The technical press is wetting their pants—or pretending to—about Apple1 raising prices on many of their products due to the AI industry fed rise in RAM prices. It’s outrageous, they claim. Apple should just eat the cost of those increases so that the rest of us can continue to pretend that nothing has changed, they say. Anyone with a semi-functional BSometer will recognize that for the clickbait that it is.
There is, of course, plenty of faux outrage to go around. The usual pandering politicians are busy demonstrating their lack of economic knowledge or at least pretending not to understand it. Among the worst offenders here is Bernie Sanders, whose statements on the matter have been so outrageous that even archliberal John Gruber felt obliged to call him out on his statements.
The thing is, even though RAM prices have increased due to demand from the AI industry, they are still historically low as this study from Stanford shows. Doubtless even the venture capitalists will eventually conquer their FOMO and begin to wonder when they’ll start seeing some returns. When that happens, the problem will likely resolve itself.
We here at the Irreal bunker are part of the iPhone upgrade program and get a new phone every year. Like everyone else, we don’t enjoy paying more but the increases are a direct application of the law of supply and demand. Chip manufacturers are working on the supply side and the aforementioned venture capitalists will probably help on the demand side.
In the meantime, when the price of components rise so will the prices of the finished product. That’s reality. All the whiners should grow up and accept that reality.
Footnotes:
Of course, it’s not just Apple. All the other manufacturers are raising their prices too but we don’t hear as much about that.