[erxam]

Just yesterday I saw people saying that Apple wouldn't increase prices until the next refresh.

And I agreed! So… holy shit. I think we're going to see even further price increases across the industry. There already were a ton, but it can always get worse, of course.

Thank you, OpenAI. What would have we done without your attempts at monopolizing destroying the memory market.

[ksec]

And I said MacBook Neo was wrongly priced since the beginning. I don't even remember how many sticks I got from it.

>Just yesterday I saw people saying that Apple wouldn't increase prices until the next refresh.

That was from Gruber, a person who claimed USB-C was invented by Apple, AirPod was sold at a loss.

Generally speaking understanding of Margins, Supply Chain, Manufacturing and Hardware Business manufacturing is still very low across the internet.

[sandcat_]

The quote from Gruber in question (IMO, a little more reasonable than you give it credit for.)

> For the same reason, I also do not think they’re going to raise the prices of existing products mid-cycle. ... But unlike with the MacBook Pros in March, I wouldn’t bet more than a beverage on my hunch here. However out of character it would be for Apple to raise prices midway through product cycles, the global RAM shortage is unprecedented. I wouldn’t be surprised if Apple pushes price increases moments after I hit “Publish” on this post.

https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/06/22/apple-device-pr...

[choilive]

Apple was on the USB Implementers Forum that designed USB-C so.. I would say they could definitely be credited as a co-inventor of USB-C, they also introduced one of the first devices that used USB-C.

[brookst]

In addition to being the sole inventors of lightning (the connector), which directly informed the USB-C spec based on learnings from field use.

Apple doesn't get solo credit for USB-C, but they were certainly essential to it. Just compare the USB-C physical interface to the USB-3 micro or super speed type B ports and compare design sensibilities.

[jaharmi]

Also compare the USB-C physical connector to the reversible power connector on Cinema Display models (circa 2004) and older Mac Minis. To me, there appears to be a strong through line to USB-C’s design.

https://open.substack.com/pub/theelectronvault/p/apple-cinem...

USB-C can fulfill some/all of what I was using Thunderbolt 2 for with a MacBook Air and a Thunderbolt Display in 2013. Going back far enough, Apple combined video and data into the HDI 45 connector in the mid-to-late 90’s (but no one was going to use that for a laptop, even a laptop of the era). It was chunky enough even on a Power Mac 6100 and display then.

USB-C / TB is the latest example of a direction Apple has been moving in for a long time.

[fmajid]

I believe Nokia is responsible for the monstrosity that is Micro-USB, and unbelievably one of the arguments was that it would be more robust than Mini-USB.

[AlexandrB]

And then they went too far and introduced laptops that only used USB-C before finally setting at a (so far) happy medium.

[SchemaLoad]

I think we needed Apple to do that to throw a lot of weight behind the standard so it didn't get stuck in an eternal migration that never ends. Though removing the SD card slot was dumb since USB-C was never an alternative to SD cards.

Even today the desktop PC market is still stuck on USB-A since they have no Apple equivalent to just get things done.

[vl]

I really don’t understand what SD card reader on MacBook Pro is for.

All small cameras and devices use micro SD. Professional cameras don’t use SD since forever now. Basically I always need an adapter now.

[mitchell209]

You can use an adapter for a micro SD but you can’t shrink the size of a normal SD card, is my only guess.

[dutchCourage]

I don't think that's right, professional cameras still use full sized SD cards.

[bel8]

That's not what Grubber claimed tho. They claimed solo inventor, which Apple is not.

[stouset]

> And I said MacBook Neo was wrongly priced since the beginning

Given that the price change is broadly in line with the rest of the lineup, were all of those products mispriced since the beginning too? Or is it possible you’re simply cherry picking the one thing you want to be right about while ignoring the broader context of memory prices going up?

[AbsurdCensor]

Memory prices are certainly going up, but Apple already makes a 40% profit margin on their products. That $1 trillion+ bank account still gotta go up no matter what right?

