We checked every Mac Apple sells. Here's what can actually arrive before term.

Scottish schools are already back. English and Welsh pupils return in the first week of September, and most university terms start a fortnight after that. So we went through Apple's UK store this morning, configuration by configuration, to answer the only question that matters in August: if you order today, will it be there in time? The MacBook Pro, yes. The MacBook Air, probably not. The Mac mini runs to eighteen weeks — the middle of December, by which point the autumn term is nearly done.

Section 01Every Mac, and what Apple is quoting

This is the fortnight when back-to-school buying actually happens. Reading lists have landed, course requirements have gone out, and the machine has to be set up, updated and familiar before the first week rather than during it. Anyone who has watched a teenager try to install the software for a new course on the Sunday night before term starts knows the difference.

So the useful deadline isn't the first day of term. It's a week or two before it. Working back from that: Scottish schools are already back, English and Welsh pupils return in the first week of September, and most universities begin teaching in the second half of the month, with the first assessed work a couple of weeks after that.

Which turns the usual August question on its head. It isn't "which Mac is best for the course" it's "which Mac can actually be here in time". So rather than rely on reporting, we went through Apple's UK online store on the morning of Tuesday 11 August, family by family, recording the delivery text against every stock model and every build-to-order option.

That spread is the story, and it maps straight onto the school calendar. Two machines you can have from Apple this week. Two that arrive somewhere around the start of term, if nothing slips. And two you will not see before the autumn half term.

Section 02The MacBook Air: nothing under a fortnight

This is the machine most students want, and it's the one with no quick option at all. Sixteen configurations, and the fastest thing Apple can send you is two to three weeks away.

Note that those are four entries for what is essentially two machines. The same 13-inch specification appears twice, a week apart, and the only difference is the colour. All six 24GB custom builds are three to four weeks; storage barely moves the needle.

Order a three-to-four week Air today and it lands between 1 and 8 September, the week English schools go back.

Section 03The MacBook Pro: the one laptop Apple can post

Here's the surprise. The 14-inch MacBook Pro base model is in stock at £1,999, as is the 24GB Pro/Max version at £2,499. So is the 16-inch. And most custom builds, 24GB, 36GB, 48GB, storage to 8TB are quoted at three to five business days.

Which explains something we'd noticed but couldn't account for. This year, for the first time, Apple's back-to-school campaign leads with the base MacBook Pro rather than the MacBook Air. It looked like an odd marketing choice. Set against these numbers it looks like the only sensible one: it's the laptop Apple can actually ship.

For a student that's an awkward trade. The Pro starts £700 above the Air, weighs more, and is more machine than most courses need. Being nudged from the right laptop to an available one is a compromise, and it's worth recognising it as one.

Section 04The desktops are gone until the autumn

If your plan was a Mac mini and a monitor as the cheap way in, that plan needs revisiting.

There is no Mac Studio configuration under eight weeks. Not one. And the cheapest Mac Apple sells, the £999 mini, is a month and a half out in its base form.

Worth noting what these two have in common: they're the models Apple hasn't refreshed. The mini is still M4, the Studio M4 and M3. Older products, lower volumes, and apparently the back of the queue.

Section 05It isn't simply about memory

We'll be straight about this: when we only had the MacBook Air data, we thought the pattern was obvious. All six 24GB builds were slower than the 16GB ones, and storage made no difference. More memory, longer wait. Clean story.

The full lineup breaks it.

Read that top to bottom. A machine with 48GB ships in three to five days, while one with 32GB takes four to five weeks. More memory, faster delivery. On the 16-inch it happens again: 48GB is in stock, 64GB is six to seven weeks.

So the constraint isn't gigabytes. It's which configurations Apple has decided to build.

Look at what's slow and a pattern appears: the unusual combinations. A base-chip Pro with upgraded memory. 24GB paired with the smallest storage tier in a Mac mini — the worst wait in the entire lineup at sixteen to eighteen weeks, and an order almost nobody places. Meanwhile the popular configurations, including expensive ones with plenty of memory, are on the shelf.

That reads like a company with scarce memory concentrating it on high-volume builds and letting the long tail slide. Rational in a shortage, and it produces exactly this shape of data.

The practical consequence is useful: if you're ordering new from Apple right now, take a stock configuration. Customising is what puts you in the slow queue, and it's no longer safe to assume a smaller upgrade means a shorter wait.

We're not the only ones to have spotted this. Trade coverage of the shortage has reached the same conclusion from the other direction that changing the memory option, picking a different colour, or choosing a standard configuration a retailer already holds can cut weeks off the wait. That matches our data exactly.

Section 06Why any of this is happening

Demand from AI data centres has emptied the global supply of DRAM and NAND flash. DRAM prices rose by as much as 98% in the first quarter of 2026 and kept climbing through the second.

Apple absorbed that for three quarters. On 25 June it stopped, raising UK list prices across almost the whole Mac and iPad range by £100 to £1,300 for unchanged hardware, we set out every model in that analysis. Six weeks on, the price rise clearly hasn't fixed the supply.

At the start of August, Bloomberg's Mark Gurman reported MacBook Air supply as tighter than retail sources could recall. Our numbers are what that looks like from the UK, and they add the detail his piece couldn't: the Pro is fine, the desktops are dire, and the pain sits in the long tail of configurations.

One caveat we'd rather state than bury: Apple has not attributed these delays to any specific component. It has acknowledged that memory and storage costs drove the June price revision, but the reading in Section 05 is our inference from the pattern, not Apple's account of it.

Nobody expects a quick resolution either way. Samsung has warned shortages could run through 2027, with some forecasts pointing to 2028. Which means the June prices are the new floor, not a spike to wait out.

Section 07Available now, for less than new

We're a refurbished Apple specialist, so treat this section as our pitch. It rests on two things you can check yourself: Apple's delivery quotes above, and our prices in a browser tab.

Our range runs from the M1 through to the current M5, so in most cases we're selling the same models, already built, already tested. 

Here's how that sits against Apple's queue, model by model.

Side by side

The press consensus during this shortage has been that refurbished is the sensible route — Macworld and TechRadar both pointed readers that way, largely towards Apple's own Certified Refurbished store, on the grounds that its prices still reflect the pre-June structure. We agree with the principle. The one thing we'd add is that Apple's refurbished inventory depends on what comes back through trade-ins and returns, so colours and configurations appear unpredictably and stock rotates fast; coverage of the shortage has noted availability there can be less consistent than for new machines.

And if you're not sure which machine the course actually needs, fell free to contact us for advice at info@hoxtonmacs.co.uk