Don't Expect To Get Your Custom Mac Devices Anytime Soon. Here's Why
One of the reasons for the massive rise in the popularity of Apple's Mac lineup is the ability to customize the product before it is delivered to you. In the past, potential Mac buyers have been able to go to the official Apple Store online and custom-build a macOS product and expect it to be delivered in a few days' time. Until recently, this process worked seamlessly, and the usual delivery times only spanned a couple of days, or at the most, one or two weeks.
Of late, however, Apple seems to be having trouble fulfilling customized orders for Mac products on time. According to a recent AppleInsider report, save for the base, non-customized variants of all its Mac products, every other product from the Mac lineup is showing excessively long shipping times that range from four weeks to 14 weeks. This is an unprecedented development, and Apple is yet to officially comment on the reasons for these unusual shipping delays.
Which Apple products are affected by the delay?
As outlined earlier, only Apple's user-configured Mac products seem to be adversely affected by these shipping delays. Among the products that show unusually long waiting periods include the M1 Max Mac Studio — which would only be delivered between June 24 and July 1 if ordered today — and the 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pro models, both of which show an estimated shipping date that lies between July 6 and July 21. For the recently launched M1 Ultra Mac Studio, Apple does not even display an expected ship date and simply states an estimated shipping time of 10-12 weeks. Apple's Studio Display, which was also recently announced, faces similar waiting periods.
According to the AppleInsider report, Apple typically encounters such shipping delays when the affected products are new, and demand is unusually high. That, however, isn't the case with the Mac lineup now, and Apple had no trouble fulfilling these orders without too much of a delay in the recent past.
With Apple yet to clarify the reasons for these unusually long estimated shipping times, speculation suggests this might be being caused by the recent surge of COVID-19 cases in China. As reported, the sudden jump in COVID-19 cases across the country led to strict lockdowns across major cities in China. There were concerns about these lockdowns potentially affecting the availability of Apple products, and that seems to be playing out right now in the form of these delays.