Cult of Mac: February MacBook Pro Orders Pushed Out to June

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28 APRIL 2022 - Something that is likely to come up a time or two in today’s earnings call is problems in the supply chain. Those seem to be persisting. Just ask people who ordered a MacBook Pro a couple of months ago and won’t be getting said MacBook Pro for another couple of months. A piece from Cult of Mac says, “People who ordered a top-tier MacBook Pro in February are being notified that it won’t be delivered until June.” One of their readers tells the site: 

We put our order in on February 6th, and they’re now quoting June 14 to June 28 for fulfillment… Over four months to get a machine is an enormous amount of time.

That person is not wrong. Of course, it’s also not Apple’s fault. The Cult says the problem is all of the “COVID-19 lockdowns in China hampering notebook assembly.” According to the report:

Quanta Computing is the only company that assembles high-end Apple notebooks, and a COVID-19 lockdown near Shanghai forced the temporary closure of some its facilities in mid-March. However, it’s been able to restart limited production, with “Apple’s Mac as the 1st priority,” according to TF International Securities analyst Ming-Chi Kuo.

No offense to Cult of Mac, but is seems unlikely that closures in Mid-March are the only thing pushing orders placed in early February out to late June. Earlier this week we hit a story about worries around iPhone manufacturing. In that story, 9 to 5 Mac argued that:

The biggest issue is not with CPUs and GPUs, but far more mundane chips like display drivers and power management systems. These relatively low-tech chips are used in a huge number of devices, including Apple ones.

One imagines that that is hurting Mac production as well. Maybe somebody will ask about it on today’s call.