If you missed pre-orders for the new M1 Macs, you may be able to get your hands on one without the wait by opting for in-store pickup.

In the UK, for example, both standard-configuration M1 MacBook Air models are showing Nov 25 to Dec 2 for delivery, but they are available for in-store pickup tomorrow …

The position with the two standard M1 MacBook Pro models is the same: the same dates are shown for delivery, but they are also available for in-store pickup tomorrow from a number of UK stores.

For the M1 Mac mini, things are even better. Delivery is available on November 24-25, but in-store pickup is available today from some stores.

The UK lockdown means that non-essential shops are not allowed to open, but Apple is taking advantage of an exemption for ‘click-and-collect’ orders, where people order online and then pick up from a store.

It’s a similar story in some other countries where Apple Stores have opened for the day.

In the US, in-store pickup is still shown as ‘currently unavailable’ at the time of writing, but it will be worth checking once US stores open.

Some of those who did pre-order in time to get the earliest deliveries saw their machines arriving yesterday.

We’ve already seen some incredibly impressive benchmark results. In single-core Geekbench tests, the three M1 Macs took top billing – though we did note some riders there.

As some users have shared on Twitter, customers around the world are now finally getting their Mac M1 orders delivered a few hours ahead of time. Interestingly, one of the first short hands-on videos with the new 13-inch MacBook Pro box shows a new image similar to the 16-inch MacBook Pro box […]

As you might expect, users who are getting their hands on the new Macs with the M1 chip are also running and sharing more benchmark tests with these machines.

We’ve also seen the M1 chip outperform both the Nvidia GeForce GTX 1050 Ti and the AMD Radeon RX 560 in graphics tests.

Now that early buyers are taking delivery, we can expect to learn a lot more about real-life performance over the next few days.