AppleInsider Staff
More than six months after Apple debuted its redesigned Mac Pro, the company has finally caught up with demand and is estimating ship times of three to five days on base configurations sold through the Online Apple Store.
Apple's new shipping estimates hit the Online Apple Store early Saturday, ending a six-month Mac Pro drought that caused customers who purchased the computer in January and February to wait more than one month for their order to arrive. The change was first spotted by Portuguese Apple blog AllMacLong.
At the time of this writing only base model configurations are eligible for 3-5 day ship-by times, while modified systems are still running at 2-3 weeks.
Since launching the completely redesigned Mac Pro in December, Apple has faced supply issues with the "Assembled in USA" machine. The company has been making steady progress, however, and advanced ship times to 2-3 weeks earlier in May. Last month, ship-by dates dropped to below one month for the first time since launch.
Historically, ship-by dates have steadily improved over the first quarter, with checks in April showing estimates at 5-6 weeks, which moved up to 4-6 weeks on Apr. 11, 4-5 weeks on Apr. 18 and 3-5 weeks on Apr. 24.
While the new estimates mark substantial progress, supply is such that in-store models are still non-existent. In January, Apple said it didn't expect to have Mac Pros available to buy from brick-and-mortar stores until at least March.
As Apple builds its inventory toward 24-hour ship times, authorized resellers like MacMall and Adorama have dozens of Mac Pro configurations for sale, which can be seen in AppleInsider's live Price Guides.
Andrew Orr
Wesley Hilliard
Malcolm Owen
Christine McKee
William Gallagher
50 Comments
Apple, fix HDMI1.4->2.0 4k/60Hz and add miniDisplay Port SST 4k/60Hz support.
It is the least you can do after "support 3 4k monitors" bragging which turns out to be a farce.
I'm happy that US assembled serious tech is selling well. So it's not all about those small, light gadgets.
I would love to know whether this is a case of demand being higher than expected or if it's a case of supply being lower than expected demand. Either way, it has been a very long time since apple has had such a hard time getting supply caught up with demand. The last time I remember it being this bad was when the "low cost" Mac IIsi and LC came out, can anyone remember something more recent?
Hawaii GPUs and dual internal SSDs would be nice (even if 1 of the Thunderbolt controllers has to be sacrificed).
it has been a very long time since apple has had such a hard time getting supply caught up with demand.
It's been a long time since a major Apple hardware product wasn't assembled in China. CTO builds are still 2-3 weeks. I hope this has just been growing pains, not a sign of the best we can do in the U.S.