MacBook Air faces weeks-long shortage as Apple steers buyers to MacBook Pro

Apple's MacBook Air, long the company's best-selling laptop, is currently so hard to come by that an order placed today will not arrive until the end of August. Retail sources told Bloomberg's Mark Gurman that stock of the lightweight model has run critically low, just weeks after Apple raised its price.

The shortage has led to an unusual shift in how Apple is marketing its lineup. According to Gurman, Apple is now prominently steering customers toward the base MacBook Pro instead of the Air, something the company has rarely, if ever, done before. Some of Apple's own marketing materials now carry a caveat reading “MacBook Air subject to availability.”

Gurman reports that Apple is also deliberately prioritizing the 14-inch MacBook Pro over the Air, in part to clear existing Pro inventory ahead of an expected M6 refresh for that line, which has been rumored to introduce touchscreen support.

The underlying cause of the shortage is the memory chip crisis the industry has taken to calling RAMageddon. AI data centers have absorbed a growing share of global DRAM and NAND production this year, as memory makers redirect manufacturing capacity toward high-bandwidth memory for AI servers instead of the conventional memory used in laptops, phones and other consumer devices. Analysts have described the shift as structural rather than temporary, with some forecasting that constrained supply could persist into 2029 or 2030.

Apple had already signaled this was coming. We reported back in June that CEO Tim Cook, in an interview with the Wall Street Journal, admitted price increases were unavoidable given how sharply memory costs had risen, without specifying which products or when. The warning proved accurate within days, when Apple raised prices across nearly its entire hardware lineup on June 25.

The MacBook Air's starting price rose from $999 to $1,099 in March with the launch of the M5 model, then to $1,299 in that broader round of increases in June. Other affected products included the entry-level MacBook Neo, up to $699 from $599, the MacBook Pro, up to $1,999 from $1,699, and the iPad Air, up to $749 from $599, while iPhone, Apple Watch and AirPods pricing held steady.

Despite the supply crunch, Apple beat Wall Street's expectations in its most recent earnings report. Still, the company has warned investors that supply constraints could weigh on results next quarter and may force it to raise prices further. At the same time, Apple's newly launched Apple Upgrade financing program, introduced last week in partnership with Klarna, could add further pressure to Mac demand just as supply remains tight.