'This is a hundred-year flood': Tim Cook's worst nightmare just came true, forcing Apple to raise prices on 8 major products due to 'RAMageddon'

Just one week after Apple CEO Tim Cook said the rapidly rising costs of memory and storage chips, a.k.a. RAMageddon, would cause a “hundred-year flood” that he’s “never seen anything like” in 40+ years in consumer electronics, the iPhone maker pulled the trigger Thursday morning. It briefly took its online store offline – and when it went live again, some products were up to 25% more expensive than they were before.

The base MacBook Air is now $1,299 — a $200 price hike. The MacBook Pro now starts at $1,999, up $300 from before. The MacBook Neo, the newest and most affordable entry in Apple’s laptop lineup, is now $100 more expensive than it was before, and will start at $699.

Among iPads, the iPad Air got a $150 price hike and now starts at $749. The iPad Pro now starts at $1,199, which is up $200 from before. And the smallest iPad you can buy, the iPad Mini, is now $100 more expensive, starting at $599.

As for the desktop Macs, Apple raised the floor for the standalone iMac desktop to $1,499, a $200 increase, and the baseline Mac Studio with M4 Max, which is basically like a Mac Mini on steroids, now starts at $2,499, which is up $500 from before Thursday. The high-end Mac Studio, which is powered by the M3 Ultra chip, is a whopping $1,300 more expensive than before (was $3,999, is now $5,299).

Nearly two months ago, Tim Cook, Apple’s outgoing CEO, warned that “we expect significantly higher memory costs” in the June quarter. “I can tell you that beyond the June quarter, we believe memory costs will drive an increasing impact on our business. And we’ll continue to evaluate this,” he said.

To be clear, it’s not just Apple grappling with this problem — although if a company the size of Apple admits it’s an issue, you know it’s even worse for virtually every other company making consumer electronics. What’s happening here is that, basically, AI is a RAM hog – and since AI data centers require a lot of memory (in addition to water and electricity), most of the Silicon Valley giants are gobbling up supply. This is a serious issue because three companies — Samsung, Micron, and Hynix — make up over 90% of RAM production on the planet. This is partly why Anthropic is paying SpaceX over a billion dollars a month. AI ain’t cheap, and unfortunately, the rest of the tech world will pay the price (but really, pass those costs onto you, the consumer).