Supposedly due to continuing RAM price pressure affecting RAM and SSDs as AI server farms hog the supplies.
Was planning to hold off until September before getting a new iPhone, but can imagine similar price rises for current and new iPhone iterations…
(Have mentioned this in other threads but in case people have been considering Apple purchases they might want to see if retailers have upped prices yet. What seems a bit unpleasant is that they’ve also raised prices on refurbished products which were likely made at lower costs.)
Yeah, prices went up over night here. I’m pretty pleased I grabbed my new M4 iMac last month. It’s just gone up $600! I’ve a new 13 inch M2 iPad Air from January and the M4 model is a whopping $1,000 more than what I paid for the new M2.
Yeah, maybe it is worth grabbing the new iPhone now….
It’s actually an ancient iPhone X - a few apps seem no longer supported or due to be phased out.
Dropped it several weeks ago - no obvious damage initially but it gradually developed worsening vertical green display lines which made use difficult - amazing how many financial and loyalty card apps were virtually unusable without screen grabbing and zooming/viewing important bits in the surviving display space.
Timpson’s (shoe and key repairs of old!) fixed it brilliantly with new screen and battery last week for £110 within 3 hours of dropping it off.
Not sure I can hold out on the new iPhone as the iPhone 18 range are likely to cost hundreds more but I don’t quite like the 17 Pro designs.
I had a iPad Pro 11 M5 (WiFi only, 256GB) in my Amazon basket to serve as replacement for my 2016 iPad Pro 9.7, that has served me well.
It was price discounted in the Prime Sale, and so with the Apple price increase it was now a few hundred less than list, so bought pronto.
The iPad Pro hasn’t changed significantly since 2018, just processor and memory upgrades.
Have been impressed with my MacBook Air M4 with 24GB RAM/512GB SSD, so hopefully all sorted.
It feels a bit off, announcing their cheapest ever laptop and a few weeks later putting the price up. They’d have known the cost pressure…if there is one.
These days manufacturers/retailers only have to sneeze and they raise prices.
Car manufacturers have been very successful at ramping up prices for distinctly average quality cars.
Dacia have been especially guilty. The Duster was just under £10k in 2020, now it’s £20k and the car press still call it great value? Inflation has not been that bad.
Old memory or new memory, both have gone up in price and value…I could sell any of my memory cards and nvme purchased in the last year or two for quite a bit more than I paid for them…
This is almost suitable for the AI Where Is It Taking Is thread.
The hidden impact here extends beyond the cost of your Mac. IT maintenance costs have gone insane due to AI greedily hogging the supply with many memory and storage manufacturers deciding to exit the consumer market to focus on AI supply.
Any company with IT costs has to eventually pass this along. Whether they make tech heavy cars or bake bread.
We see customers increasingly pushing 3 year hardware cycles to 6 year and trying to maximize compute resource efficiency like it was 1980 all over again. Customers that went all in on cloud infra are now crying. The large memory and storage instance types in Azure and AWS have just gone to insane price levels.
All this drive for AI is very much contributing a large amount to inflation across the board.
We aren’t the real “customers” for AI. Wall Street is.
This is why AI is pushed aggressively despite negative consumer sentiment for it on many product categories. Businesses are fast doubling down by removing any non AI offerings because any that have invested in AI are facing shareholder demand to force everything on to it or be punished with sell offs.
When you wonder WTF your vacuum cleaner needs AI, that big marketing push isn’t designed to appeal to you. Such is the cynical world we live in.
Exactly , if I move I will lose Sky Q and the flat will have ultra , super, duper , mind blowing internet speeds so it is the choice between an Apple TV, Sky Puck or Sky Glass
Have recently refreshed my home networking kit. Ubiquiti have taken the approach of adding a memory surcharge rather than raising base prices. While the cost impact is the same, it allows them to dynamically change the price rather than a set hike like Apple’s.
Probably best not to take absolute national inflation numbers literally.
I find that in my life in relation to the real things I buy and pay for inflation is much greater than the inflation numbers that are quoted for the country (i.e. RPI and CPI).
The flat hunting is mixed , I have a buyer - who I think wants a studio at the bottom of the garden.
I found a flat last Saturday , but there was a design issue which was serious enough for me to cancel.
The flats are close to Greenham Common and I am due back on Sunday to see 4 more but because of the processing issues in my brain I am finding it “stressful” .
It’s very hard to describe but when the overload comes I get very glazed , akin to too many glasses of red wine but without the booze .
My view is that if my buyer were to pull out , I would defer to next Spring and start over again , if not I will try and move out this Autumn
When things come together with the right purchaser and the right property to move to , it could come together …
