On this week’s episode of The Woozad Show, we discuss potential price hikes for the iPhone 18 lineup following Apple’s wave of hikes yesterday, as well as plans for the Apple Watch Ultra 4 and camera-equipped AirPods.
Apple yesterday raised prices for most of its lineup, including the HomePod mini, HomePod, Apple TV, the entire iPad lineup, the entire Mac lineup and Vision Pro, following CEO Tim Cook’s warning to the Wall Street Journal that the hikes were “inevitable” due to soaring costs of memory and storage chips. Apple’s online store was briefly taken offline before returning with the new pricing, with increases ranging from $30 on the HomePod mini to $1,300 on the high-end Mac Studio, averaging $246.67 for the affected products.
The iPhone, AirPods, Studio Display, Apple Watch, and accessories like the Apple Pencil appear to be the only product lines that are unaffected. Separately, the 256GB Mac mini returned to the lineup after disappearing earlier this year, now priced at $799, an increase of $200 from its previous price.
The same pressure is likely to hit the iPhone 18 Pro and iPhone 18 Pro Max, which were already thought to cost more than their predecessors before yesterday’s increases. Talk with the Wall Street JournalCook acknowledged that Apple is not immune to these cost pressures and said clarity on iPhone pricing would come with the range’s launch in September.
Citing research firm TechInsights, the Wall Street Journal reported that DRAM and flash storage costs are expected to roughly quadruple by fall, pushing the iPhone 17 Pro bill of materials from around $582 up 25% to around $726 for its successor. TechInsights said Apple would need to raise the price of the iPhone 18 Pro by around $270 to preserve current margins, although Apple’s preference for standardized pricing alone makes a starting price of $1,299 more likely.
Taking into account the new camera system, which analyst Ming-Chi Kuo predicts could cost around 50% more than the previous generation, the Wall Street Journal estimates that Apple could ultimately set the starting price of the iPhone 18 Pro at $1,399 or more, a jump of $200 to $300 from the current model, with the iPhone 18 Pro Max likely starting at $100 more.
The iPhone 18 Pro is rumored to retain the aluminum construction of the iPhone 17 Pro, with four new colors, including Dark Cherry, a muted wine red that is expected to be the signature shade. Like last year, there probably isn’t a true black option. Weibo leaker Fixed Focus Digital recently warned that the new colors could be prone to the same chipping and surface issues seen on last year’s Cosmic Orange and Dark Blue, which Apple reportedly treated as a hardware feature rather than a defect.
The iPhone 18 Pro and iPhone 18 Pro Max are expected to launch in September alongside Apple’s first foldable iPhone, the ‘iPhone Ultra’. Shipping might slip a little later for the foldable. A Chinese leaker recently said any gap would be a month at most, and BloombergMark Gurman reported the device remained on track for September, after Barclays analyst Tim Long earlier suggested shipments could slip into December. The foldable is expected to feature a 7.8-inch interior display, a 5.5-inch cover display, the A20 chip and C2 modem, Touch ID instead of Face ID, dual rear cameras, and a starting price of at least $2,000.
Gurman recently announced that the Apple Watch Ultra 4 and Apple Watch Series 12 would launch alongside the new iPhones. Little is known about these devices, although a faster chip seems very likely given that the Series 11 and Ultra 3 stuck with the previous year’s S10. watchOS 27 will likely add new watch faces, including a variant of the Modular Ultra watch face.
For 2027, Apple is developing AirPods equipped with a camera. The cameras, built into the AirPods’ stems, are not designed to take photos or videos, but will instead provide information about the wearer’s surroundings to Siri, who will be able to answer questions about objects and whatever the wearer is looking at, as well as provide pop-up reminders and enhanced turn-by-turn directions. An included light will let people nearby know when the cameras are active. AirPods were originally planned for a 2026 launch, but Apple’s broader AI struggles and the need to develop reliable object identification models have apparently pushed back the timeline.
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If you haven’t already listened to the previous episode of The Woozad Show, check out our more in-depth discussion on WWDC 2026 and iOS 27, macOS Golden Gate, and Apple’s other new software updates coming this fall.
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