Well there was a report a week or so ago that Watch production capabilities were cut in half. That could contribute to the quick shortages, honestly.
Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
Apple Watch Sold Out in Less Than 6 Hours as Shipping Times Slip on All Models
- Thread starter MacRumors
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
Well there was a report a week or so ago that Watch production capabilities were cut in half. That could contribute to the quick shortages, honestly.
Not here to say otherwise sir... Glad you got yourself a treat; God knows I love toys.
What I meant is having a bunch of tech products isn't an indicator of wealth... Just an indicator of what one chooses to do with it...
Poor pre-order process
I'm a little upset during this pre-order process to be honest. I've been looking forward to it and actually getting up before 3am eastern time to be ready. The Apple store app had the watches ready at 3am however they don't accept gift cards. How annoying is that? You would think there would be a way to link them to ApplePay or passbook. Instead I had to wait until the online store was up which by then they shipping dates had been pushed back further...
Sorry if this sounds like bitching but if Apple indeed is trying make people shop online or through the app to deter long lines at the stores, then for goodness sake make it a smoother process.
I'm a little upset during this pre-order process to be honest. I've been looking forward to it and actually getting up before 3am eastern time to be ready. The Apple store app had the watches ready at 3am however they don't accept gift cards. How annoying is that? You would think there would be a way to link them to ApplePay or passbook. Instead I had to wait until the online store was up which by then they shipping dates had been pushed back further...
Sorry if this sounds like bitching but if Apple indeed is trying make people shop online or through the app to deter long lines at the stores, then for goodness sake make it a smoother process.
I figured as much. I was just joking because the person I responded to wrote the first date in the European style and then the second date in American style. Then he translated values in American style.
5/8 Australian is 5 August.
5/8 American is May 8.
Lol. It happens every single time because the cost of increasing production capacity to meet launch demand that would then be unused after launch demand is met would significantly increase costs and be very inefficient.
It isn't just about meeting launch demand. It is about effectively and efficiently producing the number of devices over an entire run of a particular models lifespan. Literally the only way to do it without just wasting money would be to push back the launch date until pre-production runs for months longer. Of course that wastes money too.
Say they anticipate selling 15 million doohickeys in the next twelve months. Now let's say they expect launch demand to be 20% of that total. That means 3 million doohickeys needed for launch and then 1 million per month over next 12 months.
3 is 300% of one. From a profuction run standpoint that is a massive difference and would require a significantly costlier investment that would then be sitting idle after launch. Even if they efficiently closed down excess capacity it would add significant costs to the development.
It is funny how people keep making these same claims even though apple sold like 90x more iphone 6s on opening weekend then they did iPhones and in both cases they were making as many as they could in an efficient manner.
It is likely apple is already the biggest smart watch seller on the planet now and maybe even has the majority of the current market.
Not sure how you could argue this is some sort of scheme if thst were the case.
----------
Well watches are smaller then phones and they likely will have sold only 10%-15% of iphone numbers. So the shipping capacity needed compared to an iphone launch would be a small fraction.
Holding inventory is the exact opposite of what supply chain efficiency is about. It is worst case scenario. Making everyone wait to get an apple watch instead of just some of them is not some sort of genius fix. Holding inventory costs money. Making lots of people wait to get your product just so everyone who wants it on day 1 can get it is horrible business.
Not that I am doubting you but I don't recall this history at all. I was an avid Apple //e user and back in the mid/late 80s Apple was using SCSI for their drives. Printers back then and well into the 90s still used Parallel or Serial ports. I began playing with Wintel PCs with WFWG 3.11 around 1993 and there was no mention of USB then either.
The only consumer devices that folks would attach to a computer in the 80s and early 90s were a disk drive hard drive (which really came with the computer anyway), a monitor, and a printer. Not until the mid 90s did the portable consumer computer electronics really take off...such as printers galore, all-in-1 printers, digital cameras in late 90s, external portable hard drives...and the big move/switch to USB for mice and keyboards in the 90s since they were such low power and also wouldn't nuke your computer if you accidentally plugged it in while the computer was on like a ps/2 port.
