A note from the studio
Thanks, as always, for opening this. I want to start with a small but important habit, I check the claims before I pass them along, and I would ask you to hold me to that. There was a version of this week's Apple story going around that had a House member asking the Senate to break up Apple. That did not happen, and the framing was off in a couple of ways. So before my opinion, here is what the record actually shows.
What actually happened, Sanders versus Cook
The real Apple political story this week was not about antitrust or breaking up the company, and it was not Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. As a member of the House, she does not file motions in the Senate, though she has backed antitrust action against big tech before, which is likely where the wires got crossed.
Here is the actual news. Apple raised prices across its lineup this week, the MacBook Air up $200 to $1,299, the MacBook Pro up $300 to $1,999, and the iPad Pro up $200 to $1,199. Tim Cook told the Wall Street Journal the increases were "unavoidable," pointing to surging memory and storage costs driven by the AI data center boom, something he said he had not seen "in any area in over 40 years."
Senator Bernie Sanders fired back hard. In his words, "Corporate greed is Tim Cook, the billionaire Apple CEO, claiming that hiking prices on Apple products by over $200 is unavoidable after it made $112 billion in profits last year and spent $310 billion on stock buybacks." One honest caveat, that buyback number is closer to $89 billion for the single fiscal year, the $310 billion figure spans several years of overlapping programs. The point lands either way, but I would rather give you the accurate figure than the punchier one.
My take. Both things are true at once, and that is what makes it interesting. Memory and storage prices really are spiking because AI data centers are buying every chip in sight, so part of this increase is real cost, not pure margin grab. And Apple is a company sitting on enormous profit that chose to pass that cost straight to customers rather than eat any of it. Cook's "unavoidable" is doing a lot of work in that sentence, unavoidable for the price tag, sure, but absorbing it was always an option Apple could afford. Sanders is scoring a fair political point on a company that left itself wide open. As the person who actually pays $300 more for a MacBook, I am not feeling especially charitable about which one of them is right.
Today's Power On, Apple reshuffles the chip map
In this morning's column, Bloomberg's Mark Gurman reported a real change to Apple's silicon roadmap, the kind of thing that quietly reshapes which Mac you should buy and when. The short version, Apple is skipping the high end M6 chips entirely.
No M6 Pro, Max, or Ultra. Every generation from M1 through M5 came in tiers, a base chip, then Pro, Max, and sometimes Ultra. The M6 breaks that pattern. The standard M6 still ships this year, reportedly debuting in a new MacBook Pro, but the powerful variants are being scrapped in favor of jumping straight to the M7 family, which is built primarily around on device AI. Gurman's timing, the base M7 by the middle of 2027, the M7 Pro and M7 Max in late 2027, and the M7 Ultra in 2028.
The Mac Studio gets a quiet but real upgrade. An M5 Ultra Mac Studio is still on track for later this year, with an M7 Ultra version slated for 2028. The exterior stays the same for now, but Gurman notes Apple is redesigning the internal heat sink to handle the thermal load of these Ultra chips and keep them from throttling under heavy AI workloads. The bigger external redesign waits for the 2028 M7 Ultra, when the power draw forces the issue.
The touchscreen MacBook Pro is real, and it is coming sooner than the chip news suggests. Apple's first touch screen MacBook Pro is now expected to ship on M5 Pro and M5 Max chips rather than waiting for the M6 generation. Read that next to the roadmap above and it makes sense, with the high end M6 gone, Apple is leaning on M5 silicon to get a high profile product out the door instead of stalling another year.
My take. This is smarter than it looks. Apple is not slowing down, it is refusing to ship a half step. Bolting a Pro and Max onto the M6 just to keep the cadence would have eaten engineering time that the M7's AI architecture clearly needs more. The practical advice, if you want real horsepower, the buying window is the M5 Ultra Mac Studio this year or you wait for M7 Pro and Max in late 2027, there is no high end M6 worth holding out for. And pairing that with the price hikes above, the message to anyone shopping is clear, know exactly which machine you need, because the easy "just wait for the next one" answer does not apply this cycle.
The daily blog, where the rest of this lives
One Sunday email cannot keep pace with a week like this, so I post to the studio blog every day. Same voice as this newsletter, just more of it and more often, a few posts a day on the things I actually read about. This week that meant the Sanders and Cook fight in real time, the chip roadmap breakdown, plus the usual mix of investing, health, movies, and the occasional dog post.
If this Sunday read is your speed, the daily blog is where the rest of it lives, all in plain language. You can read it at jcmobileappstudio.com/blog.
Find the studio online
I am posting throughout the week on social too, the quick takes, the links, and the occasional behind the scenes from building these apps. If you want the day to day between Sundays, that is the place. The studio is on X at @jcmappstudio, and on Instagram and Threads, both @jcmappstudio. A follow or a repost genuinely helps an independent studio get seen, and I read every reply.
Help spread the word
Hasta la próxima
That was issue 06. Two reminders to carry out of it, check the claim before you repeat it, and know which Mac you actually need before this pricing and chip cycle tempts you into waiting forever. I will keep doing the first part here every week, and the daily blog and socials fill in the rest.
Thank you, sincerely, for reading and for sharing. It keeps the lights on and the apps coming.
Josuam, JC Mobile App Studio