Memory Is the Machine

It is late April 2026. If you want to get a Mac you want, you cannot go into any Apple Store and pick the Mac you want. A Mac mini with 64GB of RAM, ordered today, ships in sixteen to eighteen weeks. A Mac Studio with 256GB of RAM ships in four to five months. The 128GB and 256GB Mac Studio configurations are listed as “currently unavailable” on Apple’s online store. Apple removed the 512GB Mac Studio option entirely earlier this year. As of last week, even the base $599 Mac mini is sold out. Have you wondered why? The easy answers include a global memory shortage thanks to the AI boom. And that Apple has devices that are good for AI work. Both are true. And yet, that is not the whole story. For instance, if you want a maxed-out M5 Max MacBook Pro with 128GB of RAM and 2TB of storage, it ships in ten to fifteen days. The Mac mini with 64GB of RAM does not ship until August. Well, simply speaking, Apple makes gobs more money from its laptops, especially the high-end machines, and is…