For two years the artificial intelligence boom has been someone else's story.
It belonged to chip designers, hyperscalers and the investors riding their shares to record highs.
This week it arrived on the price tag of a laptop.
Apple has raised list prices across much of its Mac and iPad range, with the changes already live in its online store.
The MacBook Neo now starts at $699, up from $599.
The 13-inch MacBook Air moves to $1,299 from $1,099, and the entry-level 14-inch MacBook Pro jumps to $1,999 from $1,699.
The iPhone, Apple Watch and AirPods are untouched, but the symbolism is hard to miss.
The reason is a violent surge in the cost of memory, the chips that store data inside almost every electronic device.
Prices of dynamic random access memory rose as much as 98% in the first quarter and are set to climb another 58% to 63% this quarter, according to tracker TrendForce.
Some in the industry have taken to calling it RAMageddon.
The cause is no mystery.
Memory makers such as Micron have been steering production towards the high-bandwidth memory used in AI servers, where buyers like Nvidia sign long-term deals and pay handsomely.
That leaves consumer-device makers fighting over what is left.
The result is a striking inversion of the usual order.
Apple is the world's most valuable consumer electronics company, with a supply chain that rivals envy.
If it cannot absorb these costs, no one can.
"This is a hundred-year flood," chief executive Tim Cook reportedly said. "I've never seen anything like it in any area in over 40 years."
Investors took the point.
Apple shares fell nearly 5%, their worst session since February, as the market digested the idea that the AI gold rush is now squeezing margins at the very companies it was supposed to leave untouched.
There is a deeper irony here.
The data centres driving up the price of a student's iPad are being built to train and run the AI tools those same students are told will transform their lives.
The benefits are diffuse and still largely promised.
The costs, suddenly, are concrete and immediate.
Apple has been careful to frame this as reluctant, saying it has shielded customers for as long as it could and is working to find solutions.
It has left the door open to further increases.
The problem lands at an awkward moment for the company.
John Ternus is due to take over as chief executive on 1 September, inheriting a memory crisis with no clear end.
Cook has declined to say when the squeeze will ease.
For buyers, the lesson is blunt.
The AI boom was never going to stay confined to server farms and share prices.
Sooner or later, a finite supply of chips has to be rationed, and rationing means higher prices for everyone outside the data centre.
This week, ordinary consumers found out it was their turn to pay
