Apple can't keep up with demand for high-memory Macs — and OpenClaw might be why.
According to Tom's Hardware, lead times on Mac models with upgraded Unified Memory have stretched from 6 days to 6 weeks. The M3 Ultra Mac Studio with 512GB? Try 5-6 weeks delivery.
Base models still ship same-day. But bump the memory and you're waiting.
Alex Finn, founder of Creator Buddy, called it out on X: "The world's first true AI agent" is driving people to buy Macs en masse.
Something big is happening. First Mac Minis. Now Mac Studios. Completely sold out. When I bought 2 Mac Studios a month ago my wait was 14 days. Now the wait is 54 days.
The reasoning is simple: OpenClaw runs locally, and running 70B parameter models in FP16 requires ~140GB of memory. A single RTX 5090 (32GB) won't cut it. Apple's Unified Memory architecture — where CPU, GPU, and NPU share the same pool — solves that.
Eternal AI, a company running Mac Studio clusters for "long-running agentic tasks and local private LLMs," welcomed OpenClaw with open arms: "The world is just catching up on what we've been doing since 2024."
Tim Cook confirmed Apple is chasing memory supply to meet demand — though he didn't name OpenClaw specifically. But with consumers now competing against AI hyperscalers for HBM, the pressure isn't letting up.
The takeaway: if you wanted a high-memory Mac, order now. Or maybe just rent cloud GPU instead.