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Top Stories: Massive Apple Price Increases, iOS 27 Beta 2, and More

Legalese78 said:
Or...wild idea...you could hold on to your phone for more than a year or two.
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I held onto my iPhone 8 Plus for 4 years before I upgraded to the 13 Pro. Shortly ever since, I upgraded yearly until the 16 Pro Max. Ashamed to admit, almost every single iPhone I bought was returned for at least around 90 times over in the past 3 years. Then, at one point, I asked myself how did I hold onto my phone that long in the past. I was just simply bored. Sure I can hold onto one or two more years, but I also love owning tech as well. I do feel comfortable holding onto tech that works, but every now and then, I love the thrill of upgrading, even if it's minimal
 
Apple is trying its hardest to protect existing profits by making consumers pick up the tab for its own bad decisions, and those of other global actors, while becoming a subscription-based tech hardware company.

Feral capitalism by gaslight, nothing less.
 
teh_hunterer said:
Aren't they worth more now though?
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If you honest reason to your customers is that the only reason why you were forced into increasing the cost of your products was due to you having to "today" pay more for the ram you are fitting into todays products then that reasoning cannot in any honest fashion apply to your old products made long before any price increase.

What you think people are willing to pay, and honest reasons why you need to put the prices up are two unrelated things
 
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Piggie said:
If you honest reason to your customers is that the only reason why you were forced into increasing the cost of your products was due to you having to "today" pay more for the ram you are fitting into todays products then that reasoning cannot in any honest fashion apply to your old products made long before any price increase.

What you think people are willing to pay, and honest reasons why you need to put the prices up are two unrelated things
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Refurbished products are supposed to be tied to to current day value just like anything else. If they don't price them according to their other products, everyone will just buy and resell them closer to the price they're actually worth. And nobody will buy the new stuff.

Do I really need to explain this?
 
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subjonas said:
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.
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I would replace generous with deliberate — for now. To me, it seems more like they are holding off on iPhone 17 hikes to avoid p*****g off buyers because the iPhone is the big moneymaker. If the iPhone sees price increases after all, I would not be surprised if they come out at a lower % than those for Macs and iPads. If greedy is exaggerating, so is generous.
 
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eifelbube said:
I would replace generous with deliberate — for now. To me, it seems more like they are holding off on iPhone 17 hikes to avoid p*****g off buyers because the iPhone is the big moneymaker. If the iPhone sees price increases after all, I would not be surprised if they come out at a lower % than those for Macs and iPads. If greedy is exaggerating, so is generous.
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My point was that these are neither greedy nor generous, because we can't make that kind of judgement on isolated business decisions without seeing Apple's whole balance sheet. If a company doesn't show us their books, then we're just judging by gut which is largely uninformed and often very biased. We can't even judge by comparing isolated business decisions with those of other companies because companies are different with different products and business models and strategies (you obviously can and should compare pricing decisions between companies for shopping purposes, but the comparisons don't work for judging morals/character). The only somewhat informed and objective way we can judge a company's greed or generosity is based off of their overall net profit margin which is disclosed quarterly and for Apple I believe it's at about 26-27%.
 
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I had the itch with my M1 MAX 64GB 2TB MBP, but couldn't actually justify the upgrade as it is doing everything so well so I decided I'll do it if it breaks. Now I hope it won't break 😛
 
Piggie said:
I have this 10 year old mac I could sell, but given the recent increased in RAM prices, I have no option but to increase my asking price by 50% to reflect this.

Sorry but I simply have no other option. 😉
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Your 10-year-old DDR3 RAM won't work in any standard PC or Mac manufactured in the last 7 years. Good luck trying to get a premium price for that.
 
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Pezimak said:
I'd rather people in here stop make excuses for Apple claiming it isn't their fault, when it is. The hypocrisy is palpable... And I'm sorry to tell you Apple IS one of the main perpetrators, your own reply to me is in itself hypocritical!
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Sorry, but you're just wrong. Right now, Apple would barely scrape into the top 10 for AI use (Open AI, Google, Meta, Microsoft, Amazon, Anthropic and others are way ahead of them) - if all Apple's customers start to use the AI features apparently coming (and that's by no means a given) then they will likely move into the top 5 (maybe even top 3), largely due to the number of customers, but right now, not even close...
 
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teh_hunterer said:
Refurbished products are supposed to be tied to to current day value just like anything else. If they don't price them according to their other products, everyone will just buy and resell them closer to the price they're actually worth. And nobody will buy the new stuff.

