iPhone 4S Pre-Orders Sell Out

Perhaps to no one's surprise, the just-announced iPhone 4S has been been leaping off the shelves ... in advance of it ever hitting shelves at all. In fact, as reported by numerous sources (here's the WSJ's version), the company's pre-launch inventory has all been sold — and they only started taking the orders on Friday.

Comments

Perhaps to one's surprise?

[asto21]

WTF are you even talking about? iProducts have been selling out for a while now. How is this news?

Re:Perhaps to one's surprise?

[gl4ss]

well, it is a surprise of sorts that they still haven't figured out how to make enough of them for the launch - being that the launch day is just a day they chose on a calendar at their leisure.

but how much was the pre launch inventory? like, in actual units. I'm sure there's plenty of places taking pre-orders still. and the stack at at&t's product database is maybe different than the one at apple stores..

Re:Perhaps to one's surprise?

[JustOK]

well, it is a surprise of sorts that they still haven't figured out how to make enough of them for the launch - being that the launch day is just a day they chose on a calendar at their leisure.

uh, marketing...if they fulfilled everyone's desire at first, there would be no one left. Leaving some wanting will also tend to increase the number of people wanting it, up to a point

Re:Perhaps to one's surprise?

[Macrat]

It's a surprise to all those people who wrote articles saying that few people would by the silly "upgraded" iPhone 4S and would wait for the "revolutionary" iPhone 5.

Re:Perhaps to one's surprise?

[Pieroxy]

These people are stupid, and everyone knows it, maybe except themselves. The iPhone is a good platform and people having one generally like sticking with it. There is such a thing as being "good enough".

My iPhone 3GS is showing signs of fatigue and I'm getting a 4S whenever I'll be able to get my hands on one. Because I like it. Because I like to tinker with stuff and my phone is not one of this stuff - mostly because of a lack of free time.

So I tinker with my desktop, my servers in my 45U bay in my garage. And I have an iPhone. And I like it. Enough to buy a new one.

Re:Perhaps to one's surprise?

[teg]

well, it is a surprise of sorts that they still haven't figured out how to make enough of them for the launch - being that the launch day is just a day they chose on a calendar at their leisure.

Why is that a surprise? Waiting half a year while building an inventory you may sell (or not, if you release a lemon) makes much less sense than selling them as soon as you make them. Your cashflow is better and your risk smaller. Also, production is likely less optimal now than it will be in 9 months... both for the phone, and its parts.

Re:Perhaps to one's surprise?

[klui]

My, what short memories people have. I admit it is too early to tell whether the 4S will be a success but many of the coverage I've heard or read expressed what a let down the introduction was.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/10/05/us-apple-asia-idUSTRE7940JQ20111005

Rival smartphone makers could exploit a rare letdown by Apple in the launch of its new iPhone 4S model, which failed to wow fans, and grab a bigger share of the most lucrative part of the phone market.

http://finance.yahoo.com/blogs/breakout/apple-iphone-4s-opens-door-competitors-analyst-210516885.html

"It's certainly a disappointment given the fact that people were looking for a new iteration to be number 5 in this case," says David Garrity, principal at GVA Research.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204524604576610991978907616.html

"Underwhelming is the word that hit me," said Endpoint Technologies Associates analyst Roger Kay.

The letdown was echoed in the early performance of Apple's shares, which fell as much as 5% Tuesday and finished down 0.6% at $372.50 at 4 p.m. trading even as the broader market rose.

Re:Perhaps to one's surprise?

[amiga3D]

This isn't the first time that industry "analysts" talked down an apple product that promptly flew off the shelves. It's pretty obvious that these guys' articles are not consulted by the customers that want these products. I still remember the dozens of articles I read about how the iPad would never sell. The dozens of articles about how zune would crush the iPod, etc., etc., etc. I read industry pundits' articles because I'm curious and like to hear peoples' opinions but I take them all with a full shaker of salt. Most of them don't really have a clue.

Re:Perhaps to one's surprise?

[SteveAyre]

Possibly. It has 2 antennas and switches between whichever has the best signal... that might be enough so that if the death grip is blocking signal to one, the other will still be working fine.

