I just ordered a couple of iPad Airs (actually 2 shipments, one 32GB and one 64GB) and both were shipped from Shenzen CN. Are they doing refurbs overseas now, or has that always been the case and my previous orders just happened to come from local warehouses?
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All iPads Are refurbs coming from China now?
- Thread starter danny_w
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All my refurb orders have always come from China (starting from iPod 5g Video, latest being iPad 4). It's pretty impressive that I get my order in 2-3 days whereas orders from the east coast can take more than a week.
It all depends on the popularity of the item. I have ordered 3 items in the past from Apple's refurbed site (well, 2, the 3rd was a present). One was a MacBook Pro (13" 2009) and that came from China. The other 2 were iPads, a first gen 16GB and 64GB iPad 2 white, both Wi-Fi. They came from Elk Grove, CA where Apple does the higher end CTOs and some refurbishment IIRC. Both were remanufactured in China, however they were sent to the US for distribution.
This might actually be a blessing in disguise; my iPad 2 had been sitting on Apple's shelf for about a year before being sent to me. It should have come with iOS 5 so I could set it up out of the box, so imagine my surprise when I opened it up and turned it on to a "Connect to iTunes" logo. It had iOS 4 installed. It also had horrible light leakage like the early models as well. Yours shipping straight from China means that they probably just rolled off the refurbishment line, unlike my iPads so it should have no problems.
That iPad was really the only issue I ever had Apple's refurbished products. That MacBook Pro was damaged internally by Apple Service people (won't go into details here) and was later replaced by a 2010 model.
Wow, let's do the time warp again.
I would have loved my replacement iPhone 5 to come with iOS 6, just so I could goof around with it a bit and enjoy a little retro-experience before upgrading it. It came with iOS 7.0 though, so it was a lot newer than my release day iPhone 5.
It makes me wonder if they make subtle improvements to the product during its production run. My new iPhone 5 supports a couple of bands my old one didn't, for example, but that's probably just baseband firmware.
Funny, quite a few of my iPhone 5 replacements after 7 launched came with iOS 6. I played with it a little while then upgraded to 7. I must be one of the few people, but I actually really liked iOS 7's interface from day one at WWDC.
Had I'd known that so many people wanted iOS 6 iPhones, I would have sold it! But it ended up turning into a 5s later on down the road which I am happy with. I do still plan to upgrade later this year when the 6 comes out then give my 5s to a family member who needs an upgrade (they have a 16GB 4s).