[stouset]

What does this have to do with my comment, or the one above it?

[Kirby64]

> That was from Gruber, a person who claimed USB-C was invented by Apple, AirPod was sold at a loss.

I can't comment on the AirPod margins, but USB-C was, at least in large part, designed by Apple. That's absolutely true. They weren't the only people on USB-IF committees, but certainly played (and play) a very heavy hand in the USB-C spec.

[ksec]

The are at least 5 people on the initial USB-C design team on HN. They certainly tell a different story.

[rootusrootus]

> a person who claimed USB-C was invented by Apple

That seems fair, I know plenty of people who think Apple only used USB-C because they were forced to. Lots of gut feelings out there.

[bel8]

But they were forced, at least for iPhones in Europe.

It's a fact. Not a feeling.

[stouset]

If anything, Apple was likely happy for this. It let them rip the band-aid off on the transition but shift blame to the EU for people annoyed by having to switch adapters and accessories.

There is zero chance that Apple wasn’t going to do this themselves anyway in the next year or two. They’d been aggressively converting everything else in their device portfolio to USB-C and were doing so way ahead of everyone else.

People who think this only happened because of the EU are high as a kite.

[rootusrootus]

Except they were steadily converting their devices to USB-C for years preceding the iPhone, and they had good reasons to make the iPhone the last device to get it. There is no indication that they were forced to do anything, and the best argument you have is a poster child for post hoc ergo propter hoc. A feeling.

[ragazzina]

> There is no indication that they were forced to do anything

The EU law forced them. The law is the indication.

[simondotau]

Sure it was Europe. Meanwhile Apple got raked over the coals for being too early with USB-C on their MacBooks.

Apple would have moved away from Lightning eventually. Did Europe force that move a year sooner than otherwise? Maybe. Maybe not.

[copperx]

> And I said MacBook Neo was wrongly priced since the beginning. I don't even remember how many sticks I got from it.

I thought they were soldered to the motherboard?

[kube-system]

They mean stick as in criticism.

And no, the memory in the Neo is not soldered to the motherboard, it is the upper part of the SoC sandwich package.

https://3dfabric.tsmc.com/english/dedicatedFoundry/technolog...

[cmdrmac]

I share the same sentiment. I honestly thought that the price increases would occur as new products rolled out. Seems like with the "back-to-school" promotion right around the corner, Apple expects to sell more machines and find it harder to absorb the higher component price tags. I'm guessing that by changing the prices now, they'll still maintain their profit margins per unit at the expense of total unit sales.

[simondotau]

Maybe they don’t want the price to absolutely dominate the headlines of their forthcoming product announcements. It won’t be forgotten, but the sting will be less “newsworthy”.

[etempleton]

Yeah, I was one of those people. Did not see this coming. The situation is truly dire out there.

[MBCook]

I thought they would but not this fast.

[ErneX]

If anything they seem to be ones who managed to delay increasing prices more than the rest.

[coldtea]

>I think we're going to see even further price increases across the industry.

Between the dire economy, the oil and materials crisis due to conflict, the trade wars and the tarrifs, why would anyone expect it to be otherwise?

[byzantinegene]

come on now, we all know who the biggest culprit is

[akmarinov]

They didn’t increase prices on iPhones, Apple Watch and Airpods

[ErneX]

Those are next in line, it’s almost guaranteed.

[conductr]

September new versions will likely start at a price point than they would have

[ErneX]

Yes, and seems they are only releasing the Pros and the foldable this year, and will release the base and e models in Spring.

[akmarinov]

For sure but an iPhone has more RAM than a Neo and those went up $100, so they’re at least eating the price difference for another ~3 months

[thewebguyd]

Yeah, iPhone is nearly half of Apple's revenue or more, it's in their interest to eat a little margin away to keep it moving, increase will come with the 18 this fall.

All their other products are lower volume.

