Apple now charges $5,299 for its top Mac Studio, a $1,300 jump the company blames on memory costs that AI data centers have driven beyond its reach. Key Points: Apple's top Mac Studio configu
Apple now charges $5,299 for its top Mac Studio, a $1,300 jump the company blames on memory costs that AI data centers have driven beyond its reach.
- Apple's top Mac Studio configuration moved to $5,299 from $3,999 on Jun. 25, alongside increases on the M4 Max model and the MacBook Neo.
- Contract prices for LPDDR5X, the mobile memory standard now bought in bulk by AI server makers, were forecast to rise 78% to 83% quarter over quarter.
- Micron's chief executive says years of hard bargaining by large buyers left the memory industry short of capacity before AI demand arrived.
The company's online store went dark briefly on Jun. 25, then reopened with higher numbers across most of the Mac line, which Apple tied to shortages of memory and storage chips.
The Mac Studio with M3 Ultra now sits at $5,299, up from $3,999, while the M4 Max version climbed to $2,499 from $1,999. The MacBook Neo moved to $699 from $599, a 17% rise.
Chief Executive Tim Cook had flagged the increases a week earlier, calling them unavoidable and describing the shortage as a hundred-year flood he had not seen in four decades of work. Apple has usually absorbed component swings instead of passing them straight to buyers.
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The chips at the center of the squeeze are LPDDR5X modules, a memory standard designed for the tight power and heat budgets of phones and tablets. Nvidia, AMD and Qualcomm now order them in volume for AI servers, where low draw matters more than sheer capacity and where heat sets the ceiling.
They use roughly a third of the power that DDR5 needs.
One rack can hold 2TB of that memory, roughly 170 times what an iPhone 17 Pro carries.
TrendForceestimated in May that average selling prices for LPDDR5X memory would climb 78% to 83% quarter over quarter in the second quarter of this year. Micron Chief Executive Sanjay Mehrotrasaid on Jun. 30 that hard bargaining by certain buyers had pushed memory prices down to a third of prior levels in 2023. He expects the crunch to run well past 2027.
Mehrotra named no customer, though Micron Chief Business Officer Sumit Sadana echoed him and said the company had warned aggressive buyers at the time that the tactic was not constructive.
Analysts at TechInsights put memory and storage content in an iPhone 17 Pro near $50, against roughly $200 for the coming iPhone 18 Pro, a fourfold rise in one product cycle.
Apple's grip loosened through 2025, when a 12GB LPDDR5X module climbed from about $30 in the early months of the year to roughly $70 by December. The company answered by routing most iPhone memory orders to Samsung, and it is now weighing supply from the Chinese producers CXMT and YMTC as a hedge. CXMT held close to 8% of the DRAM market last quarter.
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