Apple has announced price increases across its product range, with some models seeing hundreds of dollars added to their costs. The entry-level MacBook Neo now starts at £699 instead of £599, while the iMac and M5 MacBook Pro follow suit, rising by £200 and £300 respectively.

The most expensive change comes from the M3 Ultra Mac Studio which has seen a jump of £1,300 to cost £5,299 now. This follows on from Apple’s decision to remove a 512GB memory configuration in March, showing the impact of rising memory prices.

Apple CEO Tim Cook blamed the soaring costs of memory for these price hikes, stating that while they are doing their best to shield customers, they have had to pass on some increases. However, this has become unsustainable with chipmakers focusing more on high-end data-center memory rather than consumer products.

These changes could be a wake-up call for long-term Apple users who remember the company's notorious pricing of RAM during the PowerPC era. The cost of technology is always changing, but perhaps the rise in memory prices signals a broader shift towards the commodification of our digital lives.