Of course they've not advertised it as such a fix, because they've never admitted there's been that problem (at least no more so than any other phone). Just said that it "improves signal strength".

Re:Perhaps to one's surprise?

[SteveAyre]

To be honest, the spec is a large jump in CPU, memory and graphics power. The camera's much better, it's double the download/upload speed and Siri is quite a significant new feature.

The only problem is it's labelled as 4S not 5, when everyone was expecting it to be a 5. That makes them feel its an updated phone when actually it is a significant update. If they'd just launched it as the iPhone5 no-one would have been describing it as a let-down. Well, except anyone complaining that it still looked the same.

Re:Perhaps to one's surprise?

[Midnight Thunder]

Given the length of phone contracts is usually two years, I think it makes sense to do a major release every two and a functional release in between.

The iPhone 4S has a good feature set and anyone with a 3G or 3GS is probably a prime market for the upgrade.

Steve jobs did believe the future 'revolution' would come from software, so we should be watching the software as much as the hardware for signs of improvement.

Re:Perhaps to one's surprise?

[Pieroxy]

I actually plan on buying the 4S unlocked from Apple. It's less expensive over the course of two years ;-)

Re:Perhaps to one's surprise?

[Antisyzygy]

This is probably due to the fact that most journalists are good with words but poor with quantitative and qualitative analysis.

Re:Perhaps to one's surprise?

[magamiako1]

You must not follow phone hardware all that often, but for those of us that remember and built through the desktop improvements of the early late 90s and early 2000s, the new thing right now is the "phone" and "tablet" market.

So yes, every 1.5 years is justified for the most part, particularly as applications come out to take control of features specific to the latest device that they couldn't realize before.

Dual cores in an iPhone? This is one of the greatest evolutions in iPhone history and will make a whole new class of applications that are must-haves (for the phone) yet won't work or work nearly as well on the older devices.

Re:Perhaps to one's surprise?

[Cinder6]

What about all the people with the 3G and the 3GS? For them, it is a huge upgrade. A friend of mine is still on an old 3G, and the thing is nearly unusable with iOS 4. He had to disable a bunch of stuff, like location services, to make it tolerable. For him, the 4S is a perfect, and logical upgrade. For me with my 4, it doesn't make sense, and so I won't get it unless I can get one at a full discount.

That said, iPhone 4s (plural, not 4S) start at $230 used on eBay, with the next auction at the time of this writing ending at $350. If you can get a full discount, just unlock and sell your old one and make some money, and still get the new one.

Re:Perhaps to one's surprise?

[SteeldrivingJon]

*Lots* of people, like me, have an iPhone 3GS, and the 4S is an ample upgrade from that.

I bought it a few months before the iPhone 4 came out, so I wasn't eligible to upgrade to the 4. But I'm eligible now, so I'm getting a new phone. Not sure what I'll do with the GS. Maybe I'll get the battery replaced and keep it as a spare. Or as an old-hardware test platform for apps. Maybe I'll recycle it. Or give it away.

Re:Perhaps to one's surprise?

[Antisyzygy]

Yes, I am on a old Droid phone from 2.2 years ago and the new iPhone is on my upgrade list. I simply think its not as big of a deal as people think it is. You know that most people buying one already had the iPhone 4. Why the hell should it sell out if people are actually reasonable consumers?

Re:Perhaps to one's surprise?

[SteeldrivingJon]

The iPhone 4S has all the internal updates that were expected of the supposed 'iPhone 5', so they are no reason to be disappointed.

All that's missing is some kind of change in the shape of the phone. But, as a practical matter, that would just mean that there would be a shortage of accessories compatible with the new shape. Which is annoying. Instead, the iPhone 4S buyer can use any of the accessories and cases and docks made for the iPhone 4.

Re:Perhaps to one's surprise?

[Antisyzygy]

Then why do you care what I think? You know that most people buying the new iPhone are early adopters right? This means they already had the iPhone 4. What is boils down to, is that most people are morons, and specific to this topic they muddle up our news sources with things that don't matter, and prohibit us from buying something for reasonable prices because of their sheep mentality.

Re:Perhaps to one's surprise?

[aiken_d]

Isn't it incredibly irritating to see that not everyone makes purchasing decisions based on your opinions and suspicisons? Seriously, WTF is wrong with everyone else?

