Apple unveiled its latest slate of MacBook Air and MacBook Pro laptops on Tuesday morning. For the MacBook Pro, the new hardware comes with the announcement of new M5 Pro and M5 Max chips. The specs on the new chips are impressive, featuring an 18-core CPU that Apple says delivers over four times the peak GPU compute for AI compared to the previous generation.
However, consumers may be surprised by the price of the new MacBook Pro devices, which are all between one hundred and four hundred dollars more expensive than their previous models. For the base MacBook Pro with an M5 Pro chip, prices start at two thousand one hundred ninety-nine dollars for the 14-inch model and two thousand six hundred ninety-nine dollars for the 16-inch model. That is up from one thousand nine hundred ninety-nine dollars and two thousand four hundred ninety-nine dollars, respectively, for the M4 Pro versions released last year.
The MacBook Pro models with the M5 Max chips start at three thousand five hundred ninety-nine dollars and three thousand eight hundred ninety-nine dollars for the 14-inch and 16-inch models, respectively. That is a full four hundred dollars more expensive than their predecessors.
The price jump also affects the new MacBook Air laptops. The 13-inch MacBook Air starts at one thousand ninety-nine dollars, up from nine hundred ninety-nine dollars. The 15-inch MacBook Air starts at one thousand two hundred ninety-nine dollars, also up one hundred dollars from last year’s base model.
With the demands for more computers and data centers to power AI, the market is experiencing a shortage of RAM, causing memory prices to surge. Analysts are already predicting that smartphone shipments will plummet this year as a result of the shortage. Naturally, other hardware like laptops would be impacted, too, and Apple’s pricing could serve as a bellwether for how much the sector will be affected.