Planning to Buy a MacBook Air for Back-to-School? Don’t Wait Another Day
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While one might reasonably expect that a $200 price increase would soften the demand for just about any product, it seems that Apple can’t make new MacBook Air models fast enough to keep up with demand.
In late June, Apple announced a round of unprecedented price hikes, citing what CEO Tim Cook had previously called a hundred-year flood in commodity prices — specifically memory chips. However, while raising prices has made it easier for Apple to pay for the memory that goes into its MacBooks and other products, it seemingly hasn’t smoothed over the process of actually getting its hands on those chips.
According to Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman, the MacBook Air is “suffering from massive shortages,” and it’s all tied to the overwhelming demand for memory chips — both RAM and flash storage.
It’s the first time we’ve seen this impact the supply of a mainstream Mac — especially one that was just released. The Mac mini and Mac Studio have been scarce since April, with Apple discontinuing some configurations outright, while others showed shipping times of up to five months.
A visit to Apple’s online store reinforces the picture. New orders for all base-level configurations aren’t scheduled to ship until the end of August, while some combinations of screen size, color and — most critically — memory options won’t arrive until early September. For a computer that was refreshed with the M5 chip in March, delays of roughly a month are essentially unprecedented.
Mark Gurman
However, Apple has made it clear that the demand for those desktop Macs comes primarily from AI server farms. As Cook said during the company’s Q2 2026 earnings call in April, “Mac mini and Mac Studio are amazing platforms for AI and agentic tools, and the customer recognition of that is happening faster than we predicted.”
Earlier this year, Apple expanded Mac mini production to Texas, and subsequently discontinued the 256 GB entry-level model to push AI hyperscalers to the $799 version — a move that both increases Apple’s profits and takes some of the pressure off its supply chain. After all, multi-billion-dollar AI companies building server farms will pay an extra $200 per unit without blinking.
Unfortunately, the MacBook Air shortages are likely to hit more people where it hurts, especially as students prepare to head back to school this fall. As Gurman points out, Apple has gone so far as to steer customers toward the base MacBook Pro in its back-to-school promotion, which is already offering the most limited set of products in the company’s history; only the MacBook Pro, MacBook Air, iPad Pro, and iPad Air are eligible for gift card bonuses. There are no desktop Macs on this list — not even the iMac — and the MacBook Neo, iPad mini, and standard iPad aren’t eligible either.
Buying a MacBook Air as a student will net you a $100 gift card, but getting your hands on one before classes start is another matter. In some of its marketing materials, Apple is even adding the disclaimer, “MacBook Air subject to availability” — an unprecedented move that’s left a lot of folks scratching their heads.
Apple’s move to push customers toward the 14-inch MacBook Pro may not be solely about availability of the MacBook Air, as Gurman notes that sources have told him it’s prioritizing that model to clear the runway for an M6 MacBook Pro that’s likely to land in October or November. A new MacBook Air isn’t expected until early 2027.
Either way, the bottom line is that if you want a MacBook Air in time for the school year, you’d better place your order now — and that’s doubly true if you’re looking for a custom configuration.