[benoau]

Only the iPhone 17 Pro and iPhone Air have 12GB of RAM, and they're ~10 weeks away from new models so probably well past their peak sales.

[ErneX]

Yeah I don’t think they will touch current models.

[axus]

I've heard that the iPhone price is going up, and they've already started paying you more to trade-in the last generation.

[MBCook]

I’d say they’re subsidizing them with the rest but the computers and iPads don’t sell much compared to phones so that doesn’t make a lot of sense.

I happened to buy an iPad 2 days ago, dang I got lucky. I thought they’d announce before the iPhone launch but had no idea it would be this soon.

[furyofantares]

Why would AirPod prices increase?

[kube-system]

Everything competing for fab capacity is more expensive. The Apple H2 is 7nm and TSMC has raised prices for that capacity.

[littlecranky67]

The H2 is also tiny and the price is not per-chip but per wafer - so the price increase should be marginal per chip.

[650REDHAIR]

There are many rumors that the new iPhone 18 Pro will start at ~$1300.

So maybe their mobile hardware will be next.

[TalkingCodeMonk]

The fact that a dozen companies are allowed to buy up the entire global supply of core components, and increase the cost of living for every human on Earth, is full blown dystopian.

[Matl]

That's why some regulation is not the enemy of the people that some want to make it out to be.

Unfortunately, I think regulatory capture is so deep now in most places, one can hardly expect anyone to do anything about it.

[Aurornis]

> That's why some regulation is not the enemy of the people that some want to make it out to be.

The question is always: What specific regulation?

Regulation is not the magic silver bullet that some want to make it out to be.

You’re not going to solve a global supply and demand change by regulating companies to not buy too many things. The supply would go to other countries. Companies would open international subsidiaries that built the data centers in other countries. Companies would move to other countries which didn’t try to stop them from buying components on the free market.

You can’t regulate companies into keeping prices down. This is an international market. If you passed a law that said RAM had to be sold for no more than 30% higher than last year’s price, the international memory companies would laugh and stop sending RAM to that country.

> Unfortunately, I think regulatory capture is so deep now in most places, one can hardly expect anyone to do anything about it.

I think you need to broaden your understanding of how the DRAM supply chain works and which countries are involved. You can’t mandate low prices for a global commodity. You can try, but the supply will just disappear for that country.

[Matl]

Yes, it's better to not do anything right? After all 'the market' is working for some.

No regulation would catch 100% of this, nor is it meant to. But it can definitely deal with companies opening international subsidiaries etc. Sanctions can be worked around too, but that's a hassle and so countries/companies/individuals generally try to avoid them at all costs.

[Aurornis]

> But it can definitely deal with companies opening international subsidiaries etc.

You’re still imagining this as a purely single-country issue.

The demand for AI data centers is global. If OpenAI, Anthropic, and xAI weren’t building them, other companies would step in to provide data center services for a fee. Now you have the same buildout, just less efficient and more expensive for the end consumers because we’re paying a new middleman for the compute.

The regulation maximalists would argue that we could then forbid companies from buying foreign data center capacity, but then that means other companies would appear in those other countries offering the AI inference service.

What you’re missing is that this is a global supply and demand issue and you can’t solve it with domestic regulations.

[Matl]

There's solutions to everything you mention and as I said, usually when sanctions are applied to countries, companies and individuals are meant to deal exactly with this.

This could range from quanta mandates on the supply side (the RAM manufacturers themselves in this case) to imposing secondary sanctions on 'other companies [that] would step in to provide data center services for a fee'

If the US and the EU did this, these other companies would be mega careful about to whom and how they provide services to, the same way Chinese private companies today are generally super careful about not violating US sanctions.

[klibertp]

> but then that means other companies would appear in those other countries offering the AI inference service.

That might actually be the goal. A more fragmented market would mean each participant has less money, so they would try to watch their costs a bit more closely. The innovation rate (in non-cost-cutting areas) would probably decrease, maybe even substantially... which some people happen to consistently advocate for. A lot of lost efficiency would be reclaimed in a few years, but the whole system would be more stable, cheaper, and less centralized as a side effect.

