The AI price shock is here: Apple, Microsoft hike prices

Apple and Microsoft have raised prices on their flagship hardware—Apple by as much as twenty-five percent on MacBooks and iPads—as artificial intelligence demand creates an unprecedented squeeze on memory and storage chip supplies. According to Axios, component costs have more than doubled since last fall, forcing manufacturers across the industry to pass those costs to consumers. This marks a remarkable reversal: for the past quarter-century, consumer electronics have reliably gotten cheaper. Now, the AI infrastructure boom is consuming scarce resources faster than they can be produced, driving up costs for chips, electricity, and data-center space. Microsoft said consoles in particular are suffering, since they're typically sold at a loss and can't absorb these higher costs. For now, the technology's economic impact is hitting Americans not through job displacement, but through their wallets.

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