The news story about Apple flying planes of iPhones into the country got me thinking. Has anyone pulling the trigger on new purchase(s) early just in case the Mad King’s tariffs jack prices up once current inventory is depleted?
1 Like
I bought a MacBook Air M3 in late December specifically out of tariff terror. I was replacing a perfectly good Intel MacBook Air with (another) failing butterfly keyboard. I had been thinking I’d wait a bit longer, but the looming tariffs convinced me to buy sooner.
1 Like
Wondering how Apple with respond to the egregious 125% on China for those of us who live outside Trumpland. Here in the UK we do not have tariffs on Chinese imports as Apples gets them direct from China to the UK without the items passing through the US.
3 Likes
There’s no impact here (in the EU & UK) then, as tariffs are charged based on the country of origin and the tariffs for China have not changed.
Having had to buy Apple stuff at already ridiculous prices here in Europe, especially from local authorised resellers in the countries where no official Apple Store is available, any price hike would likely see people leaving the ecosystem in larger numbers.
I am, sadly, also past feeling any empathy for the users in the US, as this was all easily avoidable and preventable, and the writing was on the wall for years – for those who’d listen.
8 Likes
If I had to buy an Apple product in the very near term, I’d be running to the store to grab something before an anticipated price hike.
Longer term (like a year out), I wouldn’t take any anticipatory action now. I think (a) this will all blow over and we’ll be back to something approximating “normal,” and (b) in the (IMHO unlikely) event it doesn’t, Tim Cook will be working to find alternative solutions to avoid the tariffs.
3 Likes
Bought an iMac last week after the announcement. I really needed to move off of Intel. My iPhone has another good year left so will wait for this to blow over.
Happy Liberation day! 
2 Likes
Debated about buying to be honest and I don’t want to get political in a tech forum.
Are our devices getting slow? Yes
But do they still work and get the job done? Yes
Is it bearable? still researching
2025 has a been a rough year on the family and extended family. Taking all those into account plus family stuff, my workflow seems to be out the window on some days. There are days I wish I had a MBP instead of the Mac Mini so I can do XYZ while I am here. Other times, I wish the iPad was a bit faster in doing ABC instead.
I had the M4 iPad Pro in my cart at one point, then an announcement of the M5, M6, M600 (you know the cycle) I think we also reached peak sharing limit (reference) so now that’s on my mind.
Then came the tariffs and now this lingering tech / political thought.
- Tech thought - I waited this long, we can probably wait until it gets really bad from a workflow perspective.
- Political thought - It’s all market manipulation. Tariffs, pause, tariffs, pause, create short-term period buying frenzies, etc.
What to do? Not sure. Now I am rambling, don’t put a tariff on that in the forum 
4 Likes
I’m not sure how anyone can respond to a situation that is changing from hour to hour. I wonder how China will respond. Place a 200% tax on all Apple product sold in the country?
The United States is overly dependent on other countries, not all of whom are their friends, for too many of its basic needs. The United States is so deeply in debt that it is ridiculous. It is about time that someone has come along who wants to put the United States on its own two feet again.
I believe the conventional wisdom is wrong about how the tariffs and related economic moves will work out. And I am willing to wait and see how the world rearranges itself in response to strong actions by the United States.
5 Likes
There’s always pen and paper, should things fail and I’ve got plenty of that! 
7 Likes
We had planned to replace a couple of 2017 iMac Pros later this year. We purchased sooner than originally planned to avoid possible tariff madness.
3 Likes
This is kind of where I landed. My 2021 iPad Pro 11” is running fine, and for a moment I thought about updating to the most current version. But in the end, my iPad is running perfectly fine, no slowdowns, etc. I can easily last another year or so.
And if prices go up by then, so be it. I don’t want to panic buy something I don’t need right now.
5 Likes
The world will rearrange itself by lessening its reliance on US products, especially when it comes to big tech (Microsoft, Google, Apple, and others), as it no longer considers the US to be a reliable and trusted partner. The sentiment is already there in the EU in retail to a large extent.