Yeah, it would be suicidal to do that when it's your budget that gets the taxes from those giant corporations; who would want to willingly reduce their income for years? The rest of the world would benefit tremendously, but it could be a net plus (socially, politically, if not purely economically) in 5-7 years down the road - even in the country currently benefiting from the corporations the most. But that would be one to two lost elections too late, even if it turned true. So, while it won't happen, if it did, I don't believe we'd be worse for it.

[FridgeSeal]

> The demand for AI data centers is global

Not saying there isn’t demand, but it’s definitely artificially inflated by VC-fomo and circular-funding ~~fraud~~ shenanigans.

> If OpenAI, Anthropic, and xAI weren’t building them

One of these companies is responsible for buying up DRAM wafers, in what still appears to be an attempt to deny them to everyone else, and another one of these companies seemingly exists to launder money for a fascist billionaire.

[ChadNauseam]

Yes it is far better to do nothing than to something that makes the situation worse

[15155]

> Yes, it's better to not do anything right?

Ah yes, "We have to do something! Something must be better than nothing!"

Famous last words before freedoms of all varieties are eroded.

[Matl]

I applaud you for standing for Anthropic, OpenAI and xAI's freedom to price everyone else out of the market, because noone else will.

[burnte]

> > That's why some regulation is not the enemy of the people that some want to make it out to be. > The question is always: What specific regulation? > Regulation is not the magic silver bullet that some want to make it out to be.

The fact that you ask the important question and then continue to kneejerk at the mention of "regulations" shows the REAL problem. People have problems DISCUSSING the idea. Everyone in the world knows that regulations can be stupid, but that's not the sole property of government, businesses can be colossally stupid too.

[Aurornis]

> People have problems DISCUSSING the idea.

My comment was discussing the idea. If you have ideas to discuss, let’s discuss those too.

What I have a problem with is the demand that we accept that regulation will fix everything, but every discussion about the actual effects of regulation gets dismissed.

When an idea only looks good if you can prevent people from discussing the details, it’s probably not a good idea.

[15155]

> businesses can be colossally stupid too

Businesses don't generally have the ability to take freedoms, power, etc. and then never relinquish control - their stupidity (in theory) has limited impact on everyone else.

[burnte]

> Businesses don't generally have the ability to take freedoms, power, etc. and then never relinquish control - their stupidity (in theory) has limited impact on everyone else.

They have those powers when they're allowed to become monopolies. Unregulated capitalism leads to monopolies and slavery as they're the best way to capture all capital. Company towns, company stores, company scrip, etc.

[Teever]

> The question is always: What specific regulation?

You're absolutely right that we can't solve this by regulating DRAM prices. How we got to a situation where a handful of companies can spike the price of consumer electronics several times what it was only a few years ago and these same companies have become the centralized source for information is a journey decades in the making at this point. Decades of insufficient regulations, insufficient enforcement of existing regulations and the lack of any organized efforts to change it.

Microsoft should have been broken up in 2001. The American government should have taken that threat seriously. Governments around the world should have. The dependence of all levels of governments on one single American company for their desktop operating systems and productivity software as well as the spying opportunities that gave American companies and intelligence entities was a grave threat and regulated better to avoid entrenched foreign monopolies. But they didn't. 25 years later and Microsoft still dominates the home OS market and office environment, they have a sizable portion of the cloud, they recently took a huge chunk of the game industry and now the AI industry with their investment in OpenAI.

Even though there's a direct line between a historical lack of regulation on a monopoly like Microsoft and the rise of OpenAI leading to the spike in ram prices it isn't just about Microsoft. You can paint similar pictures about Google, Oracle, Facebook, or Amazon. But to me it isn't just about these companies and regulations/actions directed specifically them but the broader misregulations that have stifled market health and dysfunction that has allowed these criminal organizations to have so much influence.

