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yes the 20th at the earliest, you see like they did with the black 15th preorder 24th release date this is the time frame they need to be able to take orders, know how many they are shipping where and get it organised so if its the 20th, the first day it should ship will be thursday 29th, doubt they will wait till thursday 22nd for pre orders as that would make a release date of saturday 31st, they will want it launched before the weekend to create another buzz and high sales for that weekend

This sounds the most logical to me. Steve said they will be shipping the end of the month.

I dont know if you would consider ordering this Thursday for delivery by the end of July a pre-order, but essentially it is. If the product is to ship by the end of the month then it wouldnt make sense for it to go on sale on Apple.com later than this week. If they put it up for sale at the end of July (lets just say July 27) then there won't be enough time to get them shipped out to customers by the end of July.

Unless Apple will just have availability just for Apple Stores, which I don't think will be the case because if so, then the thousands of people who don't have an Apple store near them would be out of luck. I also don't think Best Buy/Walmart/RS will have a significant amount.

So hopefully what Jobs meant was, shipping out to customers at the end of July. LIke it was for the first launch, it was to ship on June 24, but it really was 'arrive' by the 24th.
 
So if the black was available at 4.00am Eastern Time, that will mean 9.00am in the UK (I think). If the white launch is to follow suit of course.

If I were a betting man I would say this Tuesday we will be able to pre-order it. If not, then Thursday. If not then, then I would say it will be available to order when it will ship at the end of the month.
 
This sounds the most logical to me. Steve said they will be shipping the end of the month.

I dont know if you would consider ordering this Thursday for delivery by the end of July a pre-order, but essentially it is. If the product is to ship by the end of the month then it wouldnt make sense for it to go on sale on Apple.com later than this week. If they put it up for sale at the end of July (lets just say July 27) then there won't be enough time to get them shipped out to customers by the end of July.

Unless Apple will just have availability just for Apple Stores, which I don't think will be the case because if so, then the thousands of people who don't have an Apple store near them would be out of luck. I also don't think Best Buy/Walmart/RS will have a significant amount.

So hopefully what Jobs meant was, shipping out to customers at the end of July. LIke it was for the first launch, it was to ship on June 24, but it really was 'arrive' by the 24th.

This could go both ways.

For people to not be able to go in and return their Black iPhone for the White iPhone, it would have to be available on 7/24 or later. For Apple to keep their word on shipping at/by the end of the month, they would have to ship no later than the 24th for the stores to receive them after the 30 days are up for the earliest Black iPhone customers.

With such a short gap, there would be no way that Apple or ATT could provide pre-orders for the white iPhone, unless they did some sort of checking to see if you are a current iPhone 4 customer. So with that, I could see them meeting that date by just shipping to the stores. Taking his words verbatim, Jobs said they would only be shipping at the end of the month, but didn't say to who or to where.

So I'm going to say that it will be available on Friday at the earliest, but for sure on Monday. I'd even go as far as to say that it will be out on display by Friday.

BL.
 
With such a short gap, there would be no way that Apple or ATT could provide pre-orders for the white iPhone, unless they did some sort of checking to see if you are a current iPhone 4 customer.
BL.

They can and did. When you buy a phone off Apple.com they check your eligibility. They did it for the black pre order as well.

A pre order would be the best way to prevent people from swapping.
 
They can and did. When you buy a phone off Apple.com they check your eligibility. They did it for the black pre order as well.

A pre order would be the best way to prevent people from swapping.

I agree.

I know this sounds like Im requesting it... but Apple must allow pre-orders. It just doesnt make sense for them not to. So many people have been waiting for this white iPhone and all other iPhones, that their website would be the best way for them to satisfy those who have waited for the white and for those who have been craving an iPhone 4 since launch.

ps: Im just really hating my iPhone 3G, so I'm needing a white iP4.
 
