/Technology

The truth is, Apple is basically making our wallets pay for the global cost of AI infrastructure. The excuse that chips are getting more expensive because of data centers is fair up to a point, but seeing a laptop that was literally born to be "affordable" (the Neo) get a price hike right out of the gate proves that the era of cheap hardware is officially over. Artificial intelligence has become an invisible tax on our budgets. The real masterstroke—and the most frustrating part—is that Apple just reported a massive jump in revenue. In other words, they aren't raising prices to stay afloat; they’re raising them to keep their profit margins sky-high, because they know we’ll complain but end up financing it and buying it anyway. It feels less like a market adjustment and more like a loyalty test. And there’s a sweet piece of irony here: seeing Apple having to turn to Intel to handle chip manufacturing proves that not even all the money in the world can shield a company from current production bottlenecks. Their pristine, closed ecosystem just showed a little crack in the logistics armor. But let me ask you: where do you draw the line financially with their ecosystem? Would a price hike like this make you throw in the towel and switch to Windows or Android, or is your dependence on the Apple ecosystem already too deep to even consider moving?