Apple raises prices on MacBook and iPad due to memory crunch, hints at more to come

Apple on Thursday announced price hikes on MacBook and iPad, its first formal move to pass higher memory and storage costs on to consumers after CEO Tim Cook said increases had become unavoidable. Here are the latest changes from Apple: MacBook Neo entry $599 increasing to $699 MacBook Air 512GB $1099 increasing to $1299 MacBook Pro 1T $1699 increasing to $1999 iPad Air 128GB $599 increasing to $749 iPad Pro Wifi 256GB $999 increasing to $1199 Apple's online store briefly went down Thursday morning and updated with the price changes. "The consumer electronics industry is facing an unprecedented challenge," the company said in a statement. "The rapid expansion of AI data centers has created an extraordinary surge in demand for memory and storage. We have never seen a component price increase this much, this quickly." Apple added that it has "reached a point where we need to begin raising prices on a number of products," leaving the door open to more increases down the line. "We know this is not welcome news, and we are working tirelessly to find solutions," the company said. Cook told The Wall Street Journal last week that Apple could no longer fully shield customers from a spike in component costs tied to the artificial intelligence boom. "This is a hundred-year flood," Cook told the Journal. …