The surprising Apple product that was spared from today’s price hikes

Apple increased prices on several of its products on Thursday, including Mac desktops, MacBooks, iPads, and HomePod devices, with Mac computers seeing a 15% to 20% rise and iPads increasing by 15% to 25%, according to the Wall Street Journal. The iPhone, Apple's most profitable product, was notably absent from the price adjustments. Apple cited escalating global AI-driven memory and storage costs as the reason for these hikes. This decision follows comments made by Apple CEO Tim Cook the previous week, who stated that price increases were unavoidable due to unsustainable cost pressures. Cook described the situation as a "hundred-year flood," unprecedented in his over 40 years of experience. Microsoft also recently raised prices for its Surface laptops and announced an increase for Xbox game consoles starting August 1. Shares of Apple Inc. (AAPL) fell 5.2% and Microsoft Corporation (MSFT) dropped over 3% following the announcements. Memory and storage chip prices have quadrupled in the last three quarters due to demand for AI servers, as reported by Counterpoint Research and CNBC. These price increases illustrate how artificial intelligence is impacting business operations and consumer costs.