Mac mini and Mac Studio orders booming

AI boosting Mac sales.

Mac mini and Mac Studio orders are facing unusually long shipping delays, stretching up to 4-5 months. This could hint at an upcoming M5 refresh or supply constraints.

After a few months of delay, Apple refreshed the MacBook Pro and MacBook Air lineup with its new M5 family of chips in late February. The new M5 Pro and M5 Max chips bring a significant uplift in CPU, GPU and AI performance. The Mac Studio and Mac mini are also due for an M5 refresh, but it’s unclear when it will land.

The extended shipping delays of these Macs could be an early sign of that transition. Apple may be winding down inventory of current models ahead of the refresh. Or it could be struggling to keep up with demand. Despite their age, the Mac Studio and Mac mini are great for AI tasks.

In the US, the Apple Store currently shows a one-month delivery time for an M4 Pro Mac mini with 24GB of system memory. The shipping time jumps to a whopping 10-12 weeks if you bump the memory to 48GB.

Source: Cult of Mac

NB: The bias of the shortage toward the high end impli…

…es the cause is not a refresh cycle. It's certainly the need for AI agent development. Beside the fact that Apple will have a killer quarter (or year) of Mac sales, the elephant in the room is that AI is benefiting Apple disproportionately more than any other platform. This is because AI needs power and power is best supplied by Apple. It's also the fact that the MacOS platform is modular enough and robust enough to run what amounts to server-level computing. Years of attention to performance are paying off.