Re:Perhaps to one's surprise?

[phpsocialclub]

My wife's 2g just got wet and died this month. She took my old 3g that had dead pixels. Now she will get a 4gs.
It is not that hard to understand how someone would want to upgrade,

Haters got to hate, that is all.

Re:Perhaps to one's surprise?

[RoverDaddy]

As others have pointed out, it's a great upgrade from the 3G or 3GS. My 3G is 3+ years old now, and it's showing its age (literally, it's beaten up to heck). Why assume that everyone ordering the 4S is dumping a one year old 4?

Re:Perhaps to one's surprise?

[Vecanti]

For me the problem is the screen. 3.5"? I know there are bunch 1280x720 3D phones headed our way like the Aquas, but even Sony and HTC have 4.7" phones coming. Still what's a standard smart phone size these days 4.3"?

Re:Perhaps to one's surprise?

[mug funky]

Apple software is ripe for improvement...
they've spent a good whack of time making their good software shit and buying up alternatives and sinking them.

maybe they'll turn a new leaf when they get tired of dealing with hardware?

or not.

they're a hardware company.

Re:Perhaps to one's surprise?

[CheerfulMacFanboy]

For me the problem is the screen. 3.5"? I know there are bunch 1280x720 3D phones headed our way like the Aquas, but even Sony and HTC have 4.7" phones coming. Still what's a standard smart phone size these days 4.3"?

Hey, why not go straight to 5.25"? How about 8"? http://daringfireball.net/2011/10/thoughts_and_observations_iphone_4s

Re:Perhaps to one's surprise?

[mug funky]

any reason your friend can't just roll back to the older OS?

oh yeah, it's hardware and software in conflict. good thing they're made by the same company, huh?

Re:Perhaps to one's surprise?

[mug funky]

there's no such thing as "too soon" :)

Re:Perhaps to one's surprise?

[gordo3000]

are you stuck thinking everyone with an iphone is on an iphone 4? my wife have an iphone 3g (no "s") and it lags so severely on iOS 4 she couldn't upgrade. This means an entire class of apps are out of reach adn the usability of the product is impaired (even if she upgrades to iOS 4, it's bad from a speed perspective). Just like computers, new apps and hardware make a new phone worthwhile. your windows 95 box can still surf the web, check email, etc. why not stick with it?

Re:Perhaps to one's surprise?

[Luckyo]

Question: since most of the major apps for android are essentially same things as major apps for ios, usually being done by same company, having exactly the same feature set, etc, how can only android ones suck?

I'm genuinely interested in how isheeple doublethink justifies this point of view.

Re:Perhaps to one's surprise?

[jandrese]

Ditto. I'm considering upgrading my iPhone to the 4GS, but it is an original 2G model. One of the bigger drivers of this upgrade has been the increasing number of apps in the app store that are compiled against iOS 4, which my phone doesn't support. I guess it's about time to finally do the upgrade.

Re:Perhaps to one's surprise?

[Vecanti]

For me the problem is the screen. 3.5"? I know there are bunch 1280x720 3D phones headed our way like the Aquas, but even Sony and HTC have 4.7" phones coming. Still what's a standard smart phone size these days 4.3"?

Hey, why not go straight to 5.25"? How about 8"? http://daringfireball.net/2011/10/thoughts_and_observations_iphone_4s

Sure there is a point where you can't go to big, but that article only talks possibly that Apple kept 3.5" because of it's usefulness?

One of the great things about 4" or bigger screen is that it's more useful because it's easier to type on. That article doesn't even bother to cover that.

Of course, the other other obvious benefits are browsing and watching videos on a larger screen. Really I don't think the size would even have to change much to get a 4" screen anyway as there is wasted space with plastic on the front of the iPhone.

Still think it is a major flaw to put a dual core CPU into something with a 3" screen. WTF?

Re:Perhaps to one's surprise?

[mrxak]

Tim Cook believes that inventory is evil, and for good reason. You have to pay money to keep those warehouses going, and meanwhile the stuff inside is losing value anyway. Ever since he started managing Apple's supply chains, and no doubt this will continue through his tenure as CEO, Apple runs a lean ship. Still, I think when the numbers come out, it'll be clear Apple sold a lot of phones, above and beyond any other phone's rollout stockpile, and this was not just some marketing gimmick of reduced supplies to hype the demand. Apple did stockpile more phones than the last time around, yet they still sold out like crazy. I'm sure if there was any possible way for Apple to make more of them faster, they would be doing just that.

