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A shortage of memory in the global market could be causing the Apple touchscreen MacBook Pro, which the world is eagerly awaiting to see, to be back-ordered, according to Mark Gurman of Bloomberg. Gurman had set the launch window to between the end of 2026 and the early end of 2027, but in his new Power In the newsletter, he indicates that 2027 is early in view as the launch date and that it is the chip shortage to blame. 

The new MacBook Pro will be a major upgrade; it will come with an OLED display with a notch called "Dynamic Island," an iPhone-iPad-like touchscreen with new M6 Pro and M6 Max SoCs. The software layer has been on time, so it is said that changes made to the touch-friendly interface will be present in macOS 27, which will come this fall. Despite this, it is only the hardware itself that is in transition. 

Any drop MAC Studio that was set to happen mid-2026 is now assumed to be closer to October, aided by a global shortage of RAM brought on by heightened usage among users executing local AI models. 

The very existence of the shortage itself is being induced by AI server demand, with data centers establishing large language model infrastructure, requiring vast amounts of RAM, straining the supply all around. It is especially vulnerable to Apple Macs, which, having already unified memory setups, run on higher speeds than even most consumer PCs do.

The scenario might not be solved soon—Counterpoint Research analyst MS Hwang was straightforward on that the supply and demand will still not stabilize until 2028, and Nikkei Asia put the vacancy at 40 percent of the gap between available memory supply and the necessary one.

Although the delay can be a disappointment to consumers, the potential upgrades would imply that Apple is looking to drastically advance both in hardware and in the user experience that could prove a breakthrough in the history of Apple and its laptops.