The RAM Tax 🍏📈

👀 TLDR

In this week’s What’s Appening, we cover the inflation-beating price hikes from Apple across its devices. The culprit? AI data centers hungry for chips and components, driving up the cost of tech hardware. Gamers have been sounding the alarm for over a year, but now Apple has had to act, too, raising prices by up to 20% globally. We also have news on a potential prediction market app coming from Meta, the disc-less video game that everyone is eagerly awaiting, a deal between Anthropic and California, and much more!

🎬 Our Top Take

🍏📈 Apple – Prices Rise Globally with AI Cited as the Culprit

We’ve all been accustomed to rising inflation over the last few years: It’s impacting everything from the price of gas to eggs to lattes. Yet there has been a kind of mini-tsunami of price increases in the tech hardware sector that is decoupled from ‘normal’ inflation. Gamers, for example, have faced two price hikes for the PS5 alone in the last 12 months, making some versions 30% more expensive than when it was released in 2020. It’s unprecedented to see ‘old tech’ rise in price in such a way. Xbox also raised prices (again) this week. And now Apple has joined the party, hiking MacBook and iPad prices globally by up to 20%. The reason? The so-called RAM tax, which is basically a catch-all for the surging cost of RAM and related components. In a nutshell, the AI sector’s demand for chips and RAM for data centers has sent prices sky-high, so the computing and gaming hardware sectors are having to raise prices. Xbox pointed out that memory and storage costs had already doubled, and here’s the kicker: it expects those prices to double again by 2027. The story has been really bubbling away for over a year now, but it now looks like it is boiling over as Apple faces the crunch. Will there be a consumer backlash? #RamTax Read more here.

📲 App of the Week: OpenClaw

If you’ve ever wanted to muck around with AI agents on your phone, well, now’s your chance. OpenClaw has released standalone apps for iOS (find it here) and Android (here), allowing you to give control to various parts of your device – camera, calendars, reminders, etc. – to the open-source AI agent. Previously, you had to use workarounds on iPhone, such as using Slack or Telegram, to control the agent, but the app makes it fairly easy, even for those not used to playing with AI agents. A little aside, though: the app does feel somewhat unfinished, so it might feel a bit rough around the edges at first.

🧐 Stat of the Week: 4,288 mAh

📈📉 Apple – Race to Crackdown on Posts After iPhone 18 Leak

A security breach at Apple’s Indian partner, Tata Electronics, has led to hackers leaking details of the iPhone 18 to the dark and not-so-dark web. Apple has been moving swiftly to shut down posts displaying the leaks on platforms like X, though it may have a harder time removing posts in the further reaches of the web. The main takeaway for now is that there isn’t much exciting to report, except maybe a bigger (4,288 mAh) battery for the Pro. Indeed, people have been so underwhelmed by the big reveal that they have been calling it the iPhone 17.01. #TataBreach Read more here.

🗞️ Other Stories

📍 Meanwhile at 3Advance

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