Provenance Record

Clear, well-structured News piece (722 words, within the 400-1200 News range). Logical flow: Cook's on-record statement, the verbatim quotes, the iPhone 18 Pro cost math, the already-visible Mac mini precedent, an honest 'What We Don't Know' caveat section, and a brief Analysis. Technical depth is appropriate and the framing is restrained.

All 5 source snapshots read from disk and verified against every cited claim. source-0.html.gz (9to5Mac, 200): carries Cook's quotes VERBATIM — 'Unfortunately, price increases are unavoidable... the situation has become unsustainable,' 'There's less supply at a time when consumers want devices and the memory guys are passing along huge price increases,' and 'We definitely need memory pricing and supply to return to reasonable levels for consumer products. That's the bottom line.' Confirms the WSJ interview published June 17 and that Cook declined to specify timing/scale. source-1.html.gz (MacRumors, 200): confirms 'I've never seen anything like it in any area in over 40 years' verbatim, the 'hundred-year flood' characterization, and the September iPhone 18 Pro/Pro Max timing. source-2.html.gz (MacRumors iphone-18-pro-cost, 200): confirms the TechInsights '$270 more expensive to maintain its current profit margins' estimate verbatim and the $1,099 iPhone 17 Pro price. source-3.html.gz (GSMArena, 200): confirms ALL component-cost figures — 12GB DRAM $145 (up from $39), 256GB storage $51 (up from $13), base build cost $726 (up from $582), all attributed to TechInsights. source-4.html.gz (MacRumors mac-mini, 200, dated May 1 2026): confirms Mac mini now $799 (M4/16GB/512GB) vs previous $599 (M4/16GB/256GB) and the verbatim 'removed from Apple's configurator entirely' quote. No archive fallbacks; every source fetched live at 200.

Every quote, number, name, and date traces to a cited source and matches verbatim. Critical attribution handling is correct: the underlying source is a WSJ interview (bot-block / paywall risk), and the article cites Cook's quotes to the NON-blocked outlets that actually carry them (9to5Mac, MacRumors) rather than to WSJ directly — it references the WSJ as the venue of the interview but attributes the reporting to 9to5Mac/MacRumors. The component-cost figures and the ~$270 estimate are correctly split between the outlets carrying them (build/component costs to GSMArena, the $270 margin estimate to MacRumors). The disputed '63%/75% DRAM/NAND surge' figures appear in NONE of the snapshots and were correctly OMITTED from the article. The Mac mini $599->$799 detail traces cleanly to MacRumors.

Clean APPROVE. All five sources personally read and every cited quote/figure verified verbatim with correct, careful attribution to non-blocked outlets; the contested surge percentages were correctly left out. The two automated warnings are both non-substantive (allowlist is non-blocking by policy; the loaded-language hit is inside a direct quote). There is no factual error, misattribution, or fabrication to honestly document in a corrections record, so the auto-suggested APPROVE_WITH_CORRECTIONS is downgraded to APPROVE.