New Delhi, Aug. 3 -- CUPERTINO - Put a MacBook Air in your cart on Apple's website this week and you will not find the next-day or two-day delivery window the company has trained its customers to expect. Depending on the model and configuration, the estimated arrival is late August or September. For a laptop Apple has marketed as its most accessible and reliably available computer, that is a meaningfully different shopping experience. It arrived at exactly the moment when millions of students are trying to buy one.

The constraints are not a website glitch. Apple's MacBook Air line is dealing with the same memory chip shortage that has limited Mac mini and Mac Studio availability for months, and the squeeze has now expanded to Apple's fla...