Re:Perhaps to one's surprise?

[mrxak]

Apple's #1 in customer satisfaction, so I guess they're all just buying it to be cool, right? Couldn't have anything to do with people actually liking the things.

Re:Perhaps to one's surprise?

[LumiLara]

I hate using screens larger than the iPhone's and they are much harder to use for me. Yes, I am a girl, and like many girls have smaller hands. 4.3" phones are much more strenuous to use over time, and it really seems that all these companies putting in larger screens don't test them thoroughly with women or care about the results. At least Apple seems to care about how everyone might use them.

Re:Perhaps to one's surprise?

[Pieroxy]

Except there is no iPhone 4GS ;-)

Funny how I find many people doing this mistake....

Re:Perhaps to one's surprise?

[Pieroxy]

Ok, you're right. I should have said "The iPhone is a good platform from people wanting a phone as opposed to people wanting a computing platform".

That would have been much longer though and most people got what I said. Not mentioning I explained it later on.

And here I am feeding the trolls again.

Re:Perhaps to one's surprise?

[Viol8]

"My 3G is 3+ years old now, and it's showing its age (literally, it's beaten up to heck)."

How tragic. Are you not an adult capable of looking after stuff for a few years or are you some teenage boy who chucks stuff around his room every night? My (non iSheep) phone is 5 years old and apart from a few scuffs looks as good as new.

Re:Perhaps to one's surprise?

[Slashcrunch]

You can roll back to an earlier version without too much trouble. OK, harder than it should be, but it wasn't what I would call hard.

I didn't run into any "conflicts".

I wrote about it here http://scottbarr.blogspot.com/2010/07/rolling-back-iphone-ios4-to-iphone-ios3.html

Re:Perhaps to one's surprise?

[AmiMoJo]

Total cost of ownership is the problem. If you don't have an iPhone you are not locked in to Apple's revenue stream. If you don't have an iPhone your peripherals and cables will still work when you upgrade.

A friend spend hundreds of pounds on an iPod speaker system and a load of charging cables, only to find that when he got an iPhone none of them worked, despite physically fitting and similar products being available for said phone. His iPod was dead (HDD failure, too expensive to fix) so he had to spend more money on new speakers. Those kinds of antics from Apple are the best reason not to buy an iDevice. If you don't have an iPhone you don't get screwed.

Re:Perhaps to one's surprise?

[Pieroxy]

Do you have anything other than one stupid example of some stupid dude buying some stupid speakers and getting screwed? There is more to iOS than a set of crappy speakers you know. And as far as accessories are concerned, this is an area where iOS devices are superior to other devices, so I am a little surprised to see you go down that route.

Re:Perhaps to one's surprise?

[tibit]

I think your friend has massively overpaid on a set of amplified speakers. You can get a Bose set on eBay for under $200 BIN, or about $100 if you're willing to wait a few weeks and snipe your stuff. Even with shipping to Europe it shouldn't be more than USD 250.

He might have (even unwittingly) bought a device that wasn't authorized by Apple. I have yet to see an amplified dock that's licensed by Apple and wouldn't work across their product line -- as long as the connector fits. Perhaps an older dock was only providing 12V charging voltage -- this is an oversight of the designers, then, Apple has nothing to do with it.

Re:Perhaps to one's surprise?

[lsatenstein]

Dont you think you are going to overpay for your toy? I use a cell phone and a netbook. My cell phone stays at my desk during the day, and in my pocket when I travel. No cell phone use in the washroom.

And my google or yahoo apps work just fine for me. I spent $40. for the cellphone. I receive and send calls. Isn't it what it is supposed to do? Do I need a live agenda, a game boy and realtime web and email? So with all this functionality when in the day do you read a book, or talk to your wife and kids. I guess it is not during the day.

Re:Perhaps to one's surprise?

[tehcyder]

Given the length of phone contracts is usually two years, I think it makes sense to do a major release every two and a functional release in between.