Do I really need to explain this?
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Unfortunately, you really do have to explain it because it is not obvious to most people who haven't thought about the way markets work.
 
steven3130 said:
It’s funny these CEOs (and other C-suite) talk about “unavoidable” price hikes but yet their salaries and bonuses increase every year.
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I wish more companies behaved like Nintendo. Nintendo announced that because of inflation they're increasing salaries by 10% across the board.

When Nintendo has a tough year, they announce that the C-suite is taking a 50% pay cut.

I wish Apple would bring back reporting sales volumes. They've been in decline for the past decade but they've been masking it with ever rising prices. Volume must be really tanking this year for Apple to be deciding to be raising prices by 20% across the board this year.
 
ececlv said:
Your statement doesn't make sense. Apple always charged money for their products. At what point does it turn into "Pure greed". Apple was holding back on their price increases for a long time. They even released a really cheap Macbook while everyone knew memory prices were going way up.

Pricing theory would suggest that Apple should have gradually increased retail prices over the past year to soften the blow, rather they held and held and held keeping prices stable. Sounds like they were doing the opposite of "Pure Greed".
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The reality is Apple always boosted the price of memory. They released a cheap MacBook just to increase the price a few weeks later. Sounds like pure greed to me.
 
subjonas said:
My point was that these are neither greedy nor generous, because we can't make that kind of judgement on isolated business decisions without seeing Apple's whole balance sheet. If a company doesn't show us their books, then we're just judging by gut which is largely uninformed and often very biased. We can't even judge by comparing isolated business decisions with those of other companies because companies are different with different products and business models and strategies
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That is true, of course. We do not have the actual numbers to go by when we argue about gouging vs. unavoidable price hike. Much of my reaction is disappointment, prompted by the $100 increases on the two most affordable devices, the Neo and the base iPad. I was in a position for over 20 years during which I had to provide extensive justification for updating a lab with Macs every 3-5 years because IT pressured us each time to switch to cheaper Windows hardware. I always wished that Apple release a true low cost Mac.
 
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citysnaps said:
Will you be exercising your agency and send Apple a strong message by immediately stop purchasing Apple products and from this point on only purchase computers/phones/tablets from an Apple competitor?
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I will refrain from buying any more devices for the foreseeable future. I'm one of those people who constantly upgrades their devices. I'm going to hold what i have for as long as possible. Price is a major factor for me.
 
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AriaAmaris said:
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.
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citysnaps said:
Will you be exercising your agency and send Apple a strong message by immediately stop purchasing Apple products and from this point on only purchase computers/phones/tablets from an Apple competitor?
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The strongest message you can send to Apple is not to buy. AriaAmaris says nothing about purchasing from a competitor. What he does say about Apple charging significantly above industry average for RAM before AI drove up prices is widely acknowledged and easily proven.
 
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-BigMac- said:
With that logic, when market cap goes up - they decrease their prices🤣 didn’t get the memo for Apple dropping their line up pricing by 300% across the last few years
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Since you’re good with the price hikes can you please offset the cost of my upgrades?
 
chuckles235 said:
Since you’re good with the price hikes can you please offset the cost of my upgrades?
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Huh? I’m disagreeing with the price hikes, as there is no price decrease when its flipped. You’re on the other hand justifying them.

Did you forget which side of the debate youre on? 🤣
 
ChrisA said:
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.
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There are a million reasons why a company's stock price takes a hit.

It's not from individuals selling the stock. It's from big institutions selling the stock, and it can take them weeks to build or reduce a position of any noted size. And their reasons may have a lot, a little, or no relationship to price increases announced by a company.

I don't think you can draw from the stock price any correlation to prices. Price is only one measure. It could just be that the ARKK fund has been selling it just to rebalance its portfolio in the last few days of the 2nd quarter.
 
ngextreme said:
It takes 3-5 years to build a facility to make RAM plus $30b. By the time Apple try to get this started, Micron and the likes will have their additional factories already running and RAM prices in theory should drop due to oversupply. It's estimated that this will fall into line by 2028. Just don't buy anything for 18months. Spend your money on something non tech related. Buy a nice watch or something.
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Hope you're right, but this ransomware industry needs to be kicked on the butt. Every two to five years I see this, they increase the price and then they reduce the price, they increase the price, they reduce the price.
 
eifelbube said:
The strongest message you can send to Apple is not to buy. AriaAmaris says nothing about purchasing from a competitor. What he does say about Apple charging significantly above industry average for RAM before AI drove up prices is widely acknowledged and easily proven.
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Nope, I'm not buying anymore electronics for a while. I'm fortunate enough to be able to consistently upgrade. I've lost all interest.
 
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