Summary: Apple raised prices across almost the whole Mac line on June 25, 2026. The general consensus is that this is due to a RAM shortage, and Dell, Lenovo, HP, and Microsoft all did similar things. A lot of the good sub $1,000 deals are gone for now: the MacBook Air M5 that drifted near $949 earlier this year is $1,299 today, and the MacBook Neo went from $599 to $699. It is a rough time to buy a computer, and it is not likely to ease soon. I would not wait around for a price drop nobody has announced, but I would not rush either unless you need the machine. Below is the new math and what I would buy at each budget today.

I keep a handful of Mac buying guides updated on this site, and after the June 25 increase I had to go fix the prices in all of them at once. 😢 That is a lot of work and confusing for you so here is the one place I will explain the price increases:

Apple bumped US prices across nearly the whole Mac and iPad lineup. These are the numbers I verified on apple.com in July 2026:

The entry machines took the smallest dollar hit and the high end took the biggest. A $100 bump on the Neo is one thing. A $1,300 jump on the M3 Ultra Studio is a huge increase and also gets us back to the traditional “Apple charges an arm and a leg for memory upgrades”.

Why prices went up

The quick answer: it is memory and storage. RAM and flash storage prices have climbed all year because AI data centers are buying up huge quantities of the memory or memory production capability. When a hyperscaler orders memory by the container load, the price for everyone else goes up, supply and demand. Apple said it had “never seen a component price increase this much, this quickly.” Nobody I read expects that to ease for a while, so this does not look like a temporary blip that patience will fix. There is some hope that China will be able to ramp up production on DDR5 and so forth, and there are some signs of that. Manufacturers are also releasing products with old memory (DDR4) and older tech (like older GPUs etc.)

Did I miss my window? Buy now or wait?

Short answer: there is no confirmed sale or price rollback on the calendar to wait for.

Prime Day already happened. Amazon moved it to June 23 through 26 this year, and it is over.

The math is simple and kind of a bummer: prices are likely not dropping soon. If your current machine still does the job, waiting is fine. Just do not wait expecting a sale nobody has announced. Back to school and maybe Christmas would be my recommended times to look for a bargain.

The one value lane that survived the increase is Renewed and refurbished. Amazon Renewed has the M4 MacBook Air around $849 (16GB/256GB) and $1,075 (16GB/512GB). Apple’s refurbished store is worth a look too if you want an Apple warranty behind it, though inventory moves fast.

What I would buy at each budget right now

I write about Claude Code and dev machines a lot, so this is aimed at that kind of buyer, but the logic holds for general use too. Quick disclosure before the picks: I really like ThinkPads 😉 My ThinkPad P14s Gen 6 with 96GB of RAM (before RAM prices went crazy) is one of my fav laptops of all time and it does a great job with VMs and experimenting with decent sized LLMs (at a fairly low token per second, but still nice for quality checking and evaluating new models). Where a Mac wins I will say so, and where a ThinkPad wins I will say that too.

Around $700: the MacBook Neo, or a Renewed M4 Air

At $699 the fanless MacBook Neo is the easiest recommendation on this list. Silent, cool, all-day battery, real macOS. For writing, web work, and light-to-medium coding it is plenty, and at this price the Mac genuinely wins the budget question. If you want to know whether it handles Claude Code, I tested exactly that, and I dug into the chip itself in my MacBook Neo benchmarks.

If you would rather trade newness for more storage headroom, a Renewed M4 Air around $849 is the other budget play.

Real-setup note: budget another $200 to $500 for a monitor and a USB-C dock or hub if this becomes your daily driver. A 13″ laptop is a great machine and a cramped all-day desk, both at the same time. My monitor list is a good place to start.

Around $1,100 to $1,500: this is a real decision now

Before June 25, when the Air drifted down to about $949, this was an easy single answer. At $1,299 it is not anymore. Here are the two ways I would go:

• Buy the MacBook Air M5 if you want the best battery life, silent fanless operation, and macOS. The base 16GB/512GB is $1,299 (Midnight has been running about $40 less), the 1TB tier is $1,449, and the 24GB/1TB config is $1,799. It is still a lovely machine, and 16GB is fine for most work.
• Buy a 32GB ThinkPad ($1,100 to $1,500) if RAM-per-dollar, ports, a better keyboard, easy serviceability, or Linux matter more to you. At this price a T14s, T14, or P14s with 32GB flatly wins the memory question against a 16GB Air, and for local LLM work or heavy multitasking that is the whole ballgame. This is the lane I benchmarked myself, so this is not me reading spec sheets at you.

Both paths are covered in depth in my best laptop for Claude Code guide and the ultimate workstation writeup. The same real-setup note applies: leave room in the budget for a monitor and a dock.

Building a desk setup: the Mac mini M4 at $799

If the machine is going to live on a desk, the Mac mini M4 at $799 plus a monitor you like is the value play. Figure roughly $1,250 all-in with a good screen. The workstation guide has the full bundle math.

If you need the Pro or Max tier

The high end took the hardest hit, so go in clear-eyed. The 14″ MacBook Pro with M5 Pro starts at $2,499 now, and the M5 Max is $4,099. If you are trying to work out which Apple chip you need before spending that kind of money, I compared them in the Apple Silicon writeup.

Bottom Line

The Mac mini I bought for $599 back in November is $799 today. I figured it might hit $749 by the holidays. It blew past that, and sooner than I thought. 🤷

So here is where I land. This is a rough time to buy a computer, and waiting probably will not save you money, because the memory crunch is not easing anytime soon. Buy what you need when you need it. The best value right now is the Renewed and refurbished lane, not a discount that no longer exists.

Mostly, do not let a stale guide (mine included, until I updated them) talk you into a price that is gone. That is the whole reason I wrote this one.

Sources and Further Reading

• Al Jazeera, “Apple, Microsoft hike prices over surging chip costs” (June 26, 2026): the announcement, the AI-data-center cause, and Apple’s statement that it had never seen a component price rise this fast.
• CBS News, “Apple and Microsoft are raising their prices as chip costs soar” (June 2026): the increase reaches beyond Apple.
• TrendForce, “Memory Crunch Hits PCs: Dell Hikes Prices 15-20%, Lenovo from January 2026” (Dec 2025): the PC-industry price resets.
• Tom’s Hardware, citing TrendForce: AI demand keeps DRAM and NAND prices climbing through Q3 2026.
• Amazon: Prime Day 2026 ran June 23-26.
• Apple: current Mac pricing, verified July 2026.
• My related guides: best laptop for Claude Code, the ultimate Claude Code workstation, MacBook Neo benchmarks, and Apple Silicon compared.

Some links in this post are affiliate links. If you buy something through one of these links, I may earn a small commission at no extra cost to you. I only recommend products I have personally used or thoroughly researched.