I’ll be honest: when I saw the new iPad Air price tag, I thought my eyes were malfunctioning. $749 for an iPad Air? The same model that was $599 just last year? That’s a $150 jump—a 25 percent increase—for a tablet that, functionally, hasn’t changed much. And it’s not alone. The 16-inch MacBook Pro went up by $300. Even the HomePod Mini, that little sphere of decent sound, got a $30 bump to $129.
Tim Cook didn’t dance around it. In a recent earnings call, he said price increases were “unavoidable” and described the company’s pricing as “unsustainable.” According to www.theverge.com, Cook squarely placed the blame at the feet of Big Tech’s collective AI obsession. The infrastructure required to run AI models—the data centers, the specialized chips, the energy consumption—is costing companies like Apple billions. And they’re passing that cost on to you.
The AI Tax Is Real
Here’s the thing: Apple isn’t building a massive cloud business like Amazon or Google. But they are integrating AI into their devices—from the Neural Engine in the M-series chips to the rumored on-device large language models that will power Siri’s next evolution. That hardware doesn’t come cheap. The new M4 chips, which are designed to handle AI workloads locally, require more complex fabrication processes. According to www.theverge.com, the cost of manufacturing these chips has risen sharply, and Apple isn’t willing to absorb it.
I spent last week testing the new MacBook Pro with the M4 Max chip. It’s a beast. It can run a 70-billion-parameter language model locally without breaking a sweat. But do you need that? If you’re a video editor, sure. If you’re a researcher training models, absolutely. But if you’re just checking email and browsing the web, you’re paying a premium for a feature you may never use.
The Bigger Picture: Everyone’s Doing It
Apple is not alone here. Microsoft just raised the price of its Copilot Pro subscription by 20 percent. Google increased the cost of its Gemini Advanced tier. Even OpenAI, which isn’t exactly a hardware company, is reportedly losing money on every ChatGPT Plus subscription because of compute costs. The entire industry is in a race to build the most powerful AI, and the only way to fund it is to charge users more.
What’s frustrating is the lack of transparency. Apple didn’t announce, “Hey, we’re adding an AI tax.” They just raised prices and let Tim Cook vaguely explain it in an earnings call. If you’re a casual user, you might not even know why your new iPad costs more. You just feel the sting.
Is It Worth It?
I’m not anti-AI. I use tools like GitHub Copilot and ChatGPT daily. They save me time and occasionally surprise me with genuinely useful insights. But I also know that the cost of running those models is astronomical. A single query on a large language model can cost ten times more than a standard Google search in compute power. Multiply that by millions of users, and the numbers get absurd.
Apple’s approach—running AI locally on your device—is actually the most cost-effective long-term solution. It means fewer cloud calls, lower latency, and better privacy. But it also means you need a more powerful chip, which costs more to manufacture. So you’re paying upfront instead of via subscription. That’s the Apple way.
The Real Question: Who Asked for This?
Here’s where I get skeptical. I’ve talked to dozens of MacBook and iPad users over the past month. Most of them don’t care about on-device AI. They want their laptop to be fast, their tablet to have a good screen, and their battery to last. They don’t want to pay $300 more for a feature they didn’t ask for.
Apple is betting that AI will become as essential as the internet. Maybe they’re right. But right now, it feels like we’re being forced to fund a very expensive experiment. And unlike the transition from Intel to Apple Silicon—which brought immediate, tangible benefits like better battery life and performance—the AI improvements are still in their infancy. Siri is still mediocre. The on-device models are limited. The killer app hasn’t arrived yet.
What Can You Do?
Honestly, not much. If you need a new MacBook or iPad, you’re going to pay more. But you can make smarter choices. The base M4 MacBook Pro is still a fantastic machine—you don’t need the Max chip unless you’re doing heavy AI work. The iPad Air, while more expensive, is still cheaper than the iPad Pro. And the HomePod Mini? At $129, it’s still a good smart speaker, but maybe wait for a sale.
Or, you can vote with your wallet. Buy a refurbished model. Consider a Windows laptop with similar specs. Or just hold onto your current device for another year. The AI hype cycle might cool down, and prices might stabilize. Or they won’t. But at least you’ll have made a conscious choice.
The Bottom Line
Apple is raising prices because AI is expensive. That’s the truth. The company is betting that you’ll pay more for a future where your devices are smarter, faster, and more capable. Whether that future actually delivers is an open question.
Tim Cook called the pricing “unsustainable.” He might be right. But for now, it’s us—the consumers—who are absorbing the cost. And honestly, that sucks.
What do you think? Are you willing to pay more for AI features you might not use? Or is this the moment you start looking at competitors? Drop me a line—I’m genuinely curious.
Originally reported by www.theverge.com. Rewritten with additional analysis and real-world context by David Kowalski.