There could have been real enforcement with criminal penalties and fines that exceed the profits and costs associated with the high-tech employee antitrust litigation.[0] Not doing so has just allowed wealth to continue to accumulate in the hands of criminal people, who not surprisingly continue to do shitty things in their quest for profit. Why were there no personal consequences to Eric Schmidt[1] for these actions, let alone consequences that would have prevented him from attaining the position of influence that he currently has?

The notion of the right to repair should have superseded the DMCA and laws should have been adopted to punish noteworthy companies that lobbied for it and profited from it. There should be more of a focus on governmental standards mandated open interoperability to prevent walled garden business models. This would have kneecapped wealth accumulation among a few corruption groups and allowed a richer more competitive market to flourish. DMCA and copyright extension, WIPO harmonizing of trade law should all have been swept away.

Where's the fallout from Snowden? Were there any massive institutional reforms there? Any jail time for people in government and industry who were involved? How did the lack of regulations and and lasting reform around that debacle shape American society at large and the tech industry?

Everything that we're experiencing today is the result of decades of choices to not regulate the tech industry in any way that resembles other industries. It is a global collective choice to cede power to private individuals based out of the west coast of the US.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-Tech_Employee_Antitrust_L...

[alex43578]

What’s the proposed regulation that would help here? Price controls? They don’t work, especially in a market like memory.

[Matl]

> What’s the proposed regulation that would help here? Price controls? They don’t work.

The proposed regulation would be that if a single company/industry buying up supply to the point it starts driving significant inflation for such and such goods, they would be severely restricted from doing so going forward.

[Aurornis]

It’s a global phenomenon. The latency concerns for data centers are minimal, so they could be built anywhere.

If your country restricted a company from buying too much of a product they need, 10 other competitor companies in other countries would be formed the very next day offering to do the work in their country for a minimal fee.

This is a global market. Supply and demand isn’t going to be cancelled out by politicians in one country trying to squeeze the market.

If you did restrict companies from buying things they need, you would see all future companies in that space incorporated in other countries.

[JumpCrisscross]

Yeah, imagine doing that for oil. American and EU companies that “hoard” oil get punished. The net effect would be everyone else gets to buy more and prices remain exactly the same.

[testing22321]

The old race to the bottom.

[m4rtink]

Not saying this is the solution, but strategic reserves of important commodities exist.

Maybe we need the same now for computer parts, that are now so important for everything in our modern digital society ?

So that feverish investor speculation and shady circular financing deals don't cause sudden 30+% inflation on any technological device.

[alex43578]

Good news, you get the DDR2 that has been languishing in a salt cave for the last 20 years.

Reality check: a strategic reserve of modern technology components in volumes needed to impact consumer prices is completely infeasible and illogical.

I’d be fine with the idea of the government maintaining supplies of defense industrial inputs, critical minerals, etc; but as we see with our efforts for rare earths (and even petroleum) you can never stockpile consumer supply levels.

[sib]

A strategic reserve of a commodity that (historically) depreciates at ~50% per year is a terrible trade for occasionally avoiding demand-driven price spikes.

[win311fwg]

So, in practice, if, say, the agriculture industry buys up the supply of seeds (they already effectively do) and we see it start driving significant inflation for food (a common concern), the agriculture industry would be restricted from buying seeds?

[Matl]

Yes, because we can't apply specific regulation for specific industries where it makes sense, we have to write them as if we were LLMs so they can be proven to 'not work'.

[angoragoats]

Barring any single company from negotiating to buy more than a certain percentage of a given existing market of goods would be a start. Companies would still be free to build their own factories/fabs if they didn't like it.

That, and putting Sam Altman in jail for being a lying fraudster.

[Danox]

One or two companies will come out of this, designing and engineering memory and partnering with someone else to do the fab of that memory no different than making processor chips in Arizona.