Engadget has a good article with some possible information on why the white was delayed in the first place.

http://www.engadget.com/2010/07/18/white-iphone-4-delay-the-challenges-faced-by-apples-glass-supp/

This almost goes without saying, but it's truly been a wild ride for the iPhone 4 over the last three weeks. While most of us will just happily open our hands to Stevie J's freebies, there's one question that's still bugging us: what's actually holding back the white iPhone 4? Sure, Apple's now promised us an "end of July" delivery for its latest iTemptation, but it has yet to specify what the manufacturing difficulty is. According to Chinese newspaper 21st Century Business Herald, the problem stems from a little-known Chinese factory by the name of Lens Technology, which is apparently responsible for transforming fine raw glass into the majority of iPhone glass panels out there (and contrary to previous reports, Corning doesn't seem to play a part here). Read on to find out what's causing our invisible hero to stall.


Lens Technology -- a rather bland name for a touchscreen glass manufacturer -- isn't exactly a household name to the average gadget consumer, but its list of clients tells a different story: Huawei, Lenovo, Motorola, Nokia, Samsung and more. Since its launch in July 1993, the company's set up several plants, including its latest site (circa December 2006) in Liuyang, Hunan that currently houses about 14,000 workers, which looks about right in the drawing above. While this is merely a fraction of Foxconn's 400,000 employees in Shenzhen, Lens' recent intake of some 7,000 "post-90's" (a Chinese saying for those born after 1990) workers still led to many disciplinary issues. But this wasn't the reason for the white iPhone 4 delay.


According to a project feasibility report published by Lens in 2006, its glass manufacturing process involves the following steps: developing the tooling, cutting the raw material (mainly sourced from Germany, Switzerland and Japan), fine-milling using CNC (computed numerically controlled) machines, sanding the edges, polishing, strengthening, cleaning, coating, screen printing, baking, anti-shatter treatment, assembling, and packaging. Yeah, pretty tedious. Now, a worker from Lens' quality control department has allegedly admitted that the company's screen-printing workshop may currently be dealing with some issues with the white iPhone 4 covers. Specifically, the factory's still working out the perfect combination of paint thickness and opacity -- the former to ensure the next sub-contractor has enough clearance for the digitizer overlay, and the latter for the absolute whiteness that Jony Ive and co. strive for. As we pointed out before, the prototype white covers we acquired appeared a touch darker than the iPhone 4 dock, so here's hoping that we'll see a better result when the official white phone comes out later this month.


Even if Apple does deliver the new batch of phones on the promised date, what about meeting the potential huge demand? According to industry sources, Lens' current production capacity only meets half of Apple's demand, thus becoming a major bottleneck for the entire iPhone 4 production pipeline. Of course, this could just be smack talk from envious competitors, and there's a small chance that other components might be affected, but the truth is the handset's currently in short supply -- after 3 million units since launch, Apple's online store was listing a 3-week shipping date for both colors at the time of writing this. Considering each CNC machine could apparently only cut out three iPhone 4 glass covers every hour, Lens will need to get its act together on the paint job and use all the machines it can get -- along with their skilled operators -- to keep Cupertino and its followers happy.
 
Is it possible that the rare whitey will end up outselling the blacky? Therefore I won't be a trendsetter anymore? :( ;)
 
I know i don't really post up here much BUT
my gf and i recently traveled from JFK to LAX to HNL for our vacation, when we had our layover in LAX there was a guy with a white iphone with green bumper.

I wanted to approach him (thinking he worked for apple) since we were in cali :) but didn't
when we got to hono, we went to the ala moana mall apple store and the waikiki one only to find the same black iphone 4 i had & the black bumpers :(

Just wanted to let people know that "some do exist" and I haven't read anyone that did that "iphone black to white" swap yet other than a few blogs
:D
 
I gave in. After waiting and waiting, I ordered a black 32gb today. I thought about what white might look like with a white case or white bumper, and thought it actually might look much worse. Then someone posted those pics of the white with bumpers, and well it wasnt really my thing.

I still want to see white in person though. But dont feel like waiting until who knows when, then fighting with the rest of the world for the 'limited' quantity.
 
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