For a week, everything at Apple boiled down to the same question: What does the memory cost – and who ultimately pays for it? The negotiating leverage has evaporated, processors without matching RAM are piling up at the factory, and the German price list could provide the answer on Monday.
The memory shortage already impacted Apple last week, affecting quarterly margins and MacBook Air shipments. This week, it has become a continuous thread, stretching from the negotiating table in Asia to TSMC's manufacturing facilities and ultimately to the price tags in German Apple Stores. Added to this was an unusually dense batch of security alerts, two stalled lawsuits, and the most concrete timeline yet for the September event.
🔥 Story of the Week: Memory Prices Dictate Apple's Fall
Apple had a plan to drive down the price demands of Samsung and SK Hynix: to establish the Chinese manufacturer ChangXin Memory Technologies as an alternative and negotiate with them. This plan failed – for a technical reason that cannot be changed in the short term. Due to US export controls, CXMT has no access to modern EUV lithography and has to resort to older DUV technology. This costs around 30 percent more wafer starts for the same output volume.
A manufacturer that produces at a higher cost cannot undercut prices. CXMT rejected Apple's request for lower LPDDR5X prices and remained at the Korean level. Furthermore, Huawei and Xiaomi have secured the majority of their capacity through long-term contracts. Meanwhile, Samsung and SK Hynix are shifting production lines to high-margin AI memory, further reducing the supply of standard RAM.
The impact on manufacturing is illustrated by the next step in the chain. TSMC is reportedly experiencing a backlog of finished iPhone 18 Pro processors worth an estimated one billion dollars due to a shortage of the necessary DRAM – leading to potentially exorbitant delivery times at launch. This billion-dollar estimate comes from Tim Culpan, a supplier, and is explicitly his own calculation, not a figure provided by Apple.
At the other end of the chain is the customer. The effect is already visible with the iPad: The base model climbed from 379 to 499 euros, the Air from 649 to 799 euros, the Pro from 1,099 to 1,299 euros – and shipments fell by 7.5 percent in the second quarter, while the overall market declined by 9.9 percent.
It's noteworthy where this pricing power isn't detrimental. In the premium segment starting at $600, Apple still holds 65 percent, Samsung has 19 percent, and unit sales increased by 9 percent. Those who already buy in the top price segment apparently react less sensitively to a price increase. The situation is different with the entry-level iPad, where there's a €120 difference between the old and new price points.
📰 What Else Mattered
Two unwelcome iCloud announcements in one day. Apple is once again taking legal action in the UK to fight a government order to hand over encrypted iCloud data – the dispute over the requested backdoor thus enters its next phase. On the same day, internal documents revealed that former employees had retained their access rights, in some cases for months.
The case against OpenAI is becoming personal. OpenAI is countering Apple's lawsuit with emails and chat logs from their collaboration and has simultaneously filed a motion to dismiss the case. In the second case, Apple's against Jon Prosser, the taking of evidence has been suspended for a month; the next status report is not expected until October.
AppleCare One has launched in Germany. The group plan covers multiple devices under one contract; Austria and Switzerland are currently excluded, while France is included. One limitation is overlooked in the marketing and only mentioned in the terms and conditions: the three covered theft events apply to all devices combined, not per device.
The leadership reshuffle is gaining momentum ahead of the CEO change. Laura Legros is returning from retirement and resuming her responsibilities within the hardware organization, which will report to John Ternus as CEO. She thus strengthens a team that will have to cope with several departures and new appointments before the change of leadership on September 1st.
Windows users will get a shared clipboard with their iPhones. Copied text will be able to migrate between the two systems – a feature Apple is implementing under pressure from EU interoperability regulations, and which will therefore first appear in the European market.
Apple TV has announced its fall lineup. Eleven series and films have been given firm release dates, including the second season of "Where's Wanda?" starting October 21. This means that the only title on the fall list with German production involvement will be available before the Christmas season.
💡 Rumor of the week: iPhone prices could rise on Monday
A Weibo account with a decent track record reports that Apple will raise iPhone prices on Monday, August 10th. No one says by how much. The source is the weakest form of leak: the leaker isn't reporting from personal experience, but rather passing on rumors – hearsay upon hearsay.
