We knew it was coming – Apple CEO Tim Cook said so himself in an interview with the WSJ last week – but now the dreaded price hikes are here, and they hit almost everything except the iPhone. For now, anyway.
After warning last week that increases were coming, Apple has now revealed exactly how much more you’re going to have to pay for some of its most popular products – and it affects everything from budget-friendly iPads right up to the top-end Mac Studio.
This isn’t a casual £/$50 uplift either; in some cases we’re looking at hikes of over 20%, driven by what Apple calls an “extraordinary surge” in demand for the memory and storage chips used in AI data centres.
The company says it has “never seen a component price increase this much, this quickly” and claims it’s “working tirelessly to find solutions”, but for buyers, the bottom line is simple: you’re paying noticeably more for the same kit.
Fans of budget Macs will no doubt be disappointed that the hugely popular Mac Mini and MacBook Neo have both jumped by £/$100, now at £/$799 and £/$699 respectively. The MacBook Air, which we’ve long thought offered the best combination of hardware and price, has also seen an uptick, now £/$200 more at £/$1,299.
These used to be the easy recommendations in Apple’s lineup; now, you have to think a lot harder before calling them good value.
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Things, of course, only get more expensive as you go up the price list in Apple’s collection, with the powerful – and RAM/storage-hungry – MacBook Pro and Mac Studio getting hit the hardest.
The MacBook Pro, for example, has climbed from £/$1,699 to £/$1,999 – a £/$300 jump – while the Mac Studio with M4 Max has gone up by £/$500 to £/$2,499. These are serious workstation-class machines, but the price rises are equally serious.
The wildest jump is reserved for the M3 Ultra-powered Mac Studio; that behemoth now costs a whopping £/$5,299, a £/$1,300 increase over its older $3,999 RRP. At that point you’re not just paying an Apple premium – you’re paying an AI-era component tax, driven by the same RAM and storage crunch that’s fuelling data-centre buildouts around the world.
Macs have, of course, been hit harder than other products given the storage and RAM crisis the tech industry has been dealing with for the past year or so – an “unprecedented challenge”, in Apple’s own words – but it’s not just Macs getting more expensive.
The 11-inch iPad Air has jumped by £/$150 to £/$749, the 11-inch iPad Pro now costs £/$200 more at £/$1,199, and the top-end 13-inch model comes in at £/$1499.
Even the HomePod Mini caught a stray bullet, jumping up by £/$30 to £/$129. It’s not as big a jump as some of the other products on the list, but it still represents around a 30% increase given how cheap it was.
Here’s a complete breakdown of all the changes coming into effect:
ProductBefore PriceAfter PriceIncreaseHomePod mini£/$99£/$129£/$30iPad Air 11£/$599£/$749£/$150MacBook Neo£/$599£/$699£/$100Mac mini (M4)£/$699£/$799£/$100iPad Pro 11£/$999£/$1,199£/$200MacBook Air (M5)£/$1,099£/$1,299£/$200MacBook Pro (M5)£/$1,699£/$1,999£/$300Mac Studio (M4 Max)£/$1,999£/$2,499£/$500Mac Studio (M3 Ultra)£/$3,999£/$5,299£/$1,300
The price hikes have rolled out today across Apple Stores and retailers in the UK, US and other regions.
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