As per https://www.reddit.com/r/macbookpro/comments/r8wnnz/preorder_and_shipping_megathread_macbook_pro_late/<p>Seems any order outside the standard 14"/16" 16GB RAM is delayed for resellers - some dating back to November! Direct orders from apple.com seem to have gone uninterrupted.<p>Is apple sacrificing the resellers to maintain its M1Max/RAM stock for Mac Studio/new products?
So <i>Custom</i> order outside of Standard config were delayed for Resellers? How is that news?<p>>Is apple sacrificing the resellers to maintain its M1Max/RAM stock for Mac Studio/new products?<p>Yes. From a consumer perspective. No, from a line manager and capacity planning perspective.
Yes, but it has always been that way. Last time I didn't buy at Apple directly and the reseller was as fast as Apple was in 1998.<p>It also makes total sense from a face-value calculation: order at Apple, get your thing fast, order at somewhere else and 'they' will not be as good as Apple. Apple wins, reseller looks bad. This is obviously not Apple-specific, nearly any direct+reseller channel combo has the same thing, it's mostly consignment channels that are less problematic (from an ordering perspective... they are so much more problematic from every other angle).
A little over a month ago, the laptop I wanted (14” MBP, M1 Max, 64GB/2TB) was showing 2+ month ship times on Apple.com but it was in stock at B&H Photo and I picked it up the same day. YMMV.
The middle aged startup I'm at (70 employee now, 6 a year ago) are constantly having to juggle MacBooks because we can't get enough and enough of what we want. Half my team are on airs that can't really hack it and waiting for new pros to come in.<p>16GB RAM versions are particularly hard to get ahold of.<p>We buy direct from Apple.<p>I never really saw the point of resellers in countries with established markets (were London based plus some Singapore, Jersey, NYC satellites). Wouldn't Apple obviously prioritize direct sales. Sorry for my ignorance, am I missing some obvious angle?
I ordered a 32GB MacBook Pro back in November from a reseller. I just received it last month. Though I saved almost $400 compared to ordering it from Apple, I am not sure the extra wait was worth it.
We recently hired a couple new employees and I ordered them the base model macbook pros last month, no custom configuration.<p>Shipping time ordering direct from Apple was over a month out.<p>I've seen this happen a couple times before, and it's always right after a new MBP model launches.<p>(Complete guess) but I imagine Apple may prefer to fulfill its direct orders before filling orders from resellers or perhaps they allocate a certain number of units to resellers (when supply is restricted).
Resellers pay less than direct customers, so as long as Apple is supply constrained and has more orders than they can fulfil it makes sense that they prioritise the more profitable orders.