Yet again putting words in my mouth.
I'm not saying they aren't great. I too own a pair and swear by them already. On their own but especially compared to that clunky adapter situation.
BUT that's beside the point: They aren't available for people to buy largely.
I give up on explaining simple non nuanced statements.
Good, because I think we explained to you why AirPods are not available in large quantities, nor were iPhones 7 or for that matter even the 2016 MBP, but you don't WANT to understand.
I work in manufacturing and have been in sales forecasting, production planning , product development etc. for over 50 years (Yes, I am old)
Apple for sure forecasted some quantity. (In this case easy to do as there were no color options, memory configuration, just one version)
Say they placed orders for 1 million pieces (incl. components from sub-suppliers) and the assembly plant estimated that on a 24/7 basis they can make 50,000 a day, that's already 20 days. (Put in whatever numbers you like)
And, it assumes all sub-components are perfect to use and arrive on time pre-certified.
During assembly start up (or since release testing of samples), it turns out that ONE (all it takes) component is not in spec, needs to be tested, sorted or worse case scenario replaced.
There go your 50,000 a day, plus every day you don't produce you are behind another 50,000, so by the time the missing components finally arrive you are well behind and still can only make 50,000 a day.
Now it still takes the 20 days from that time and no capacity left for additional orders. Everything (shipping) gets pushed out accordingly.
In the meantime sales has additional pre-order numbers or maybe they even had immediate numbers telling the factory we have to get to producing 100,000 a day.
You think the manufacturers of all components now can just open their desk drawers and have those additional components handy?
There is also a fine line of forecasting and figuring out when orders return to normal volumes. Why would a factory set up for a spike of say 5 million, then the orders go to a normal of 2 million and the workers go twiddling their thumbs or they have to let go of people or reassign them.
If you are really interested, this is only a quick glance of what is going on in production and it is way more complex than that.
Apple has been making millions of pieces of products for many years , so to insinuate that they don't know what they are doing because a new item isn't shipped in quantity immediately after release ignores any production realities.
Why would anyone even assume Apple wouldn't want to ship trillions of anything if that was possible?
So, as another poster already mentioned, they solved their production problems , made and shipped what they could yield at the time and are/will be catching up until production and sales go to normal conditions.
