RAM prices are forcing companies to choose higher prices, worse specs, or both (opens in new tab)

Shrinkflation is the diminution in product quality and/or volume to resist raising prices due to inflationary pressure. This has been happening in the USA since roughly 2001. Gadgets largely improved anyway though the market transitioned from metal and wood casings to brittle plastics, and there were other sacrifices made.

This, however, isn’t shrinkflation. This is supply chain, demand, and uncertainty.

RAM prices experiencing a spike due to a demand shock is not shrinkflation. Its a single COGS line item not a broad increase across all line items.

Note: some single item shocks can lead to broad inflation (eg: oil) but that effect takes awhile to play out.

The article is wrong with their Apple example. The cheapest Mac mini with the smallest amount of RAM is no longer available, but the next larger config is available at the same unchanged price point.

The MacBook Neo proves that gadget "shrinkflation" is largely a choice. I own an Neo and I continue to marvel at how capable, nice, and yet inexpensive it was.

tech peaked at the PS Vita and I am not joking

We squeezed everything we could squeeze over the last decades, getting better products / quality of life (in the west at least). Now that there is almost no one left to abuse (ie people on the other side of the planet willing to work for pennies) we'll have to get by with shittier products, more working hours, later retirement, worse public services, etc.

Many product segments peaked and the only way left to extract more money from us is to either lower the quality so that it's cheaper to make/break faster or subscriptions/ads.

We can see this with the Lenovo Legion 2026 models. They literally perform worse than the 2025 models and cost more. Not only that, the build quality was cut for 2026.

I know Apple is escaping it due to their large contracts but I’m honestly not sure how at this point. They must have pre-purchased multiple years of memory or otherwise have a really insane contract.

But what’s puzzling about that is, why don’t other manufacturers have the same kind of deals? It’s not like Lenovo is a low volume supplier.

Obviously, the iPhone sells in volume unmatched by other devices. But still…I’d have to ask why other high-volume brands like Samsung have wildly expensive laptops.

It just seems like the other companies are asleep at the wheel and don’t have any passion for their strategy, to the point where a tiny company like Framework is overperforming just by caring a little bit. Sure, they can’t beat Apple on raw value but they at least they put together a laptop with a respectable trackpad and a CNC body. Where is volume leader Lenovo?

And then Google is moving at full speed to lock-up the whole Android experience (bootloaders, OS, app store, etc.) so that even tech-savvy consumers are forced to get new, crappier devices when the old ones start slowing down. Enshittification at its highest level

Wait until Shrinkflation meets AIflation, where most services once mediated by humans are taken over by dumb, error-prone, allucinating AI, with no possibility of recourse.

So I randomly ended up buying a lot of computer gear last year because I killed a perfectly fine 4 year old PC and couldn't decide what I wanted to replace it. I thought at the time "this is an expensive mistake" but you look at the prices I paid for parts a year ago and it's mind-blowing eg:

- 4TB Samsung Pro 990 SSD for $150 (now $940)

- 64GB DDR kit for a laptop $180 (now $700)

- 64GB DDR5 CL30 kit for a desktop $200 (now $950)

- 9800X3D/5070Ti PC $1800

- 2TB Samsung Pro 990 $95 I think? I honestly don't even remember why I bought this

It's really depressing now. Normally at this point in the NViida product cycle we'd be expected a 50x0 Super series. I think it's all but confirmed we won't see those until next year. I think the 50x0 series will last a lot longer than the 40x0 series.

So it's going to be interesting to see what happens when this hits phone makers who also need RAM. There certainly won't be a RAM increase this year and there'll likely be a price bump. Apple may be able to absorb this to some degree because of anyone I expect them to have long term contracts.

Still, Apple has temporarily delisted the base 16GB Mac Mini and removed the 512GB Mac Studio so they aren't unaffected.

But I think this SSD/RAM price hike has basically killed the Steam Machine, which is sad. Valve obviously didn't lock in long-term contracts before announcing it. Woops. The Steam Deck is also a hard find as a result.

We've seen an almost unprecedented price hike on the PS5, which is an almost 6 year old console at this point. I wouldn't exxpect a PS6 before 2028 at the earliest.

We've had RAM price spikes before, usually because of supply crunches (eg years ago I seem to remember a fire taking out one of the major suppliers).

I honestly don't expect any of this to get better until we have an increasingly likely global recession and the AI bubble pops. OpenAI and Anthropic may not be able to cash out in time to avoid all this.

Crazy suggestion - maybe there is some space for a more efficient compute software / device combination ecosystem and companies. I don't really need or even want the AI features being pushed on my devices. I don't want to pay for ever more absurd camera specs on phones. I don't need 8k or even 4k displays on small devices. I don't need or want browser security container features to safely run and render obnoxious adds - I just want them suppressed. I don't need 4k streams or want to pay for the bandwidth.

We actually don't need all the ram. Everyone was fine in 2010. The devices were fine, the internet was productive.

We have all just seriously fucked up in the software and hardware space. We are super-sizing devices and software just as surely as the car industry has done in massive pickups and SUVs and the food industry has done with portion sizing.