusual either.
Capitalism requires a few things to be called "capitalism". Here are the top five of those things:
- Private Property Rights
- Profit Motive
- Market Competition
- Freedom of Choice and Enterprise
- Minimal Government Intervention
It's free. Even an anti-capitalist has to appreciate that, right?
What's your point? Operating in the free market means you set your price and your customer can decide for himself or herself if the thing they're buying will be worth that price.
Oh for sure, I too thought that the price increases would have been a lot bigger.
The price increases are a global thing. They'll hit Samsung too. And everybody else who makes a gadget that competes with Apple's gadgets.
Some people are 100% about the optics. They might even acknowledge that this person or that company "did the right thing", but get mad at the choice of words in the press release. Or something they perceived as "a mean tweet".
QCassidy352
macrumors G5
Prices are way up (or very soon will be) across all devices that use memory. This isn’t an Apple issue, it’s an AI-totally-screwing-everyone-else issue. Just look at the price of gaming consoles. Out of control.
Flight Plan
macrumors 65816
It's not a rip off if nobody forced you to buy it. You're free to decide for yourself whether or not the transaction is worth your money.
Matt713
macrumors member
Don't care what Apple's "reason" is for dropping support of the latest software for AWU1. They are full of it. Wasted $800 on this crap that won't receive new software OS. Some lifespan of software support.
Many of you seem to have a VERY short memory. For as long as I can remember, Apple has never been a "value" proposition, especially if you tick a few upgrade boxes, where you'd usually pay triple the price of standard PC components for memory or storage.
Then the AIpocolypse hits and all of a sudden you can barely buy a 16gb memory kit for the price of a Mac Mini, only because Apple was the only company that DIDN'T jack the prices to Pluto.
Not making excuses for them, but also not really surprised.
Then the AIpocolypse hits and all of a sudden you can barely buy a 16gb memory kit for the price of a Mac Mini, only because Apple was the only company that DIDN'T jack the prices to Pluto.
Not making excuses for them, but also not really surprised.
AimeeHogan
macrumors member
Yeah, holy cow! I was going to upgrade my phone this year, but that will have to last. This current economic climate has everything going up. The price of petrol is absolutely insane right now. Living in a colder state, that means heating oil will still be extremely high this winter. Seeing those price increases has certainly priced me out of upgrading anything.
Not really, this is why Apple's stock price took a hit. Everyone expects buyers will postpope purchaces for as long as possible. Investors pretty much got it right. This is not the end of Apple, but we are entering a period of reduced sales volume.
I don't plan on buying anything until prices return to normal. I suspect I'm not the only one thinking like this.
So what you are really saying is that AI is so ubiquitous that you do not even realize you are using it daily.
Do you read the news? Do you see photographs of objects in advertisements? Even if you are the classic "dumb consumer," you are consuming an AI product.
GPT-based chatbots are not what is driving this. It is EVERYTHING, including the cruise control in your car that was trained using $250,000 of electricity in some data center. Same for the motion detection in your Ring doorbell. Even the 3D CAD system used to make a bicycle part might have some AI component.
Not using AI is like saying you don't use electric motors. I bet you own and use two dozen of them, starting with the motor inside the cooling fan in your computer.
Even if you are a dog or a goldfish, your food comes from a world where advanced automation is required, and you are an indirect user because your owner pays people who use this technology.
The baseline M5 Max 14" MacBook Pro is now £4099, that, is NOT worth the money. And it IS a rip off, Apple ARE certainly price gouging with that one. Add a nano texture screen, 64GB RAM and the 40 core Max chip and it costs £5249. If they DO release an OLED Ultra model I can easily see it costing from 5 grand on it's own!
I am VERY glad I picked up my 14" M3 Max refurb when I did. From Apple it cost me £2900 and I thought that was ridiculous then, I was thinking of one of these Ultra models but they just do not present any value what so ever with the current prices. Especially as Apple will obsolete the models after 5 or 6 years. My next purchase will be a refurb iPhone 17 Pro max, and depending on Apples pricing I may buy that elsewhere too... and then that is it until my AirPods give up or something, and even then I'll get the previous gen ones to save money.
I am VERY glad I picked up my 14" M3 Max refurb when I did. From Apple it cost me £2900 and I thought that was ridiculous then, I was thinking of one of these Ultra models but they just do not present any value what so ever with the current prices. Especially as Apple will obsolete the models after 5 or 6 years. My next purchase will be a refurb iPhone 17 Pro max, and depending on Apples pricing I may buy that elsewhere too... and then that is it until my AirPods give up or something, and even then I'll get the previous gen ones to save money.
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And Apple is one of the main perpetrators in Ai now! Literally Apples new Siri uses data centres stuffed full of Nvidia's incredibly expensive RAM packed Ai servers... all causing the price increases. If Apple wasn't forcing Ai onto everyone then those servers would not be needed as much etc..... So it is INCREDIBLY hypocritical for people on here to claim don't blame Apple, well YES YOU CAN BLAME THEM actually. Very much so...
macfacts
macrumors 603
the real downside is once the prices go up they rarely go down. Even if memory prices fall it’s unlikely Apple will reduce the prices after they see people will pay them.
Personally, I've never cheered on Capitalism. I find it offensive. It's all about greed. Which is the m.o of the U.S.