Apple Still Trying to Keep Up With M2 MacBook Air Demand Almost a Month After Launch

Almost a month after launch, demand for the new M2 MacBook Air continues to be high, with the notebook in relatively short supply. For just the baseline configuration, customers are facing up to a three-week wait, according to Apple's online store.

M2 MacBook Air Lifestyle
In the United States, Apple lists the ‌MacBook Air‌ as shipping out in two to three weeks for the baseline model with 8GB of RAM and 256GB of SSD storage. Other configurations with varying storage and memory options are listed with a one to two weeks shipping estimate.

The delay is untimely, as Apple is currently running a Back to School promotion for students preparing for classes this fall. The new ‌MacBook Air‌ may be an attractive purchase for students thanks to its lightweight and thin design and the battery life and performance enabled by the ‌M2‌ chip.

Apple has been facing supply chain constraints in recent months, but the situation does seem to be easing. Besides the long wait for the new ‌MacBook Air‌, most other Macs in Apple's lineup remain readily available for shipping with no weeks-long delay.

The highest-end Mac Studio and the 24-inch iMac with the M1 chip are the two exceptions. The ‌Mac Studio‌ is listed with shipping estimates of one month or longer, and customers looking for an ‌iMac‌ face a three- to four-week delay, according to Apple's store at the time of writing.

In the third quarter of the year, Apple's Mac business was severely constrained. Apple CEO Tim Cook said that Mac supply was so low for the quarter that it was difficult to gauge actual demand for Apple's latest computers:

In terms of testing the demand, you can't really test demand unless you have the supply. We were so far from that last quarter that we have an estimate of what we believe demand was, but it is an estimate. We recognize how the industry is doing, we think that we've got a great story with the Mac, getting M1 out and now M2 out, we have a very strong offering for the back to school season and we'll see how we do this quarter. We'll report back in October.

Mac revenue for Q3 of 2022 was down to $7.3B from $8.2B in the year-ago quarter.

Related Roundup: MacBook Air
Related Forum: MacBook Air

Popular Stories

New Things Your iPhone Can Do in iOS 18

20 New Things Your iPhone Can Do in iOS 18.2

Monday December 16, 2024 8:55 am PST by
Apple released iOS 18.2 in the second week of December, bringing the second round of Apple Intelligence features to iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 16 models. This update brings several major advancements to Apple's AI integration, including completely new image generation tools and a range of Visual Intelligence-based enhancements. Apple has added a handful of new non-AI related feature controls as...
iphone 16 apple intelligence

Apple Drops Plans for iPhone Hardware Subscription Service

Wednesday December 18, 2024 11:39 am PST by
Apple is no longer planning to launch a hardware subscription service that would let customers "subscribe" to get a new iPhone each year, reports Bloomberg's Mark Gurman. Gurman first shared rumors about Apple's work on a hardware subscription service back in 2022, and at the time, he said that Apple wanted to develop a simple system that would allow customers to pay a monthly fee to gain...
iPhone 17 Pro Dual Tone Feature 1

iPhone 17 Pro Rumored to Stick With 'Triangular' Camera Design

Wednesday December 18, 2024 2:36 am PST by
Contrary to recent reports, the iPhone 17 Pro will not feature a horizontal camera layout, according to the leaker known as "Instant Digital." In a new post on Weibo, the leaker said that a source has confirmed that while the appearance of the back of the iPhone 17 Pro has indeed changed, the layout of the three cameras is "still triangular," rather than the "horizontal bar spread on the...
elevation lab airtag battery

Your AirTag's Battery Will Last for Up to 10 Years With Elevation Lab's New TimeCapsule Enclosure

Wednesday December 18, 2024 10:05 am PST by
Elevation Lab today announced the launch of TimeCapsule, an innovative and simple solution for increasing the battery life of Apple's AirTag. Priced at $20, TimeCapsule is an AirTag enclosure that houses two AA batteries that offer 14x more battery capacity than the CR2032 battery that the AirTag runs on. It works by attaching the AirTag's upper housing to the built-in custom contact in the...
apple tv 4k yellow bg feature