[Danox]

The market will take care of itself. The Chinese are going use this to ramp up and build more memory, and some companies out there will take it in-house, In short, they won’t be caught with their pants down again.

[byzantinegene]

yes, this will give the Chinese a good opportunity to catch up.

[mghackerlady]

The only thing the US could feasibly implement is forcing micron to allocate a certain amount of its production for consumer use

[alex43578]

Why? Why is consumer use vs corporate use a higher and better priority meriting such an intrusive regulation?

[angoragoats]

Because extreme corporate use, that is, what is happening now where a majority of supply is locked up ahead of time via B2B back-room deals, is anti-consumer. Unregulated, it is easy to see how this could lead to a perpetual "rent everything" dystopian environment for consumers.

[mmcnl]

The AI "market" is not a free market. It needs regulation.

[slopinthebag]

What evidenced-backed regulation would solve this problem?

[groundzeros2015]

The cure for high prices is high prices. This increase in demand is encouraging economization. Factories which make components are trying to operate for more hours. Producers who haven’t gotten into RAM may try it out. Large companies like Apple may test alternative suppliers. Consumers who don’t really need an upgrade will wait, allowing others who need it to buy one.

[hackingonempty]

Unfortunately, RAM is more like a taxi than an umbrella.

> Anyone who’s spent any time in New York City knows that when it begins to rain, two things happen immediately: It becomes easier to buy an umbrella and it becomes harder to hail a cab. As soon as the first few drops fall, people appear on the street selling cheap umbrellas, while a lucky few pedestrians occupy all the available cabs.

http://shirky.com/2001/01/

[groundzeros2015]

No? It’s an interchangeable component which is manufactured at scale by many suppliers.

Even though the elasticity of supply for taxis is less, rain encourages taxis to get on the road, and work longer to serve the spike in demand. With ride sharing apps the pool of supply is even more elastic.

[hackingonempty]

Building a RAM factory is a major investment and takes a lot of time. There is a big risk that by the time you enter production the rain will have stopped in the form of reduced demand and/or algorithmic improvements that reduce the memory required to produce good results. All of the attention is on the well funded frontier labs who may be buying up RAM as much to starve out competitors as anything else while in the background there is an army of researchers all over the world who only have a handful of consumer GPU to work with.

[groundzeros2015]

I already mentioned 3 ways we get more RAM and none of them require building new factories. Although, I would not doubt that effort is also ongoing.

[butlike]

Yeah but if you think about it... you don't really _NEED_ any of this stuff. It's all "want" and not "need" deep down. We don't really need smartphones, we're just led to believe we can't live without them.

[Libcat99]

This is true in the same sense you don't need to own a pair of shoes.

Technically, sure, but there are jobs that require you to have a phone (at many different career points too), colleges that expect it, and more. And while there may be workarounds, they are often workarounds at someone else's expense, such as asking someone else to check the class schedule or work schedule.

So yes. You don't need to own a smart phone. And you don't need to own shoes. Both will get you (understandable) looks from general society. Both will limit what you can do. Both are somewhat understandable as having become a default, expected thing that people WILL have.

[user43928]

We were talking here about whether it is necessary for the government to intervene because of rising prices for consumer electronics, particularly high-end Apple products.

In that context, it is not only technically true that you do not need to buy those products. This simply does not strike me as an issue where the government would need to step in and regulate the market.

[TalkingCodeMonk]

> because of rising prices for consumer electronics, particularly high-end Apple products

Here's your problem. This is not a consumer or Apple-specific issue whatsoever. Computing hardware is critical infrastructure in the digital age. The AI boom is inflating the cost of almost all compute for every business, including the cost of all cloud computing.

It's alot like housing, in that the average cost of housing directly inflates the average cost of living, impacting the poorer many orders of magnitude more than the richer. When all governments, companies, and individuals depend on computers to amplify productivity or deliver services, a significant increase in price will impact every government, company, and indiviudal.

