Apple’s Product Revamp Shows Fruit of AI Comeback Strategy

Apple, the exclusive US broadcaster of Formula One, is in a race of its own in artificial intelligence, and until recently, almost no one had it pegged as a winner. With its spring hardware refresh, it’s putting pedal to the metal. 

The tech behemoth has been unveiling a slew of updates and new products this week, most of which offer customers hardware that is better equipped to handle the AI innovations constantly thrown their way. The new MacBook Air will be powered by Apple’s M5 chip, while the new MacBook Pro will run on the latest chips, the M5 Pro and M5 Max. The company also revealed the iPhone 17e, which enables Apple Intelligence and other AI models to run faster, and the new iPad Air comes with (you guessed it) a better chip.  

“With M5, MacBook Air powers through a wide range of tasks, from everyday productivity to creative workloads, and is even faster for AI,” John Ternus, Apple’s senior vice president of hardware engineering, said in a statement. Separately, the company said the new MacBook Pro will deliver “up to 4x AI performance compared to the previous generation.”

Reckoning and Revamp 

Apple’s AI-focused product revamp comes as the company trails its tech rivals, such as Meta, Amazon and Alphabet, in harnessing the fast-growing technology. Critics say that customers don’t come to Apple solely for hardware; they come for a top-of-the-line experience using their phones, computers and other devices, and that increasingly includes AI innovations. In December, the company’s AI head, John Giannandrea, stepped down after being sidelined for much of last year, per Bloomberg, and the company spent less on AI than its peers. 

Whatever customers’ motivations for buying Apple products, one thing is certain: Its AI comeback will cost them: 

• The new MacBook Airs start at $1,099 for the 13-inch and $1,299 for the 15-inch, a $100 price bump for each, although they come with more storage.  
• The MacBook Pros are getting more expensive, too.  

Memory Squeeze: Suppliers aren’t as keen on offering memory chips to consumer hardware makers as they are on handing those chips over to AI data centers. The tight supply is part of what’s driving up prices. “What we are witnessing is not a temporary squeeze, but a tsunami-like shock originating in the memory supply chain, with ripple effects spreading across the entire consumer electronics industry,” Francisco Jeronimo, who leads research on mobile devices at the IDC, said in a recent report.