New Apple TV Rumored to Launch Next Year With These Features

Tuesday December 17, 2024 9:02 am PST by
The current Apple TV 4K was released more than two years ago, so the streaming device is becoming due for a hardware upgrade soon. Fortunately, it was recently rumored that a new Apple TV will launch at some point next year. Below, we recap rumors about the next-generation Apple TV. Bloomberg's Mark Gurman last week reported that Apple has been working on its own combined Wi-Fi and...
blackmagic vision pro

Blackmagic Debuts $30K 3D Camera for Capturing Video for Vision Pro

Monday December 16, 2024 4:17 pm PST by
Blackmagic today announced that its URSA Cine Immersive camera is now available for pre-order, with deliveries set to start late in the first quarter of 2025. Blackmagic says that this is the world's first commercial camera system designed to capture 3D content for the Vision Pro. The URSA Cine Immersive camera was first introduced in June, but it has not been available for purchase until...
mac pro creativity

Apple Launched the Controversial 'Trashcan' Mac Pro 11 Years Ago Today

Thursday December 19, 2024 7:00 pm PST by
Apple launched the controversial "trashcan" Mac Pro eleven years ago today, introducing one of its most criticized designs that persisted through a period of widespread discontentment with the Mac lineup. The redesign took the Mac Pro in an entirely new direction, spearheaded by a polished aluminum cylindrical design that became unofficially dubbed the "trashcan" in the Mac community. All of ...
iPhone 17 Slim Feature

'iPhone 17 Air' With 'Major' Design Changes and 19-Inch MacBook Detailed in New Report

Sunday December 15, 2024 9:47 am PST by
Apple is planning a series of "major design" and "format changes" for iPhones over the next few years, according to The Wall Street Journal's Aaron Tilley and Yang Jie. The paywalled report published today corroborated the widely-rumored "iPhone 17 Air" with an "ultrathin" design that is thinner than current iPhone models. The report did not mention a specific measurement, but previous...

Top Rated Comments

cicalinarrot Avatar
31 months ago
If you’re a comment-section-genius and all of your knowledge about this mac comes from sites like this, you may think the M2 air is a horribly flawed product because the SSD.

However, in the real world, this is just the coolest laptop apple has ever delivered and it’s faster than what 99% of people who buy it could ever need.
Score: 41 Votes (Like | Disagree)
pdaholic Avatar
31 months ago
Just got my midnight M2 MBA a couple of days ago, it’s fantastic. Best Apple purchase I’ve made in a while.
Score: 36 Votes (Like | Disagree)
bluecoast Avatar
31 months ago
Nearly every reviewer on YT:
Don't buy the baseline M2 MBA under any circumstances - it's slow as molasses (you're obviously going to buy it to do 8k video editing, compositing and exporting everyday, right?).

Regular people:
I want the baseline MBA, just take my money.
Score: 26 Votes (Like | Disagree)
Makosuke Avatar
31 months ago
Apple is one of the largest companies on earth, so one of course expects a lot of their manufacturing capability, but it's kind of amusing to see a headline acting as if it's abnormal to have still not caught up to demand a month after launch of a hot new product.

Earlier this year my org waited well over two months between order and delivery of some completely boring midrange Dell laptops getting toward the end of a product cycle. I don't even have a clue when the recent-release model we ordered last month will ship, but at this point I'm downright excited when I see a lead time of only 3 weeks on just about anything from Dell.

Then again, even coming up on 3 decades after, I've still never forgotten the pain of excitedly ordering a Power Macintosh 8600 then waiting at least 3 months for it to arrive only for the ADB port to be stone dead.
Score: 17 Votes (Like | Disagree)
incoherent_1 Avatar
31 months ago
Apple Silicon is the most underestimated breakthrough so far this decade. The sheer processing power + energy/battery savings alone is just blow away.
Score: 15 Votes (Like | Disagree)
wanha Avatar
31 months ago
Yes, Apple is struggling to keep up with demand.

Is Apple alone?

Hardly. Just try and buy a PS5 that's been out for nearly two years now.

Apple is handling the supply constraints better than any other company out there, but I understand headlines like this get people to click, so... here we are.
Score: 9 Votes (Like | Disagree)