Although Apple and other companies can pioneer and/or push a brand new technology, the timing has to be right for technologies (especially a protocol) to take off. Apple was practically out of business when you say they pushed USB...yet Windows was booming...Wintel PC prices were plummeting fast...everyone and their grandmother was buying a new Wintel PC by 1996...portable, consumer computer electronics were growing exponentially in both available models and the technologies themselves.
On a side note, I've always disagreed with Apple's "one cable for everything" approach...it's just not realistic...and to have all the eggs in 1 basket is never a good idea. I'm glad the thick, unbendable days of SCSI and early USB cables are long gone...and glad a few things are wireless these days...but I am very happy to have a few cords in case, say, my keyboard dies and doesn't affect my mouse and monitor and external hard drive at the same time.I'll buy another $3 USB cable or $25 keyboard vs. the risk of buying $1000+ worth of new equipment and the extreme inconvenience in the first place!
I've come to appreciate that the winners tend to write the history.
Either I'm demented or there are many things I recall about computing for which I can find no clear verification. For instance, when Netscape Navigator took off I also recall Gates distinctly stating publicly that he's devoting no resources to Internet browsing because he didn't think it was going to amount to much.
The official story today is that he was invested in it from the very beginning. I can't find any reference to Gates' initial statement anywhere. Maybe I'm just getting old and crazy.
Everything we have heard has apple indicating they expect to sell an unbelievable amount of these devices. That would not have happened if they were not ready to launch.
So 4-5% of the people you know with iPhones want the Apple Watch. That translates to about 20,000,000 units. Sounds pretty darn good to me.
But if you're a supply chain genius (and successful COO then CEO) you will also know that there's a finite time to get to market if you're going to release a product - and whilst you can calculate a projected yield (and have to adjust it up/down due to actual yield if there's manufacturing problems or successes) - so you sometimes need to ship before you have enough stock to service all, or even most, of your customer's wants to order.
It has nothing to do with artificially restricting supply.
And let's be honest here - Tim Cook (no need to add silly letters to make his name seem different) is an extremely successful businessman, COO and CEO - so the tag "supply chain genius" probably fits him better than you, who's questioning this tag and saying that "he's doing it wrong". Facts speak for themselves, really..... Your (and even my) conjecture on the situation doesn't hold up against those facts.
Based on what people are saying here, I would venture an guess that the Space Gray Watch Sport is proving to be the most popular model by a wide margin.
But that would be a guess.
I still see June (on the web at least), but if it is indeed July then how can this be artificial low stock by Apple? Surely they'd want your money if not by the end of this month, by the end of May, or most certainly June!
TOTALLY agreed. I had 2 gift cards in my Passbook, ready to use at 3am, and couldn't use them! Irritating.
What happened at GTAT is not indicative of issues in the industry as a whole. Are there issues in the manufacturing process? Yep. Are they as dire as you make them out to be? Nope. GTAT was an outlier. They were trying to accomplish two goals: Giant boules and high volume. Neither of those goals were accomplished. Conversely, there are several manufacturers making high quality optical quality sapphire, or as you so superlatively put it, the world's second hardest crystal. They are using tried and true processes. No one is saying its as easy as ice cubes. What I am saying is trying to grow outsized boules and produce 60-70 million 5-6" panels is not analogous to creating sapphire for watch faces.
Can we just say you win and call it a day?
Was anyone succesful getting a watch ordered to deliver 4-24?
I woke up in the middle of the night and refreshed my safari window until it let me get into the Apple Store. By the time that I was able to order the watch it was 2:05AM Central Time (12:05AM Pacific Time), and I have a 4-6 week wait time. This is a poor estimate on Apple's part, making me wonder if anyone actually got their watch ordered and are going to have it shipped 4-24.
I woke up in the middle of the night and refreshed my safari window until it let me get into the Apple Store. By the time that I was able to order the watch it was 2:05AM Central Time (12:05AM Pacific Time), and I have a 4-6 week wait time. This is a poor estimate on Apple's part, making me wonder if anyone actually got their watch ordered and are going to have it shipped 4-24.
