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Apple Says Mac Studio and Mac Mini Will Be in Short Supply for Months

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During today's earnings call for the second fiscal quarter of 2026, Apple CEO Tim Cook said that the Mac mini and Mac Studio could be hard to get for months to come.

mac-studio-purple.jpg

"We think, looking forward, that the Mac mini and Mac Studio may take several months to reach supply demand balance," Cook said.

Apple underestimated demand for the Mac mini and the Mac Studio. "Both of these are amazing platforms for AI and agentic tools and the customer recognition of that is happening faster than what we had predicted, and so we saw higher than expected demand," Cook said.

Shipping delays for the Mac mini and the Mac Studio have been increasing over the last few months, and the waits for some models stretch into months. Apple stopped selling the Mac Studio with 512GB RAM entirely, and it stopped accepting orders for some models with higher amounts of RAM. As of last week, the base Mac mini was listed as "Currently Unavailable" from Apple's online store because it is out of stock.

Article Link: Apple Says Mac Studio and Mac Mini Will Be in Short Supply for Months
 
Article Link
https://www.macrumors.com/2026/04/30/mac-studio-mac-mini-constrained-months/
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fleabttn said:
you’re suggesting that it is going to become a common occurrence that people are going to commit assault against people purchasing used mac minis?
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I'm saying keep your wits about you if picking up refurbs at the store. Be aware of your surroundings as you leave.
 
I was going to wait for the M5 Max Mac Studio to replace my M2 model, but with the expected delays into late 2026 or even early 2027 plus the probable major price increase if Apple sets the base model to 2TB of storage, I instead bought a 14" M5 Pro MacBook Pro during the recent Amazon sale (which now replaces my Studio, my 14" M1 Pro MacBook Pro and 13" M1 iPad Pro).
 
JPack said:
This is the key answer in the call: "The primary constraint in the March and June quarter is the availability of the advanced nodes our SOCs are produced on, not memory."
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Reports say that Apple has been buying up significant stocks of memory, paying well above market prices to secure supply. So it makes sense that the limit would be not being able to get enough wafers to produce sufficient number of the higher-end M5 SoCs due to other companies paying a premium to TSMC to secure first-access to said wafers.
 
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If there's a bright side to this then I'd suggest this implies that Apple might have canned any earlier release for the M5 variant Mini and Studio and instead we could be looking at M6 variants perhaps next year if Apple can secure what they need in terms of SoC nodes.
 
macmyworld said:
Meaning they will miss out on sales.
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It's not high priority. Minis + Studios are probably a tiny fraction of Apple's revenue. Priority is always going to be SOC and SSD for iPhones, the red bits below, which constitute the lion's share of hardware sales for Apple.
Screenshot 2026-04-30 at 3.39.09 PM.png
Screenshot 2026-04-30 at 3.39.01 PM.png


Apple has to have a successful launch for the iPhone 18 and Ultra series. They have to convince people and have them itching to upgrade their phones. Assuming a non-saturated market, and people don't skip this new generation, they can generate huge demand with big upgrades and have plenty of supply on hand.
 
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Not to worry, everybody, for the GREATEST PIPELINE EVER is still in effect! Rest assured that the ALL NEW iPhone 18 series will take the best-in-class iPhone to a whole new level. And, for the first time EVER, the iPhone 18 series will feature the biggest advancement to Siri since Siri was introduced, powered by the game-changing Apple Intelligence.

Apple is hard at work on the ALL NEW iPhone 18 series and as a tiny startup with extreme limited resources, operating on the bleeding edge, there just isn't quite the supply or bandwidth to update Apple's most powerful desktop Macs, the Mac Studio and Mac mini. Not to worry, though, because Apple has discovered the secret. Stay tuned....

But seriously, if Apple wanted to update them, they would. There is no clear upgrade path, because the evolution from M4 to M5 is not compelling.
 
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chars1ub0w said:
It's not high priority. Minis + Studios are probably a tiny fraction of Apple's revenue. Priority is always going to be SOC and SSD for iPhones, the red bits below, which constitute the lion's share of hardware sales for Apple.
View attachment 2626249View attachment 2626250

Apple has to have a successful launch for the iPhone 18 and Ultra series. They have to convince people and have them itching to upgrade their phones. Assuming a non-saturated market, and people don't skip this new generation, they can generate huge demand with big upgrades and have plenty of supply on hand.
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Yet another reason to push the base 18 out to Spring 2027. I wouldn't be surprised if all of the base model devices shifted to next spring while Pros stayed in the fall while both memory and SoCs are impacted.
 
"Both of these are amazing platforms for AI and agentic tools and the customer recognition of that is happening faster than what we had predicted, and so we saw higher than expected demand," Cook said.
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So they had zero clue these devices would be so adept at platforms for AI (because they were fumbling the AI football on their end) that it never occurred to them others would pick up the slack and, as such, the hardware they’ve been producing would be in such high demand for AI related tools because they themselves couldn’t make proper use of it.

Tim can’t openly admit to another huge AI related mistake, missed sales due to missed hardware demand forecasting, so he says they “couldn’t have predicted” how popular the hardware would be.

So they’ve been sitting on hardware that’s more than capable of handling AI while their software team has been fumbling it all away for two going on three years, and they could be making money hand over fist in hardware but aren’t producing enough of it because of bad demand forecasting.

Sweet!!!!!!
 
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Corefile said:
I'm saying keep your wits about you if picking up refurbs at the store. Be aware of your surroundings as you leave.
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Who knew? And all this time I thought it was only jewelry stores that attracted that kind of attention. Mugged because of a Mac Mini. What strange times we live in.
 
They sell more laptops than desktops, so it's no surprise they weren't prepared. Sucks, but there are new models around the corner, anyway.
 
Padre_Pio said:
They sell more laptops than desktops, so it's no surprise they weren't prepared. Sucks, but there are new models around the corner, anyway.
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You think so? When Tim says that there are constraints on the most advanced node process, and that Mac minis will take longer and longer to get, I think this means they don’t have an early launch date.
 
Not to gloat (okay, maybe a little) but my new 24/512 Mac Mini is coming tomorrow on my birthday. And no, I'm not giving anyone my address.😉

I thought about upgrading to the m4 pro, but shipping times are in August, so no.
 
I guess this means no Mac mini until end of the year… when prices will be much higher.

I am thinking of getting a MacBook Air despite it not having the same sustained performance as a Mac mini…
 
I can’t find affordable fuel to get to the Apple Store anyway. Yes, strange times we live in.
 
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