The iPhone 4S has a good feature set and anyone with a 3G or 3GS is probably a prime market for the upgrade.

Steve jobs did believe the future 'revolution' would come from software, so we should be watching the software as much as the hardware for signs of improvement.

I read in the paper at the weekend that Apple fans seem to think the new voice command system is the first step towards Artificial Intelligence,or something,because it can recognise both "create a text" and "create a message" as meaning "please open up the SMS application and wait for me to dictate a short misspelled note"

Re:Perhaps to one's surprise?

[tehcyder]

It's official!. A girl says that smaller is better. A thousand slashdotters cry out in relief.

Re:Perhaps to one's surprise?

[Ibiwan]

Incidentally, you have the salt thing backwards. The meatier the opinion, the more salt it takes to season or preserve it. Which is, of course, kind of the whole point of taking something with "a grain" of salt -- "sure, I'll take your opinion, but it isn't even worth wasting a dash on". So taking the pundits' articles with a full shaker of salt implies you're planning on living off their opinions for a good while to come!

Re:Perhaps to one's surprise?

[Pieroxy]

Since you don't need a smartphone, nobody does? Is that your claim right here?

I can't even believe what I'm reading. How closed can a mind be. Open up for god's sake! Other people want something else than you, it makes them stupid, dumb or what?

Re:Perhaps to one's surprise?

[lsatenstein]

No, It is more than that, It is a balance of functionality versus lifestyle . Do your kids each need one too?

What happen is the "Got to have one because the Jones have one" syndrome.

I like a smart fone with calculator, message, and some agenda alam capability. But then it also became the home entertainment system. And is it worth the price. Costs of toys separates the men from the boys,

Re:Perhaps to one's surprise?

[Pieroxy]

Because there's no hype towards Android smartphones? What does this have to do with Apple, really?

Re:Perhaps to one's surprise?

[DinDaddy]

Of course, the other other obvious benefits are browsing and watching videos on a larger screen. Really I don't think the size would even have to change much to get a 4" screen anyway as there is wasted space with plastic on the front of the iPhone.

Apple is not going to increase the size until they can up the resolution to keep physical pixel density within what they have defined as a "retina" display. And that probably IS when you will see the iphone get a bigger screen, when they can get a higher res 4" panel and keep the phone the same size and not decrease battery life. They weren't there yet this time.

Re:Perhaps to one's surprise?

[lsatenstein]

I just feel that we are driven by hype. The 46 inch TV is not good enough, have to get the 56 inch one. The cell phone is not good enough, it has to have music and games, and downloadable apps. And common, guy, my friend John has one, and I want one too. Each of my older grandkids have their IPODs, and guess what, after 2 weeks, they lie in drawers. While they were exploring their use, homework suffered.
So, if the Smart Phone has too many smarts, could we say that priority is given to it, instead of family or job, or homework?

Two ipods collecting dust in my daughter home. But my daughter and her husband are happy with the $20/mo cellphone service, as am I.

  I guess people have obsessive compulsive desires.

Re:Perhaps to one's surprise?

[CheerfulMacFanboy]

Wow, that's sad. You cradle your 5 year old phone like its your baby, and you even talk to strangers how special it is, and how they are bad people for not focusing their lives on their phones like you do.

Re:Perhaps to one's surprise?

[mug funky]

k, swap iphone 4s for ipad 2. there's been reports of scuffles in queues at apple stores. google it.

doesn't affect the rest of what i said. like it or not, your life is empty. i pity you and your kind (and i laugh at your downmods). when the economy finally kicks it's last and dies in a heap, you wont know what the fuck happened, and i'll continue to live a full and happy life.

Re:Perhaps to one's surprise?

[Viol8]

Yeah , nice try fanboy loser, but I think you were looking in the mirror when you wrote that. Some of us know how to keep stuff in good condition because ultimately it saves money. Others , like you I guess and the OP , are still in mental adolescence and don't have a clue.

Re:Perhaps to one's surprise?

