Apple Inc (AAPL)

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11:43 AAPL Apple Computer unable to meet rising MacBook demand - AppleInsider (67.16 -0.46)

AppleInsider reports the co is once again facing a problem that it has become all too familiar with -- not enough supply of its most popular products to meet growing demand. In particular, the co this month is reportedly struggling to fill orders for its consumer-oriented MacBook notebooks, which are arguably its most popular new product of the year.

Weighing on the co is the back-to-school shopping bonanza. This year, Apple's MacBooks are being billed as a hot ticket, but the co (or one of its component suppliers) has seemingly underestimated demand. Many customers who were expecting to receive previously-placed orders for Intel notebooks by this week got something else instead -- an apology letter from Apple stating that it would be unable to fill orders within the timeframe it had promised.

It's unclear how far back the MacBook backlog stretches, but customers who custom-configured their systems with added memory and hard drive space are reporting delays up to two weeks from when they first placed their orders.