This week, Apple unveiled a plethora of new Macs with M5 chips – and it revealed an interesting new trend. More base storage, but at slightly higher prices. This impacted the MacBook Air and MacBook Pro.
At the moment, M4 versions of the Mac mini, Mac Studio, and iMac still remain with their old pricing lineup – but that’s likely to change with the M5 lineup.
This weeks adjustments
With M5 MacBook Air, Apple raised the base storage from 256GB to 512GB – coupled with a $100 price increase.
This is great for a lot of people, since you previously had to pay $200 to get that level of storage. Essentially, the MacBook Air got cheaper if you already would’ve paid for 512GB of storage.
A similar price adjustment came to the base 14-inch MacBook Pro with M5. It went up by $100, but it now comes with 1TB of storage as the standard. Sure, it costs more than it did prior at a baseline, but if you previously bought 1TB of storage, it became more favorable.
Things differed slightly with the M5 Pro and M5 Max MacBook Pros. Those got 1TB of storage by default, but at a $200 price increase. So, you’re effectively just paying for the additional storage, with no real added value.
What’s next
Apple’s desktop lineup hasn’t yet been touched, but we’ll most definitely see the same adjustments with future models. I’m slightly surprised they haven’t done it yet, but it’s likely not too far away.
With the next versions of Mac mini, iMac, and Mac Studio, we’ll probably see similar price shifts:
- iMac: $1299 → $1399 with 512GB as the new standard
- Mac mini: $599 → $699 with 512GB as the new standard
- Mac Studio: $1999 → at least $2199 with 1TB as the new standard
For the Mac mini and iMac, I won’t necessarily take issue with the price adjustment. 256GB of storage is honestly a joke in 2026, so if you’re someone who already paid for more storage, it actually becomes a better value for you.
On the flip side of that argument, I’d also much rather see consumers pay slightly more out the gate for 512GB of storage, rather than buying 256GB and ending up with a slow Mac because their storage is full and macOS can’t rely on swap memory – or have to upgrade quickly after because their storage needs change.
Mac Studio, on the other hand, is a little bit of a mixed bag. With the M5 Max MacBook Pro, Apple started including 2TB of storage by default, and as a result – an M5 Max upgrade cost more than it did with M4 Max. For that reason, Mac Studio may cost even more than $2199 with the next generation.
Wrap up
Ultimately, this is all speculation. However, given Apple’s adjustments on a lot of the Mac lineup this week, it almost seems like a lock for everything else that’s yet to come. As things stand right now, Apple hasn’t adjusted any of their unified memory pricing despite the RAM crisis, so that doesn’t seem like an immediate concern.
How do you feel about Apple charging more for its computers and including more base storage? Were you someone who always stuck to the base storage regardless? Let us know in the comments.
My favorite Apple accessory recommendations:
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