[tlhIngan]

Tim Cook believes that inventory is evil, and for good reason. You have to pay money to keep those warehouses going, and meanwhile the stuff inside is losing value anyway. Ever since he started managing Apple's supply chains, and no doubt this will continue through his tenure as CEO, Apple runs a lean ship. Still, I think when the numbers come out, it'll be clear Apple sold a lot of phones, above and beyond any other phone's rollout stockpile, and this was not just some marketing gimmick of reduced supplies to hype the demand. Apple did stockpile more phones than the last time around, yet they still sold out like crazy. I'm sure if there was any possible way for Apple to make more of them faster, they would be doing just that.

Apple's numbers are absolutely enormous compared to most other products out there. Most phones will be lucky to hit the 100,000 units sold mark, and fewer hit marks of 250,000 and a handful at 500,000. And the iPhone can hit over 1M units on opening weekend. (Note that this would be individual models - considering how fast phones turn over...).

And that 1M preorders was the first 24 hours. It probably sold 2+M by the time Apple quit taking preorders. And Apple's probably got another 1M+ lined up for retail sales.

You'd think when you build 2-4M of the things a month, there'd be some channel stuffing going on, but it seems the sell through rate is fairly high.

And the numbers are even bigger when you look at production costs. If we say Apple put up 3M units for sales (2M preorders and 1M retail), and say it costs $200 to build, that's $600M just to build the thing - over half a billion dollars.

And Apple's loathe to use the "it's sold out" moniker - they probably stopped taking preorders when order delivery dates start extending into 3 weeks. They don't want to every sell out - if you wanted to buy a iPhone, they want to have one waiting for you. They don't want people profiting off eBay.

Re:Perhaps to one's surprise?

[CheerfulMacFanboy]

Yeah , nice try fanboy loser, but I think you were looking in the mirror when you wrote that.

Interesting theory - but I don't have a phone. So it's obvious who the fanboy loser is. At least to the rest of us.

Re:Perhaps to one's surprise?

[Viol8]

"but I don't have a phone"

Mummy and daddy not allowed you to have one yet? Understandable.

Re:Perhaps to one's surprise?

[CheerfulMacFanboy]

Ooh, witty reparte. I bet you picked that one up during the Great Depression. Now go back to your misunderstanding of the meaning of "phone sex".

Re:Not possible

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm waiting for the limited ed. steve jobs memorial ones.

Who is "one one"?

[afabbro]

Perhaps to one one's surprise

Slashdot, please get rid of rubbish like 'timothy' and hire editors.

Re:Who is "one one"?

[drmitch]

"has been been"

Re:Who is "one one"?

[Anonymous Coward]

I wonder if you're that big of an ass when not hiding behind the anonymity of the Internet.

Re:Who is "one one"?

[St.Creed]

Bonus points for ironic use of anonymous cowards anonimity to post this.

Re:Who is "one one"?

[antdude]

For free? :P

Re:Have mobile providers have faked a sell out ?

[somersault]

Wow.. dozens of people..? Crazy! I agree, there can't be enough other people left in the world to buy a small set of new iPhones..

Maybe on purpose?

[LynnwoodRooster]

Has anyone thought that maybe Apple purposefully restricts inventory at release, thereby driving demand faster to "get in first", and also to build hype about how it sells out? Knowing what is coming, and that you'll sell millions per month after initial release, it shouldn't be such a big logistical issue to make 10 million for initial release, versus 7 million. But then, you lose the power of the marketing line "we've sold out already!" to continue driving demand...

Re:Maybe on purpose?

[ColdWetDog]

Or maybe is a complicated dance between getting the manufacturer to make x million in a certain time without any significant leakage of the product's specks or design. While Apple kept the idea of a modestly improved iPhone 4 pretty close to the chest (everybody was yapping about the magical iPhone 5 and a 'cheap' iPhone), they can't do it forever. They had to package and ship everything somewhere. They had to organize the event. Maybe they would have liked x + y million but just settled on what they could get.

Don't forget, these are complex little devices and not all that easy to manufacture in quantity.

Really no need to get all wrapped up in your tin foil - it works better without all the creases anyway.

Re:Maybe on purpose?

[Anonymous Coward]

And why not? Better to sell out than to make so many that you end up dumping off excess inventory in a landfill.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atari_video_game_burial

Re:Maybe on purpose?

[Xugumad]

I certainly would, given how often anything that doesn't sell out at pre-order is apparently a failure :(

Re:Maybe on purpose?