An extremely small number of individuals or orgs being able to dramatically impact critical infra, and the cost of living – regardless of why – is a major national security and supply chain failure. This is the entire reason why monopolies and too-big-to-fail entities are bad for everyone, and anti-trust laws were created to being with; to prevent an extreme minority from influencing markets in such a way that it is detrimental to consumers and other market players or sectors.

[Danox]

The Chinese won’t be sitting around? They will consider it a vital area. And they will keep the engines going sitting back and daydreaming will only leave you further behind…

I don’t think government needs to get involved in the West, but some of those companies affected that have the resources are gonna have to reconfigure themselves and design around the three memory companies. The Chinese certainly will.

[compiler-guy]

"A linen shirt … is, strictly speaking, not a necessary of life. The Greeks and Romans lived, I suppose, very comfortably though they had no linen. But in the present times, through the greater part of Europe, a creditable day-labourer would be ashamed to appear in public without a linen shirt, the want of which would be supposed to denote that disgraceful degree of poverty which, it is presumed, nobody can well fall into without extreme bad conduct."

--Adam Smith (yes, that Adam Smith) _Inquiry into the Nature And Causes of the Wealth of Nations_

[angoragoats]

I want to believe this is true, but I am increasingly encountering situations IRL where saying "I don't have a smartphone" would be a serious hindrance to doing whatever it is I'm doing.

[butlike]

What helped me come to my conclusion is trying to come up with concrete examples, so like "I need a smartphone cause I need maps going to a place I've never been before" instead of "I need a smartphone for whatever it is I'm doing."

Then I can be like: well, the trip sends me to the boonies, so maybe I'll have a printed/offline map as a backup, just in case.

[pseudalopex]

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48677854

[angoragoats]

Yeah, this is the type of stuff I was referring to, not the map stuff, which can obviously be done without a phone.

[kube-system]

Technology and semiconductors are part of the supply chain for all modern necessities.

[650REDHAIR]

I mean…

My banks in the US and abroad all require 2fa and some of them are app-based 2fa not just SMS. All traditional banks- no neobanks.

Some government services require apps or the experience is infinitely worse without a smartphone.

Do we need the newest/fastest/best? Probably not, but I don’t see any major mobile OS making software more efficient for older/ lesser hardware and if you try to hold onto your old phone eventually it will be vulnerable to attacks after support for it ends.

It’s gross.

[as1mov]

It's 2026, the _WANTS_ are reserved for the ultra wealthy. The rest of us plebs should be happy we're getting 1500 calories everyday with a room to go back to in the evening, after increasing shareholder value everyday. Oh and don't forget to reduce your plastic usage to save the planet.

[qaq]

If people were not consuming their services they would not be buying inference hardware at this rate so it's pretty much on consumers.

[Insanity]

They are reserving future HW productions to meet their hypothetical usage as well. Which is why others (like Apple) can’t reserve it for their future products.

Yet the AI labs are speculating on usage, and spending money from investments without clear revenue path.

[qaq]

Yes 65B ARR that Anthropic has is clear indication there is no path to revenue.

[Insanity]

Sorry, I should have said "profit path", good catch! They have revenue, but their cost scales with revenue and they're losing more than they are making.

See: https://www.wheresyoured.at/brokenomics/ for an interesting write-up on the economics of AI.

[brookst]

Their costs do not scale linearly with revenue. Inference is expensive, but it's a variable cost. Anthropic's overall costs include massive fixed costs in training, which are the same regardless of usage.

It's easy to falsify the claim with a simple experiment: imagine they had no customer at all, $0 in revenue. Their costs would still be massive. If the claim were true, $0 revenue should mean $0 costs, right?

[qaq]

If people are sure they can always short NVIDIA

[mrbungie]

How much money does that revenue cost though? If I had to steel-man GPs argument I'd ask for profits rather than revenues.

[qaq]

We will see once they go public Dario did claim profit margin on inference is 40% if memory serves me right

[danabrams]

This is not sustainable forever unless their hypothetical usage is realized, and eventually the bill will come due.

