What was announced has now become reality: Apple has raised prices across its lineup – Macs, iPads, Apple TV, HomePods and Vision Pro, on some models by several hundred euros. Almost simultaneously, a new forecast sees the company reaching record market share in 2026. This week thus revealed two sides of Apple: noticeably rising prices and a strength its competitors lack.
A good week after Tim Cook publicly paved the way for higher prices, Apple has implemented them. The online store was briefly unavailable – and returned with in some cases significantly higher prices: the increases span Macs, iPads, Apple TV, HomePods and the Vision Pro, while iPhone, Apple Watch and AirPods are spared for now. Behind the numbers lies the memory shortage, which by now is making itself felt from the data center all the way to the store counter. This very cost pressure shaped the entire week – from the question of who helped cause the shortage, to a reshuffled chip roadmap, to a forecast that sees Apple stronger than ever despite it all. A weekly recap between price shock, record figures and a surprising personnel change.
🔥 Story of the Week: The Price Hikes Have Arrived
It was announced, now it's here – and it hits broadly. The steepest increases in absolute terms are on the pricier Macs: the 16-inch MacBook Pro costs 400 euros more, the 14-inch model 300 euros. In percentage terms, the Apple TV is hit hardest, with its 128 GB variant jumping from 189 to 299 euros. The iPad Pro, iPad Air, both HomePods and the Vision Pro are also climbing; in the US, the Mac Studio with M3 Ultra even rises by 1,300 dollars. Spared for now are the iPhone, Apple Watch and AirPods.
Apple cites the rapidly rising memory prices as the reason – Tim Cook had announced the increases a week earlier, attributing them to a once-in-a-century flood in memory chips, because much of the available memory is currently flowing into AI servers. This narrative does not go entirely unchallenged, however: of all places, it is from the supplier industry that the suggestion comes that Apple's own purchasing strategy may have helped intensify the shortage. Memory maker Micron reported a record quarter in the same period, with revenue jumping 346 percent – evidence of just how much the industry is profiting from the very shortage that is currently driving Apple's prices upward.
What's notable here is less the size of the increases than the fact that Apple is passing them on openly at all – for years the company absorbed fluctuations in component costs itself. And it likely won't stop at one round: in its statement, Apple speaks of "beginning" with price increases – a choice of words that suggests further waves. The next candidates are seen as exactly the products spared today: iPhone, Apple Watch and AirPods.
📰 What Else Mattered
The second iOS 27 beta is here. With some distance from WWDC, Apple is rolling out the second developer beta of the 27 series – with numerous detail changes and the striking discovery that Siri AI flatly refuses to summarize entire web pages. Alongside it, fresh feature overviews are appearing, including one on the Home app.
The Tata data leak is widening. The cyberattack on Apple's Indian manufacturing partner is spreading further: more than 630 gigabytes ended up on the dark web, and by now alleged documents from TSMC and Qualcomm are surfacing among them as well. Apple's security team is now directly involved in the investigation.
Apple is heading toward record market share. Despite – or precisely because of – the price hikes, Counterpoint Research sees the company reaching the highest market share in its history in smartphones, laptops and tablets in 2026. The iPad's share is expected to climb to 39 percent and the iPhone's to 25 percent – while many competitors are likely to see double-digit declines under the weight of memory costs.
Apple's case against Jon Prosser goes back to square one. A court has set aside the default judgment against the leaker – meaning the lawsuit will now proceed through regular litigation.
Eddy Cue gets an award – and makes some declarations. Apple's services chief has been named Entertainment Person of the Year and is at the same time promising "better and more" for Apple TV.
China sets its sights on App Store fees. An antitrust complaint over App Store commissions has been filed against Apple there – another regulatory arena alongside the EU.
💡 Rumor of the Week: Apple Reshuffles Its Chip Roadmap
Perhaps the most surprising rumor of the week revolves around Apple's chip roadmap. According to a Bloomberg report, Apple is for the first time skipping the powerful Pro and Max variants with the M6 generation and pulling the AI-focused M7 series forward instead. The M6 is expected to arrive later this year for the entry-level Macs – as Apple's first Mac chip built on a 2-nanometer process and with significantly higher memory bandwidth. The next Pro and Max chips would then only come with the M7 series toward the end of 2027.
For performance-hungry Mac users, that pushes the timeline noticeably further out, since the upper MacBook Pro segment is likely to follow this schedule. In parallel, an M5 Ultra for the most powerful desktop Macs is still expected to arrive in 2026 – two new chips in a single year, then. Behind the shift is a clear motive: Apple is increasingly aligning its roadmap with AI and graphics workloads, after the company recently had to cede its top spot as TSMC's largest customer to Nvidia.
📊 Number of the Week: 400 Euros
That's how much more the 16-inch MacBook Pro costs after the new round of price hikes – the largest increase in absolute terms. With it, Apple's top-tier notebook climbs from 2,999 to 3,399 euros. It's the most visible number of a week in which the memory shortage shows up directly on the price tag for the first time – and possibly only the start of a whole series of adjustments.
👎 Flop of the Week: Apple Loses Its Glasses Chief to OpenAI
Right in the middle of the reshuffle at the top of hardware, a high-profile departure lands: Paul Meade, longtime lead for the hardware of the Vision Pro and the planned Apple glasses, is moving to OpenAI. Meade had been at Apple since 2010, led Vision Pro hardware engineering for over seven years and most recently the development of the AI glasses with which Apple aims to take on Meta's Ray-Ban models.
The timing makes the loss particularly awkward. The move is a direct consequence of the reorganization under new hardware chief Johny Srouji, which is said to have effectively demoted several vice presidents. That, of all people, the mastermind behind Apple's glasses ambitions is now leaving for an AI rival – shortly before these devices are meant to play a central role – is more than a personnel matter. His responsibilities are being taken over by his former deputy, Fletcher Rothkopf.
🔭 What's Coming Next Week
The view ahead is focused above all on software: Apple is likely to roll out the next beta in the coming days – the expectation here leans more toward the 26.6 series, while the iOS 27 developer betas continue to appear on a rhythm of roughly every two weeks. On top of that, iOS 26.5.2 and macOS Tahoe 26.5.2 are about to be released. And perhaps the most important open question remains: after Macs and iPads, will the next price wave follow soon – and will it hit the iPhone, Apple Watch and AirPods this time? None of that is confirmed yet.
💬 My Take
The real story this week isn't that Apple got pricier. It's that Apple said so out loud. For years the company quietly ate the swings in component costs to keep its prices steady, and the fact that the buffer is now visibly cracking tells you more about the depth of the memory crunch than any earnings figure could. It's also worth poking at the victim framing. Yes, costs are genuinely up. But while Apple points to expensive chips, its own supplier Micron just posted a record quarter, and the forecasts have Apple sitting on its highest market share ever. A company with those margins and that kind of demand has room to absorb more than it's choosing to pass along. And the wording itself — that Apple is only "beginning" to raise prices — hints the most uncomfortable number is still out there: the price of the next iPhone.
📚 From Our Archive
Apple Glasses: All the Rumors at a Glance – The very glasses whose hardware chief is leaving for OpenAI this week are expected to arrive in late 2027; what's known about the device until then is gathered in this overview.
iPhone 18 Pro: All the Rumors at a Glance – Whether the next price wave also reaches the iPhone will be decided by the upcoming Pro generation – the ongoing overview pulls together what's expected in terms of price, chip and camera.
Money was the common thread this week too – this time not as a worry about tomorrow, but as today's price tag.
Until next Sunday, Apfelpatient wishes you relaxing reading and a good start to the week. (Image: Apfelpatient)