Yes, according to MacRumors 101 the best way to sell 1 million of a product is to only make 200,000 of them and let 'crazy demand' make up the shortfall
Scarcity is a great trick to play on the consumers before the pre-order date, but once the curtain rises you're supposed to have some actual product there to sell.
HobeSoundDarryl
macrumors G5
I didn't say scheme. Never said scheme. Didn't say deceptive, tricky, manipulative, incompetent, <any other negative adjective we want to inject to weaken another person's point among Apple fans>, etc either. I wasn't even trying to paint Apple in any negative light at all. Instead, I was offering some constructive views to make them even more successful, mostly on the concept of delighting customers even more.
Go through this very thread. There are people who are posting that as little as 1 minute after the opening bell, the delay for the one they tried to order was already out to 4+ weeks. 1 minute. Fantastic for Apple to have that kind of demand that they could sell out of all they can possibly make by launch date in as little as 1 minute. But those customers not among the lucky few are not delighted by the experience.
Is it devastating to such a customer that they have to wait longer than they expected? No. Is their life ruined? No. <insert any other extreme pain or effect we can conjure to try to mitigate their disappointment>. No.
I just don't buy excuses made for Apple unless those offering such excuses work for Apple. Do you work for Apple? Or are you just speculating, just like I'm just speculating there must be a way for them to do better?
They could wait 1 day longer than earliest possible to make 1 day's more supply to delight that many more customers. They could set the launch date one week later than earliest possible to make 1 week's additional supply to please that many more customers.
I didn't say they should wait months to build up so much supply that could meet every single possible order and delight every single customer who orders... just wanting the great & wonderful Apple to do better, which, if at all possible, would be good for Apple customers AND good for Apple too.
If they simply can't wait a day or a week or a few weeks, how about launch in fewer countries as was the historical norm for Apple? Same net effect of being able to fill more orders on day 1 with the same quantity of production that could be done by a rigid launch date.
Analogy: why don't I post something like, "Apple can't possibly make a better phone than the iPhone 6 because it's as good as they can possibly do"? I'd expect to get skewered because I just implied that Apple cannot do better. Sub in iPad, Mac,
TV, carplay, the iCar concept, <anything>. Skewered. Why? Because "we" can't tolerate any kind of insinuation that Apple could not do better against anything they take on. So, I'll buy your response: "Apple can't possibly do a better job of meeting customer demand on launch day". I just put Apple down. Does anyone- perhaps you- dare refute that?
Last edited:
Space Grey had to be the first to slip. I was a few minutes late and saw 4-6 weeks, so I went with the Silver/Green combo.
It's crazy that the gold ones are in such limited supply. Maybe they gave too many to people like Drake, and Katy Perry
Edit: But we shouldn't get too excited about this, or mock the "haters". We have no idea how many they made. For all we know it could've been a few hundred thousand. Save the victory dance until we get the numbers -- IF we get the numbers!
A few hundred thousand would be sales around $100,000,000 - not bad...
Glitch in the Matrix?
I have all sorts of memories of that sort too. The internet doesn't have a record of everything.
I have all sorts of memories of that sort too. The internet doesn't have a record of everything.
I've come to appreciate that the winners tend to write the history.
Either I'm demented or there are many things I recall about computing for which I can find no clear verification. For instance, when Netscape Navigator took off I also recall Gates distinctly stating publicly that he's devoting no resources to Internet browsing because he didn't think it was going to amount to much.
The official story today is that he was invested in it from the very beginning. I can't find any reference to Gates' initial statement anywhere. Maybe I'm just getting old and crazy.
HobeSoundDarryl
macrumors G5
I didn't say "make everyone wait". Don't put words in my mouth. I said that I think Apple could do better. That doesn't require EVERYONE to wait. Apple picks the launch date; it's not rigidly forced upon them. If the launch date was next friday instead of today, they would have provided 1 more week to make enough extra to delight more customers than could be delighted by launching today. Nobody waits because the expectations of when anyone could order one at the earliest would simply be next Friday instead of today.
And, last I checked, Apple had some money on hand such that they could probably afford to build up enough inventory to be able to fulfill orders on day 1 for longer than a minute or 20 minutes into the launch. I believe they could swing it. They're not 1997 Apple anymore.
Last edited: