The Talk Show With John Gruber · Wednesday, July 1, 2026
John Gruber and John Moltz connect Apple's recent product price increases to the burgeoning AI industry's demand for computing resources. They suggest that the increased need for RAM and SSD storage in AI data centers is driving up component costs across the board, affecting products like the Apple TV 4K and MacBook Air.
“And the price, but it's only 100 bucks. It's only what is that 16 to 20%? It's in line with the others, but it's no longer so charmingly inexpensive, right?”
“Because the bubble has now had effects that have trickled all the way down to just buying a new MacBook Air for your kid who's going off to college in August or September and you didn't unfortunately didn't buy the MacBook Air yet.”
“But the money to buy the data centers and the computers that go in them, which are more RAM hungry than any other computer anybody's buying for anything else and I guess to some extent needs massive amounts of SSD storage too.”