Meanwhile, component makers will surely be spinning up more capacity, some of them in a foolhardy manner, and if the bubble does burst, 3-6 months later we'll be seeing fire sales on components and component makers going bankrupt (or getting bailouts, if considered of national importance)

[butlike]

I feel like the fact Apple raised their prices means they foresee this lasting a lot longer than 3-6 months.

[ErneX]

This is going to be the 1st increase of a series of increases. I don’t think this will ease in the next 2-3 years.

[coldtea]

People will consume a lot of things offered below actual cost thanks to VC and cheap loans.

Doesn't mean people would legitimately use them enough to warrant such infrastracture demand, if they were priced according to actual costs.

So it's a distorted market.

[qaq]

Most of Anthropic revenue looks to be companies paying for Claude Code at API prices ...

[coldtea]

Companies will consume a lot of things offered below actual cost thanks to VC and cheap loans.

[qaq]

API pricing is def not below cost

[rpgbr]

Ask every Windows 11 or Google consumer that doesn't give a damn for AI and, yet, has been almost forced to use Copilot and Gemini…

[dajonker]

It's not OpenAI, that's what the memory industry wants you to think.

[cush]

Tim Cook said prices were going to increase a few days ago

[sockaddr]

I read the same comment and thought it made sense too.

[cassianoleal]

Didn't they literally say they would, just a few days ago? Why would you all say they wouldn't? What would they gain by lying about price hikes?

[angoragoats]

The only news about this I saw was that Cook confirmed that price increases were inevitable, but he wouldn't say when or how they would come. I think most people erroneously took this to mean that they'd roll them out gradually as products were refreshed.

[balls187]

Not OpenAI’s fault that the cost of a shipping container doubled.

I collect fountain pens which have nothing to do with the data center market and the big 3 Japanese makers announced pretty substantial price hikes.

[suddenexample]

I mean, sure shipping is more expensive but that’s definitely not the cause of Apple’s price increases.

[quentindanjou]

The cause is the whole thing, cost of shipping (container, gas, etc), cost of components (RAM, SSD, etc), cost of tariff, cost of lobbying and lawsuits, and overall inflation cost.

[KerrAvon]

No. It's literally RAM.

https://www.macrumors.com/2026/06/25/apple-explains-why-it-r...

[balls187]

And AI is the reason why developers are being laid off.

Don't trust a fox to count your chickens.

[quentindanjou]

They would never say it is about the other reasons because of politics.

Also RAM is impacting other components such as SSD

[sib]

You can fit about 8,000 MacBook Pros into a 40-foot container in their retail packaging. If the cost of shipping a container went up by USD8,000 (a very large amount), that would be about USD1 per MBP. It's not the shipping that's driving the price increase.

Year Average Spot Rate (USD)

2006 $1,825

2007 $1,775

2008 $1,383

2009 $1,350

2010 $1,900

2011 $1,450

2012 $2,000

2013 $1,750

2014 $1,900

2015 $1,125

2016 $1,350

2017 $1,525

2018 $1,775

2019 $1,490

2020 $3,008

2021 $8,608

2022 $5,500

2023 $1,575

2024 $4,740

2025 $3,150

2026 (YTD) $3,835

[stavros]

What's OpenAI going to do? Not secure supply for their product? If you don't like the hardware price increases, don't use LLMs.

[Insanity]

You are assuming the HW shortage is the result of meeting a real demand and not just build-outs for a hypothetical demand that might never materialize.

[coldtea]

>What's OpenAI going to do?

Close down would be a good idea.

[mmcnl]

The world would be a better place without AI, OpenAI, Anthropic and all others. It only immerses the world into chaos, dystopia and increased inequality. So far nothing for the public good has come out of it.

[robin_reala]

I broadly don’t use LLMs (once or twice a month), yet I’m still being hit by hardware price increases.