[thetoadwarrior]

They certainly wouldn't be the first or last company to that. But until they give all the numbers it will be hard to say. They've only sid AT&T has sold 200,000 in the first 12 hours which isn't too bad especially considering that if you listened to the internet as it made it out the 4S was the worst thing ever and was the end of the iphone.

Re:Maybe on purpose?

[Anonymous Coward]

Gosh. At each and every Apple product release that same baseless nonsense bullshit is repeated over and over again.
Don't forget your tin-foil hat.

Just accept the more logical explanation that Apple stuff just sells well. That's all.
Occam's razor. Ever heard of it?

Re:Maybe on purpose?

[Mashiki]

Nah. The fastest way to create artificial demand is to restrict the supply in your initial production run. In turn you're creating an artificial demand, and causing people to think that it's a very desirable product. This is marketing and economics 101 stuff.

Re:Maybe on purpose?

[mrbrown1602]

Or you could manufacture hundreds of thousands, or perhaps even millions of them, ship them to stores, and not sell more than a few hundred or thousand (Samsung? HP?).

Re:Maybe on purpose?

[Macrat]

And why not? Better to sell out than to make so many that you end up dumping off excess inventory in a landfill.

Somewhere there is a new island made of Microsoft Kin and Zune.

Re:Maybe on purpose?

[peted56]

Hard to manufacture???? Factories churn them out by the million, not so hard if you have a factory me thinks.

Re:Maybe on purpose?

[aiken_d]

Ah, the old "scarcity conspiracy" theory. It wouldn't be Slashdot without it. It's like the flat-earth version of marketing.

Apple may know that they are going to sell out, but I guarantee you there is no way in hell that they are better off selling fewer phones than they would be selling more. Maybe someone, somewhere who wouldn't have otherwise bought an iPhone in January will now do so after remembering a shortage and thinking that signals a superior product. But thousands of times more people (which is to say, thousands of people) will go to a store with the intent of buying an iPhone and end up buying something else when their first choice isn't available. And those are customers Apple will lose for at least a year.

Apple would rather satisfy every drop of demand at launch. Because they've decided to launch knowing they can't doesn't mean they want shortages, it just means they're better off launching today with shortages than in November (or December) with enough stock.

Re:Maybe on purpose?

[spire3661]

It equates to SOME lost sales, but also generates buzz. Its not zero-sum.

Re:Maybe on purpose?

[Moridineas]

While Apple kept the idea of a modestly improved iPhone 4 pretty close to the chest (everybody was yapping about the magical iPhone 5 and a 'cheap' iPhone), they can't do it forever.

That's actually not true in the slightest. The rumor sites had universally nixed the idea of an iPhone5 by the time of the announcements (or at least said, it's possible that there will be an iPhone5, but we have absolutely no evidence for it at all). The 'cheap' iPhone is the 8gb iphone4 (and the 'free' 3gs). Siri/personal assistant feature had been leaked. Upgraded camera had been leaked. I don't think there was a single unanticipated thing in the announcement beyond the odd "mail a postcard" feature and the existence of a "Where are my Friends?" app.

Re:Maybe on purpose?

[LucidBeast]

Why wouldn't they do that if they can?

Re:Maybe on purpose?

[ColdWetDog]

The rumor sites had universally nixed the idea of an iPhone5 by the time of the announcements (or at least said, it's possible that there will be an iPhone5, but we have absolutely no evidence for it at all).

Yep, in the last several weeks of the year long run up to the launch. Before that rumors about the magical iPhone 5 were rampant.

Of course, the whole idea about people getting so wound up about the launch of another cell phone that they would complain about it for an entire year is pretty weird, but that's what happened.

Re:Maybe on purpose?

[houghi]

Or maybe it isn't OR/OR but they do both at the same time.

Re:Maybe on purpose?

[gnasher719]

Has anyone thought that maybe Apple purposefully restricts inventory at release, thereby driving demand faster to "get in first", and also to build hype about how it sells out?

Yes, there is always a whole bunch of people with conspiracy theories. You sell more buy selling stuff than by not selling stuff.

Re:Maybe on purpose?

[Alomex]

Apple was heavily rumored to have hired people to stand in line during the first releases of the iPhone to increase the hype.

