Ill-timed interview touts Macs as ‘amazing’ AI devices–if you can afford one

Apple senior silicon product manager Doug Brooks touted Macs as 'amazing' AI devices in an interview published after Apple raised Mac and iPad prices by hundreds of dollars, making the claims appear out of touch. The interview, conducted before WWDC 2026, highlighted Apple silicon's AI strengths but was undermined by subsequent price hikes that increased the Mac Studio's cost from $3,999 to $5,299.

WWDC wasn’t even a month ago, but it feels like an eternity. In the four weeks since the keynote aired, Apple has released two OS 27 betas, unleashed Siri AI on the world, and raised prices on Macs and iPads by hundreds of dollars. That’s why this interview https://www.thedeepview.com/articles/how-apple-s-decade-long-bet-on-chips-won-ai with senior Apple silicon product manager Doug Brooks by The Deep View, a “daily guide to the fast-moving world of AI,” feels so out of touch. It’s not so much what he says, but rather when he said it. The interview, which is relatively short and light on news, was conducted “ahead of WWDC 2026 in June” and was only just published late last week ahead of the Fourth of July holiday in the U.S. As expected, it’s all about how primed Apple silicon is for on-device AI, but in light of all that’s happened in the past month, it sort of misses the mark. For one, Brooks notes that AI’s performance demands, which rely on “the whole chip contributing to different parts of the task,” are a good match for the “strengths of Apple silicon.” He adds that Apple is “maintaining our core strengths around unified memory and incredibly power-efficient performance,” and points out that “the momentum around AI capabilities continues to be phenomenal.” He particularly calls out the Mac mini and Mac Studio as “amazing platforms for AI in general and especially for these emerging agentic tools … that tap into the strengths of Apple silicon and unified memory in a very power-efficient way.” All of this is true, of course. Earlier this year, the Mac mini became the AI agent desktop of choice https://www.macworld.com/article/3043356/the-mac-mini-is-at-the-center-of-the-latest-ai-meme.html , leading to a supply crunch that forced Apple to drop several models from its lineup https://www.macworld.com/article/3129806/mac-mini-starting-price-rises-to-799-as-apple-stops-offering-256gb-option.html , including the cheapest Mac mini. That model actually returned in late June, but unfortunately came with a $200 price increase—and you still can’t get one until next month. But it’s this bit that’s particularly eye-rolling: “Increasingly they’re delivering compelling price-performance as well.” That may have been true in early June, but it’s no longer the case, as Apple has raised base prices across the board and hiked RAM and storage prices as well. The M3 Ultra Mac Studio, which cost $3,999 at the time of this interview, now costs $5,299. That’s hardly compelling value—and besides, it won’t be in stock till October. Of course, none of this is Brooks’ fault specifically. Had the interview run on June 10, for example, it would have made a lot more sense. But it’s hard to believe he didn’t know Mac prices were about to blow up https://www.macworld.com/article/3176418/ugh-apples-price-hikes-are-brutal.html less than a month later.