How long does preparing to ship take?

So I placed my 2020 iMac 27" (customized) order on Sept 23 and it went to "preparing to ship" on Sept 28 and then to "shipped" less than 12 hours after that. The original delivery estimate was Oct 8-15. It looks like it's shipping UPS, probably from China although it lists Ireland as the location (probably since that's where the company is officially based for all the tax avoiding schemes they use).

UPS tracking doesn't show the package accepted yet but with a delivery date of Oct 2, but now the delivery date on Apple's site shows Oct 6. I don't know when it's actually coming but I'm thrilled I'll be getting it ahead of schedule!

Mine came a week earlier than the earliest date in the estimated delivery range.

Sep 23: order placed > processing (estimated delivery: Oct 8-15)

Sept 28: processing > preparing to ship > shipped (from Ireland)

Sept 30: arrived in USA (Ireland > Germany > New Jersey)

Sept 30: NJ > WA

Oct 1: delivered by UPS (Seattle)

It usually takes a while. I ordered mines on 8/31, shipped on 9/8, and arrived on 9/9. It takes a while, but it should come. If you have any other questions, you should ask Apple, this is just my experience.

Update: Early this morning the status was changed to preparing to ship. Then a couple hours later, it changed again to shipped and should be arriving tomorrow!

Hi  applepro2020,

Thanks for coming to Apple Support Communities for help today with shipping for your new MacBook Air. You can reach the Apple Online Store through this link: Contacting Apple. They would have the best information for you regarding shipping.

Have a fantastic day!

My 13-inch MacBook Pro - Space Gray

Hardware:

2.3GHz quad-core 10th-generation Intel Core i7 processor, Turbo Boost up to 4.1GHz

Intel Iris Plus Graphics

32GB 3733MHz LPDDR4X memory

1TB SSD storage

Was placed on 5/16, and moved to preparing to ship only today 6/1. Estimated arrival 6/11 to 6/18. Hopefully sooner.

I just contacted Apple Store Online support yesterday and they told me that since my country has no Apple Store, my MBA will be coming from Singapore, and since it is a custom configured Mac it'll take 1-2 weeks to ship to my country, and that many paper works will be done so it seems like I'll wait for the shipment longer than the expected end of September.

it's honestly ridiculous how long apple shipping is for certain products for such a huge company.

here's my saga in case any one else is looking:

— ordered macbook air with upgraded 16gb ram on the 7th of august with estimated time frame at the time of order being 26th august to 3rd september

— processing until 15th of august when it then was being prepared to ship

— shipped 17th august, estimated delivery 27th august.

despite being stated pretty much everywhere that apple does 1-3 day delivery after shipping its taking almost three weeks for my order to be delivered. i'm glad there are others in the same boat.

i got my macbook for school and to do my summer homework that i have to submit before 1st september. we'll see how that goes.

although there's an apple store half an hour away from me they didn't let us order it in store because we didn't have a valid proof of id. so i ended up having to order it one on of the macs in the **** apple store, having it delivered in three weeks, when i could've just got it then and there.

hope it arrives sooner. i'll update whenever it does.

I bet you’re proper gutted!

I contact Apple yesterday via the web chat and they reassured me that it will be sent this week in the next few days. They said that it wouldn’t go out of the delivery window which has honestly given me hope now!

If you don’t mind me asking, where are you ordering from? I’m ordering from the UK.

Mine only took a couple hours before i got another email saying it was shipped and was delivered the next day

I order my Mac book Air with an upgrade of 16gb RAM on September 26; and now it just recently switched from “processing” to “preparing to ship”. It took almost two weeks for me.

Mines arrived tomorrow!! I do a quick timeline!

august 1st - Order my MacBook Pro and the AirPods that come with it

august 4th- AirPod came in

august 18- MacBook still processing

august 20th-

email got still saying it be delivered the 21st

just got an update this morning that my laptop has prepared to ship. crossing my fingers that this means i'll get it tomorrow or within the next few days.

here's a timeline of my order

8/17 orders mbp

8/18 received the airpods

expected delivery for mbp was 9/6-9/16

from 8/18 to 9/10 it was processing

9/11 in the morning i got a notification that my card was charged and they are preparing to ship my mbp.

My MBA 2020 journey so far:

Ordered my 13in MBA with upgraded 16gb of RAM at around 7pm on Sept 7th.

Stayed in processing until today, Sept 17th. I was never notified but I’ve been obsessing over this order so I just checked the page and saw that it is now “preparing to ship”.

It’s been hours and I still hasn’t been shipped, so I’m not exactly sure what that means but 🤷🏻

The ETA is Sept 24-30, but I really hope it comes sooner!!

No it was early. My dates were Dec 8 - 15 so it'll arrive one week early. However I know they ran into production issues sometime after my order went through the production line. People have gotten emails about delayed delivery times from Apple directly. There are also some M1 models that are very constrained. I think being the Intel 16-inch CTO helped me out.