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Over the last year, we've seen major tech conglomerates like Google, Microsoft, Meta and Amazon spend huge sums to build massive computer systems for AI. These hyperscalers paid top dollar to secure the available supply of components for their generative AI and large language models, or LLMs -- which then drove up prices across the rest of the tech industry. Apple, in the meantime, deliberately sat out the massive AI infrastructure spending race. Instead of burning cash on its own AI data centers and cloud warehouses, the company is now integrating Google Gemini models to power its AI-upgraded

Even though the silicon crunch is real, shifting the burden to consumers is a choice. If any company had the resources to ride out the chip shortage and absorb higher component costs, it's Apple. The Cupertino company's healthy profit margins have helped it weather supply chain disruptions and rocky economic waves better than others, even during the COVID downturn and the subsequent period of peak inflation.  Anshel Sag of Moor Insights told CNET that Apple is simply not impervious to global market forces. Sag said he believes the tech giant held off on price hikes as long as it could, thereby

After months of absorbing higher costs for memory and storage chips, which have quadrupled in price since 2025, Apple says it can no longer shoulder the expense. "We have never seen a component price increase this much, this quickly," a company representative told CNET via email.  But with Big Tech sitting on some of the largest cash piles in history while reporting consistently strong profit margins, many loyal customers are pissed they're being made to foot the bill. Or maybe millions of Americans don't even notice because they're too busy scraping their paychecks to cover groceries, rent, i

Even if higher input costs justified some of Apple's recent price increases, the markups go well beyond simply covering expenses. Take the entry-level MacBook Neo, marketed as an affordable option for students, which saw a $100 price jump just months after its launch, despite no meaningful improvements in hardware features or functionality. As my colleague Matt Elliot pointed out, Apple seems to be using the widely reported memory shortage as a convenient cover to raise the Neo's price. In reality, the company exhausted its initial supply of surplus smartphone processors for its budget laptop