How are Apple’s price rises affecting MacBook deals?
The price increases mean deals are harder to come by than they used to be, but third-party retailers like Amazon and Best Buy are finding ways to undercut the new list prices, so not all hope is lost. Direct discounts on Apple products were already rare before the hike. Now, they’re even scarcer. Trade-ins are currently your best bet for meaningful savings. You could go the route of an older M4-gen model, but deals on those are drying up too. Apple is the latest in a line of tech companies to raise prices citing component costs, a trend that’s showing no signs of slowing down. CNET’s Scott Ste
Apple and other computer-makers point to the surge in demand for memory and storage from AI data centers, called RAMageddon, as the reason for rising component prices, which have forced them to hike the price of the computers they sell. But with only 8GB of RAM and a modest 256GB SSD, the baseline MacBook Neo doesn't seem to merit a $100 increase. And given that the step-up model gets you only a 512GB SSD with no accompanying increase in memory, its $100 price hike feels steep, too. I think Apple is hiding the real reason behind the Neo's price hike: It sold through its initial supply of Neos