Credit: Andrew Cunningham

The Apple Macintosh is more than 40 years old, but it’s still going strong, and its recent success was significant enough that Apple CEO Tim Cook called it out during the company’s earnings call last week. In particular, Cook credited the new low-cost MacBook Neo, which Apple says is attracting a fair number of new Mac buyers rather than simply prompting upgrades from previous customers.

But Cook also noted that the Mac’s success was being held back somewhat by “supply constraints… on several Mac models,” which was exacerbated by “less flexibility in the supply chain” than Apple was used to; the company also expects to pay “significantly higher” prices for RAM than it has been so far. In other words, shortages of everything from RAM to storage to advanced chipmaking capacity are making it harder for Apple to produce as many Macs as it can sell.

Sites that track Apple news currently post multiple times a month about Mac shortages, noting each time Apple removes a Mac mini model from its online store and religiously reporting on shipping estimates for the MacBook Neo. But because those spot checks only account for Apple’s inventory at a moment in time, I did what I sometimes do when I want to back up vibes with empirical data: I made a big spreadsheet (the full thing is here; only a few representative snippets appear in the article below).

In early April, I went through nearly every Mac configuration available—every processor, RAM, storage, and color option, plus every possible combination of each. I only skipped features like nano-texture display options or iMac VESA mounts. For models with specific shipping dates, I tracked both the soonest and the latest each model could arrive; for models that listed availability as “weeks” or “months” out, I converted those to dates using the current date at the time. I did this for 423 discrete Mac configurations.

This week, I did the whole thing again. And then I noted which ship times had changed by more than a few days.

Stating the obvious: Mac mini, Mac Studio, and MacBook Neo

Apple’s MacBook Neo is being affected by shortages, but the situation isn’t nearly as dire as it is for the desktops.
Credit: Andrew Cunningham

The Macs with the longest shipping estimates are generally the ones everyone has already been focusing on: the Mac mini, the Mac Studio, and the MacBook Neo. That’s the same now as it was in April.

The situation for the Mac mini has only gotten a little worse; there are a couple of midrange configs that shipped a few weeks faster in April than they do now, and the 16GB/512GB version that now serves as the base model actually ships a couple of days faster now than it did a month ago. But Apple has also made things easier for itself by discontinuing a long list of configurations that could still be purchased a month ago: all 32GB M4 models, all 64GB M4 Pro models, and what used to be the baseline $599 Mac mini, with 16GB of RAM and 256GB of storage. Currently, the M4 mini with 16GB of RAM and 512GB of storage is the only one you could get within a month if you ordered it today.

But Apple is having even more trouble with the Mac Studio; the company has discontinued many of the Studio’s configuration options, and the ones that remain will arrive weeks later than they would have if you had ordered in April. All M4 Max Mac Studio models with 48GB of RAM or 128GB of RAM are gone, as is the 256GB version of the M3 Ultra Studio. (As for the 512GB model, not only has it been gone for months, but Apple’s support page has erased any record of its existence. Apple was actively playing up its capabilities as recently as November!)

That Apple is struggling even more with the Studio than with the mini makes some sense; one has to imagine that the market for a $2,000-and-up desktop computer in 2026 is pretty small, so if demand spikes unexpectedly, there’s that much less capacity to handle it.

Cook attributes the desktop shortages in part to demand from AI enthusiasts running models locally on Mac hardware—Apple Silicon’s low power usage, good performance, and unified memory pool accessible by both the CPU and GPU have made them popular among these buyers. Combine that with the fact that replacements for these computers are reportedly due soon and that Apple often winds down production of old models before introducing new ones, and you have a recipe for extreme shortages.

The situation with the MacBook Neo is different. For one, it remains much easier to get than either desktop; one ordered now should arrive within two or three weeks. This has generated headlines, but it’s the same shipping estimate Apple was giving a month ago. While I don’t have March data recorded, it appears to be the same shipping estimate Apple was giving two months ago, shortly after the Neo launched.

And unlike the desktops, the Neo remains readily available through third-party retailers like Amazon, Best Buy, and Walmart. Given that the Neo is a play for new Mac owners, it probably makes sense for Apple to prioritize other retailers over its own store. And if Apple isn’t keeping up with demand, it at least isn’t falling farther behind, as it is with the Mac mini and Studio.

That this situation has been so stable for weeks belies the sky-is-falling behind-the-scenes reports of unforeseen demand, component shortages, and falling profit margins that have circulated about the Neo in recent weeks. If those rumors are to be believed, Apple can’t possibly continue to offer the Neo at its current price, and it must therefore be considering cutting the $599/256GB model already. If Apple is struggling this mightily to meet MacBook Neo demand, the company is showing few outward signs of it.

Other small slips: MacBook Air and MacBook Pro

The MacBook Air’s availability remains mostly good, but you’ll wait slightly longer for a 32GB RAM configuration.
Credit: Andrew Cunningham

Though most of Apple’s other computers remain readily available, there are a few places in the lineup where the supply constraints Cook mentioned seem to be taking a toll.

Most notably, the 32GB configurations of the M5 MacBook Air will take two or three weeks longer to ship than they did a month ago. Apple doesn’t appear to be struggling with the 16GB or 24GB versions, and storage capacity doesn’t seem to make a difference. The M5 version of the 14-inch MacBook Pro doesn’t have the same problem; we’d imagine demand is simply higher for the less-expensive Air.

We also noticed small slips for M5 Pro and M5 Max MacBook Pros with 48GB of memory. The lower and higher memory capacities, including the top-end 64GB and 128GB options, all ship faster. There’s also an extra week or two of delay for a handful of MacBook Pros configured with 2TB, 4TB, or 8TB storage upgrades, though in general, there’s basically no sign that Apple is struggling to secure enough storage (even if some price increases have been passed on to buyers).

How about everything else?

You know what Apple desktop you can get easily? Any of the dozens of varieties of the M4 iMac.
Credit: Andrew Cunningham

The shortage situation is noteworthy because it’s rare when shopping for Apple products; generally, the company’s control of its supply chain means that if it wants to sell you something, it can do so on whatever terms it chooses. That’s mostly still true.

So far, the chaos affecting Apple’s headless desktops is mostly not touching the rest of the lineup. Ship times for the vast majority of MacBook Air, MacBook Pro, and iMac models are mostly the same as they were a month ago, with a handful of basic configurations available for delivery the day after they’ve been ordered and typical-ish week-or-two wait times for most build-to-order models. There are exceptions here and there—the odd iMac color option that takes slightly longer to ship than the others—but the company’s size and sales volume have helped insulate the Mac from the kinds of across-the-board price increases we’ve seen elsewhere.

But as we track more data over more months, we’ll hopefully get a better sense of the direction things are heading. Will Apple catch up to demand for the MacBook Neo and its desktops? Will the minor delays we’re seeing for a small handful of RAM and storage options improve or get worse? It’s too early to tell the difference between a “trend” and a “blip,” but that will change as we keep revisiting the data.