Apple’s most popular laptop has become oddly hard to buy. Order a MacBook Air today and it will not arrive until the end of August, with some memory and colour options slipping into September. Retail staff told Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman that stock is more constrained than they can ever recall.
It also costs more than it did in spring. Apple launched the M5 MacBook Air at $1,099 in March, then lifted it to $1,299 in June. Buyers now pay $200 extra and still wait weeks. The same crunch has raised prices on gear from Roku players to Google’s Pixel 11.
The cause is a memory shortage some call “Ramageddon.” AI data centres are buying up the world’s memory chips. It hit Apple’s niche machines, the Mac mini and Mac Studio, first, and, as TechCrunch noted, has now reached the mainstream Air. Tim Cook called it a “hundred-year flood.”
Apple’s first move is to sell you something else. It is steering shoppers to the pricier entry MacBook Pro, a step Gurman says it has rarely taken. It added a “subject to availability” warning to the Air, delayed its back-to-school promotion, and is chasing Chinese memory for its China devices.
Even the upgrades are shrinking