8 Likes
This is inherently political sadly, in other words I will probably pay the massive tax increase like most regular Americans will in one way or another: including businesses who import plant and so on. Those of us in the top 20% of wealth and income will probs be ok, as individuals, probably most who post here. Don’t mis undertand though a man of the people, in my own eyes, I love Apple gear and the team here. Life is full of contradictions.
I am heavily committed to DEVONthink 3 rather than Apple as such, possibly Keyboard Maestro too. So it is not easy for me to switch out of the eco system. It would probably cost in some respect more to re jig a new system than to replace this mac book air when it ages out. I won’t for sure be moving to a more expensive 16inch model as I was planning now: I just found suddenly my enthusiasm is gone. I give no reason, just feel meh all of a sudden.
Some of this will ‘normalize’ as others have said, since a lot of this a granstanding stunt: however the mistaken belief that China is ‘cheating us’ in some way and the general xenophobia combined with the idea that tarriffs will bring back industry here, is likely to persist. I am for, controlled tarrfifs though, like Biden was already doing. To complex to enter the full topic here.
Tim Cook carved out exemptions with the last Trump regime, hypocrite that Trump is. Again a worrying ‘sovereign’ type dynamic our Founders specifically warned against and one reason why tarriffs should be set by Congress not farmed out like the current GOP have allowed. One notes the massive insider dealing we saw this time. Proudly displayed publicly, ‘so and so made 900 Billion, well done guys’…
The White House lies continuously so you never know what the ‘real’ plan is, not in full anyway, the lastest lie was that Apple was bringing production back to America, it isn’t, because it can’t.
Apple is though, to appease the King, the Man from Utopia, buying heavily into the AI hype and building to accommodate that.
The idea that we can scale up on reasonable time scale to the current levels of Chinese production is a fantasy. Some comments have been made that competent high level scientists being sacked from NOAA and NIH, wrecking out research infrastructure by the way, can be remployed to screw in small parts, is a joke, and a cruel one. Those jobs wear out even youngsters and are onerous, boring and demanding, few American would or could do them or for long.
I close out since there is no way to avoid poltics on this topic and in fact tech is, like everything else, not independent of politics. Guess we learnt that the hard way guys? I will resist the temptation to reply to comments based on Reagan era economics. I promise Steven! 
8 Likes
Here in NZ, we don’t pay tariffs on stuff that gets purchased in NZ and shipped from China, so unlike America our apple stuff shouldn’t go up by much (all things being equal, I guess).
That said, my savings account which I use as a safety net for when my business has quiet times, and is invested in tracker funds, just fell by the cost of a very, very good MacStudio, so I don’t think I will be upgrading any time soon. Especially when there’s suddenly so much new uncertainty in the economy.
Also, in other news, I bought some loose walnuts last week, realised they were from California, so I put 20% of them back.
5 Likes
If I lived in the US I think I’d follow the advice proffered on Accidental Tech Podcast: if you know you need a new device, buy it now; otherwise consider its affordability in the face of huge uncertainty. I read in this morning’s Washington Post, for example, that doctors are concerned about supplies of Heparin; it’s derived from pig intestines and where are the pigs? China.
It will take months to years just to work through the complexities of all the supply chains that may/ will be impacted; meantime savings are a buffer if new tech is just a want, not a need.
3 Likes
There is a difference between measured decoupling from countries like China and systemically reorienting the Global Supply chain so that all our eggs aren’t in one nations basket. (Like Apple moving iPhone Production to India)
It’s another thing to anger your western allies and blow up the Post World War II order…
10 Likes
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-04-12/trump-exempts-phones-computers-chips-from-reciprocal-tariffs
Apparently we can take our time buying Apple products now. ??
1 Like
It’s time for the United States to do something different. After only a very short time, you think you know how this is going to turn out? The way it starts is not the way it is going to end.
3 Likes