The reason this rumor deserves this section lies less in its reliability than in its verifiability. The day after this publication, we'll know whether it's true. For comparison, here are the current German prices for the smallest storage capacity:
| Model | Memory | Current price |
|---|---|---|
| iPhone 17e | 256 GB | 699 euros |
| iPhone 17 | 256 GB | 949 euros |
| iPhone 17 Pro | 256 GB | 1,299 euros |
| iPhone 17 Pro Max | 256 GB | 1,449 euros |
The timing would be remarkable: An increase four weeks before the presentation of the next generation would hit exactly those buyers who are waiting for the usual price drop of the previous year's models.
📊 Number of the week: 19 percent
Surgeons at the University of California San Diego saved this much time during endoscopic procedures on the tear ducts when they wore an Apple Vision Pro instead of a monitor: 34.4 minutes on average compared to 42.7 minutes across 32 procedures. All five participating physicians preferred the headset and reported less physical strain; all procedures were complication-free.
The authors themselves describe their study, published in the journal AJO International, as small and preliminary. For German-speaking hospitals, the device is not yet ready for procurement – certifications and software integration with hospital infrastructure are lacking. Nevertheless, as the first peer-reviewed evidence of a measurable benefit in the operating room, the figure is the most robust of the week.
👎 Flop of the week: Private relay reveals the real IP address
The service has exactly one task – to hide the IP address from visited websites. Two security researchers have now documented three ways in which this fails. The most significant vulnerability involves passkeys: When a website initiates a WebAuthn login, WebKit forwards the request directly to the system service, bypassing the proxy. Two further vulnerabilities arose from features that Apple itself added later: DNS prefetching since iOS 26 and WebTransport since iOS 26.4.
Apple described the problem to researchers as serious, but did not provide a timeframe for a fix. The process is undetectable to users; there is no warning or notification in the settings. Private Relay was never a VPN anyway and never covered the entire system – that's precisely the difference between it and a traditional VPN. Within Safari, however, the service should deliver on its promises.
One detail remains regionally interesting: In the EU, browsers have been allowed to use their own engine since the Digital Markets Act, and the WebKit requirement has been lifted. This does not apply in Switzerland, where every browser still runs on WebKit. In practice, the difference is currently only theoretical, as hardly any providers have switched.
🔭 What's Coming Next Week
The most important date is Monday: Whether iPhone prices in the German store will actually rise can be checked in just a few minutes. If nothing changes, it was just another rumor; if something does change, it will postpone the entire calculation until autumn.
The schedule for the September event is becoming more concrete. The application deadline for the internal program, through which store employees are randomly selected to give the keynote address, was August 8th; acceptance letters will be sent out on August 17th. Official invitations are expected in the last week of August, which places the event on either September 8th or 9th.
The iPhone 18 Pro, the iPhone Ultra and several accompanying products are expected to be unveiled on stage.
On the software side, iOS 26.6.1 appeared in access logs. Experience shows that an interim update of this kind appears within a few weeks, unless it disappears from the logs again.
💬 My Take
The price increase for the iPad is now clear: from €379 to €499 for the base model, from €649 to €799 for the Air, and from €1,099 to €1,299 for the Pro. These are no longer market adjustments; this is the storage price being rolled out across the entire product range. And Apple has provided proof this week that this cannot be changed through skillful negotiation – the only competitor that could have undercut the Koreans simply doesn't have the technical capability.
We therefore expect the next iPhone generation to be more expensive in September than its predecessor, regardless of whether Monday's rumor proves true. More interesting than whether it will be more expensive is the question of where Apple will implement the price increase. The most discreet way is not through the visible starting price, but through the storage upgrades – these already cost €250 per doubling and go unnoticed in the headlines.
For you, this means one thing above all: If you have a specific model in mind and don't absolutely need the largest storage capacity, you'll pay more for waiting this year. The usual price drop for last year's model will be smaller if the components for the new model cost more than for the old one.
📚 From Our Archive
iPhone buying guide: iPhone 17 vs. Air vs. 17e – the comparison of the three models will become much more useful once it is clear on Monday whether and where Apple will raise prices.
iCloud Costs: All storage plans, prices and which one is worthwhile – when device storage becomes more expensive, the calculation shifts in favor of the subscription, and the breakdown shows from which need which plan becomes worthwhile.
In the end, everything this week came down to the same point: Apple continues to decide on design, chips and deadlines – two Korean memory manufacturers are currently also deciding on the price.
Until next Sunday, Apfelpatient wishes you relaxing reading and a good start to the week. (Image: Apfelpatient)
