Do you thunk it?
If you think that Apple didn't see this coming, you grossly underestimate the business acumen of Mr. Jobs.
That business man knows exactly how to keep the market as thin as possible so as to keep demand as high as possible.
You know that new hardware has a useful life of 6 months...we are engineered for it through the media, vendor ads, etc.... The consumers create this, not the vendors. I have yet to see a vendor go out and make a person buy their product. You can yell, scream and whine all day and night, but until Mr. Jobs has the police come down to your shack, or wherever you live, handcuff you, take your credit card, go to the Apple store, or your room where you have your computer and buy one of these things, you are the driver of this ship, not Apple.
As soon as hardware comes online to the stores/customers, the clock to the revenue life of that product begins to run out. Apple times releases exactly to when they believe that the next version will bring in more revenue vs. their inventory of old product and seek to run out of product before putting the new one out there. This is economics 101.
While we type and go back and forth nebulously and uselessly, Mr. Jobs is seriously in the back rooms of Apple ensuring that you will buy the next item he creates.
Trust me, as soon as a product hits the shelves, he could care less about it because people would rather have cool over function...that's the New American way and China is all over it.
Delayed gratification and maturity...FORGET THAT S#$%^T!!!!!!!!!!!! says the 10-55 year old today, no matter where in the world you are.
I say MORE POWER TO THE SCALPERS...they are the only one who get it that there is a market within the market within the market for this crap.