💸 A $499 laptop with less inside

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🤯 WOW! Memory and storage chip prices have quadrupled in three quarters. Micron’s profit margin went from 39% to 84.9%, higher than Nvidia’s.

Why it matters: For 20 years, you saved money by waiting for last year’s model. That rule just broke. Read to the end for how to buy a phone, TV, laptop or tablet without eating the increase.

📖 Read time: 3 minutes

Here’s something Apple has never done before. Last week when it announced new iPhones, it raised the price of the old ones.

The iPhone 16 went from $699 to $799 overnight. The iPhone 17, same phone, no changes, jumped from $799 to $899. The 17e and the Air each went up $100, too.

For 20 years, the deal was simple. New iPhone lands, last year’s model gets cheaper. Patience paid. This year, patience got punished.

AI data centers are vacuuming up the world’s RAM. Memory and storage prices have quadrupled in three quarters. Micron’s profit margin went from 39% to 84.9%.

Tim Cook, in his last months as CEO, called it a hundred-year flood. “I’ve never seen anything like it in any area in over 40 years.”

This isn’t limited to phones. 

Everything with a chip has RAM: TVs, laptops, tablets, doorbells, cars. Meta added $50 to the Quest 3S. Apple already raised MacBooks and iPads $100 to $300. Gartner expects PC shipments to fall 10.4% this year and phones 8.4%. Analysts predict this runs into 2027.

Companies hate scaring you with a bigger number, so some won’t raise the price. TrendForce’s research VP says manufacturers will quietly cut performance instead. 

Same $499 laptop, less machine inside. Shrinkflation for your electronics.

Anything you were already going to buy: Buy it before Christmas.

I’m not telling you to panic-buy. I’m telling you the January sales you’re waiting for probably aren’t coming.

📩 Send this to someone who is shopping for any electronics between now and the end of the year. Use the link to share now.

🌲 Air apparent: Imagine hopping into an Uber and finding 30 air fresheners dangling like an orchestra. No thanks. Drivers say the arsenal helps bury smoke, takeout and body odor, which can cost them ratings, fares and real money. I get that. I’ve sat next to people who’ve violated the Geneva Conventions. But riders say the concentrated perfume triggers headaches, nausea and gagging (paywall link). I agree. For now, the rideshare quality-control department is a cardboard pine tree soaked in synthetic pineapple. Five stars for effort, one for oxygen.

Above and beyond: The U.S. has weapons orbiting above the satellites your family uses all day. The Star Wars nerd in me thinks this is cool. The rest of me is anxious. The Air Force secretary disclosed the capability, calling it protection against adversaries such as China and Russia. He didn’t explain the weapons, their targets or when they arrived. The forecast says partly cloudy with a chance of international incident.

🏆 Comedy takes all: Apparently, we all have to watch Widow’s Bay. The Apple TV comedy won 14 Emmys, the biggest one-year haul ever for a comedy. It grabbed eight Creative Arts awards, then swept all six prime-time categories it entered, including comedy series, writing, directing and three acting trophies. At this point, skipping it means spending the next six months smiling politely while friends explain why Episode 4 changed their lives.

🔥 Too hot for your lap: Do you treat your laptop like a heated throw pillow? Stop. A boy spent hours each day with one resting on his bare stomach, and the low, repeated heat left bruise-like discoloration called toasted skin. It wasn’t hot enough for a normal burn but enough for concern. Use a desk, tray or barrier, unless surprise doctor visits are part of the family screen-time plan. One of my favorite accessories is linked here. Check it out.

There’s a 30-second chatbot trick that decodes your Medicare coverage before open enrollment closes. Plus, my embarrassing story about how my AI email assistant accidentally sent four conflicting replies to a major radio executive. I had no idea.

Listen on Komando.com →

🎧 Or search “Komando” wherever you get your podcasts. I’m everywhere.

⚡️ 3-second tech genius: A page loads half-broken in Chrome, you hit refresh and nothing changes. That’s because Chrome is handing you a saved copy from its own cache. Press Ctrl + Shift + R on Windows or Cmd + Shift + R on Mac. That’s a hard reload, and it pulls the page straight off the website’s server. Clutch when a store is flipping prices mid-sale. Refresh is polite. Hard refresh means business.

🔐 A credit freeze won’t stop this: Fake tax returns filed in your name, bank account fraud, your info sitting on the dark web. A freeze does nothing for any of it. I dropped LifeLock for Coveron and got more protection for less money. Get 71% off with my exclusive link.*

Tapping twice to get your Android’s attention? Blame the screen protector. It puts a layer between your finger and the sensors underneath. Go to Settings > Display > Touch sensitivity and switch it on. While you’re in there, flip on Accidental touch protection, so your phone stops dialing people from inside your pocket. I’d rather my phone didn’t start making plans without me.

🙄 An update for the update: Microsoft’s September patch closed more than 970 security holes, two of them already being used by hackers. It also brought AMD crashes, black screens and dead microphones. The emergency fix, KB5129195, is downloading automatically right now and cleans up Remote Desktop, Claude Cowork and multichannel audio. AMD owners are still waiting. Check yours at Settings > Windows Update > Check for updates. I’ll keep you posted.

Why’s your coworker in your Facebook suggestions? Your phone number and email are doing the matchmaking. Anyone holding your contact info can get served your profile, and you get served theirs. Shut it down at Settings > Audience and visibility > How people find and contact you, then set the phone and email options to No One. The office gets enough of you already. 😅

🆕 Things to try in iOS 27 today:

Cell towers have officially learned to travel.

Sceye sent its giant HAPS balloon on a 30-day, roughly 18,600-mile round trip from New Mexico to Japan, where it spent a week about 10 miles up delivering calls, texts, internet and video to ordinary smartphones. 

The flying cell tower even handled computing onboard, cutting response delays by more than 40% versus cloud processing. Sceye says one HAPS (high-altitude platform system) could cover roughly 500 ground towers.

Welcome to 2026, where cell service roams around you. 

Check it out. They think highly of us.

🎓 What you learned today: AI data centers are making old iPhones and everyday electronics pricier, rideshare air fresheners are starting scent wars, the U.S. says it has weapons in orbit, laptops can toast your skin and Sceye’s balloon tower brought cell service from 10 miles above Earth. Not bad for one email. No car for sale drives itself. Not even the one with Full Self-Driving on the window sticker. Tomorrow, what this means to you, your mom and dad.

👯 The answer: D) Your identical twin. Apple says so in its own documentation, which also warns about siblings who look very alike and children under 13, whose facial features haven’t finished settling. 

Twins are the exception nobody at Apple could engineer around. If that’s your household, use a passcode. Your twin can open your phone. Consider it nature’s family plan. I hear you, “What about Touch ID?” One in 50,000. Not bad odds there. 

One for the road: A woman has identical twins, and gives them up for adoption. One goes to a family in Egypt and is named Amal. The other goes to Spain and is named Juan. Years later, Juan sends a picture of himself to his mom. Upon receiving it, she tells her husband that she wished she also had a picture of Amal. Her husband said, “They are twins. If you've seen Juan, you've seen Amal.”

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Kim Komando • Komando.com • 510+ radio stations • Trusted by millions daily

🏆 THE KIM CHALLENGE: Forward this to ONE person who needs to hear it today. Pick the person who popped into your head while reading. You know who it is.

Photo credit(s): ChatGPT/Kim Komando, Amazon, Arlo, Sceye

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