No, Apple will want to get the order queue down to "In Stock, within 24h", because that maximises sales, and sales equals money. Shipping times as they are right now are simply not the intention, and are caused by Apple not being able to fill demand - for whatever reason. The rMBPs are drop-shipping from China, not local stockpiles, which is what Apple do when they simply don't have enough to go around.
If you were right, Apple would keep us at 3-4 weeks shipping for all their products...but they don't. Everything else is within 24 hours, because they have stock on hand to sell. Ergo, there's a shortage somewhere in the supply chain (one of which is the 768GB SSDs).
You're right in one respect, it's a released product, in high demand. Back on day one it was basically a queue, and you knew you'd be waiting. I signed up, and was perfectly ready to wait until 13-19th July for my computer, but was happy when it was several weeks early.
$3k on your card is not money in Apple's bank account. It's not money that Apple have taken away from you without giving anything back. The $100 gift card? You can still use it on an iPhone, iPad, another Mac, whatever. They've still given you a product for your money.
You'll notice that those who ordered as soon as possible all have their machines now - shipping is now on the 3-4 weeks or longer wait people. Everybody was told that it could take that long for their computer to ship, it's what you signed up for, so why moan when it is still in that timeframe? If you were so bothered about the wait, why did you even order in the first place?
Apple were up front about the wait times. Whenever I see "Ships in 3-4 weeks" on Apple's site, I know that this means I'll have to wait (or the product is on the way out), and with a new product I also know that it'll be due to high demand/short supply.
Full charge or a hold? Apple usually do a hold for the full amount, to check you have the money, and then refund it later until they finally take the money at shipment.
We don't know the exact reasons for delays, but we can make a damn good guess. The normal MBPs or MBAs aren't suffering this problem, so there isn't an issue with the CPU, GPU, SSDs, logic boards, RAM, ports, boxes etc. In fact, it means the problem must lie with what makes the rMBP different:
1) Screen - LG can't make a brand new screen type fast enough
2) Enclosure - Unlikely
3) 768GB SSDs - 256/512 is fine, but delays on these orders
Everything else about the rMBP can be found in other Macs, shipping in normal times. I'd personally place money on LG not being able to make enough screens to fill demand right now, as they're brand new.
You're totally contradicting yourself there. One minute you say that if somebody has to wait 4 weeks for their precious laptop then they can have a moan, and then you say the moaning is due to a lack of communication? Make your mind up!
Oh, and =/= is perfectly accepted mathematical usage.
