Apple MacBook Neo in Citrus

Prakhar Khanna

Apple has announced price hikes across its MacBook and iPad lineup, following outgoing CEO Tim Cook’s "unsustainable" pricing remarks last week. He said price increases were unavoidable due to rising memory and storage costs, and now we have more expensive Apple products.

On Thursday morning, Apple’s online store briefly went down before returning with updated pricing. The much-celebrated $599 MacBook Neo now costs $699, while the M5 MacBook Air starts at $1,299. As for the Apple tablets, the $599 11-inch iPad Air will now set you back $749, while the base iPad has gone from $349 to $449.

The iPhone has remained unaffected so far, but I’ve reached out to Apple for comments on the same. In a statement given to Reuters, Apple said, "We have never seen a component price increase this much, this quickly. We have shielded our customers from these increases so far, but we have now reached a point where we need to begin raising prices on a number of products, including today's increases for iPad and Mac."

"Memory prices have increased more than fourfold since Q4 2025, and this single component has eroded the profit margins of most consumer electronics players," says Tarun Pathak, Research Director at Counterpoint Research. The recent Apple price hike "signals a shift in how the entire industry sets prices," he added.

With component costs continuing to rise and memory shortages expected to persist, today’s increases could be the first sign of a broader pricing shift across the consumer electronics industry.

"The growing demand for AI infrastructure has fundamentally changed the memory supply chain, meaning higher BOM (Bill of Materials) costs are now a lasting challenge. We expect other PC and tablet makers will likely respond by increasing their own prices, offering fewer entry-level options, or focusing more on high-end products with AI features and OLED screens to stabilize their profit margins," says Pathak.

Here's the full list of new starting prices for the affected Apple products.