Like everyone else who is switching, and thus buying for the first time, I am quite eagerly anticipating the delivery of my new Mac. My friends have thrown around the words "obsessed" and "zealous" to describe my rapt facination w/ the tracking number displays from fedex and ups as the various components have arrived.
Anything shipping out of China (powerbook and ipod mini) has suffered from some strange delay. After plumbing the depths of the fedex phone tree I have found out why!
Apple's production volume is now so great they don't have sufficient storage space for their finished products. They have instead agreed w/ fedex that fedex will pick up and store their products as they are made, with the understanding that fedex will ship those products "as space is available". In other words Apple is literally producing more than the carrying capacity of fedex out of shanghai. Well that's not literally true. There was some week-long festival in China just recently, and that impacted fedex's ability to operate (but strangely not Apples; probably Fedex's reliance on public employees at the airport or customs or some such). This cut down their flights per day, and thus exacerbate the rate mismatch between production and shipping.
This is one delay I don't begrudge Apple 😀
-RS
PS I realize "as space is available" might be misunderstood to mean Apple's products get shoved in after everyone elses' are already packed, but let me tell you, from the way the lady was describing the apple product volume, that is hardly the case. I think it is more likely that each manufacturer/client is assigned certain flights, so that they can more easily organize their production processes around concrete times. If Fedex is flying 15 flights, and Apple gets 1-2 of those (quite a bit when you consider who else is going to be exporting out of Shanghai ie a plurality of majority of all western companies with facilities in China) they can quite easily overrun their space assignment. Dell can hardly complain if one of their flights gets a few pallets of Apple products after they have loaded up, but they understandably get first refusal on space in "their" flights.
Anything shipping out of China (powerbook and ipod mini) has suffered from some strange delay. After plumbing the depths of the fedex phone tree I have found out why!
Apple's production volume is now so great they don't have sufficient storage space for their finished products. They have instead agreed w/ fedex that fedex will pick up and store their products as they are made, with the understanding that fedex will ship those products "as space is available". In other words Apple is literally producing more than the carrying capacity of fedex out of shanghai. Well that's not literally true. There was some week-long festival in China just recently, and that impacted fedex's ability to operate (but strangely not Apples; probably Fedex's reliance on public employees at the airport or customs or some such). This cut down their flights per day, and thus exacerbate the rate mismatch between production and shipping.
This is one delay I don't begrudge Apple 😀
-RS
PS I realize "as space is available" might be misunderstood to mean Apple's products get shoved in after everyone elses' are already packed, but let me tell you, from the way the lady was describing the apple product volume, that is hardly the case. I think it is more likely that each manufacturer/client is assigned certain flights, so that they can more easily organize their production processes around concrete times. If Fedex is flying 15 flights, and Apple gets 1-2 of those (quite a bit when you consider who else is going to be exporting out of Shanghai ie a plurality of majority of all western companies with facilities in China) they can quite easily overrun their space assignment. Dell can hardly complain if one of their flights gets a few pallets of Apple products after they have loaded up, but they understandably get first refusal on space in "their" flights.