The Beatles and other rock bands have admitted to paying some of the more hysterical screaming fans often shown on TV.

Re:Maybe on purpose?

[iamhassi]

Nah. The fastest way to create artificial demand is to restrict the supply in your initial production run. In turn you're creating an artificial demand, and causing people to think that it's a very desirable product. This is marketing and economics 101 stuff.

that would be true if a new iPhone didn't come out every year, so some people will hear "OH it sold out? Ok, I'll just wait a few months until the next iPhone"

iPhones usually come out in July, so we're only 9 months away from the iPhone 5.

Re:Maybe on purpose?

[iamhassi]

I don't think there was a single unanticipated thing in the announcement beyond the odd "mail a postcard" feature and the existence of a "Where are my Friends?" app.

I love how you say "leaked" as if they knew. Many "leaked" larger screens and 4G and that didn't happen. Many said "no home button" and no 64gb since everything is "in the cloud" but we still have the home button and a 64gb model. (more no 64gb rumors)

Rumors are just that, rumors. Nothing was "leaked", reporters just threw cards up in the air and predicted some would land face up... and they were right!

Re:Maybe on purpose?

[Moridineas]

You're reading the wrong sites :-P

The venerable and largely reliable site is macrumors.com. 9to5mac is newer but has a good record as well. They almost always cover the same things.

Reading the reliable sites, just about everything -- including the name 4s! -- was indeed leaked correctly. The only information about the 5 came from 3rd parties--case designers. Information about the 4s allegedy came from closer sources. This includes photographs of chips, ports, wiring, etc. False rumors are what people make up that aren't reliable. Leaks are based on actual information that isn't made up. Is everything that was predicted -- even on macrumors -- correct? Of course not! They would be the first to say that. The point is, there were actual leaks, as opposed to just rampant speculation. Apple did not control any information about the iphone 4s.

Read the macrumors roundup to see what I mean http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=1238595

Re:Maybe on purpose?

[Moridineas]

Yeah sure, people can make up rumors all the time. Making up rumors is not the same as leaking or receiving leaked information. I could predict a followup to the Samsung Galaxy SIII and eventually I'll probably be right! Even a broken clock--that old thing.

The point is, Apple did not successfully control leaks of information regarding the phone and software that was actually announced.

Re:Maybe on purpose?

[Charliemopps]

It sold out in 3 days. They're either idiots, or they did it for a headline.

Re:Maybe on purpose?

[Mashiki]

I don't even own a cell phone, so I realize this is kinda moot. But both Samsung and HP had terrible marketing campaigns where they were already trying to launch a new product into an overly saturated market. This hurts even more in a downturn economy, where people aren't generally buying *OOOH SHINY* rather they're in the paycheque to paycheque.

Re:Maybe on purpose?

[gnasher719]

Apple was heavily rumored to have hired people to stand in line during the first releases of the iPhone to increase the hype.

If that had happened, some of the hired people would have talked, and this thing would have _so_ backfired. Of course you can feel free to believe that Apple would employ dishonest PR tricks, but this would be both dishonest and stupid, and Apple doesn't do "stupid".

Re:Maybe on purpose?

[shmlco]

"This hurts even more in a downturn economy, where people aren't generally buying *OOOH SHINY* rather they're in the paycheque to paycheque."

That explains the iPad.

Wait.

Re:Maybe on purpose?

[shmlco]

As stated above, AT&T announced that they sold 200,000 in the first 12 hours... all by themselves.

Read that again. AT&T, alone, without Apple stores, Apple Online, Verizon, Sprint, Best Buy, or Radio Shack sold more iPhone 4Ss in 12 hours than most phones sell in their first week.

Some restrictions...

Re:Maybe on purpose?

[shmlco]

The TV will still show that. This way they still get the lines AND manage not to piss off millions of people at the same time.

Not to mention the small part about not everyone living next to an Apple store.

Re:Maybe on purpose?

[Midnight Thunder]

The iPad had adjusted people's expectations about feature set, quality and design. Apple also created something that even novice users could use or felt was targeted at them. The HP and Samsung felt like enterprise was their focus and not consumers (at least that is what it seemed to me). Apple focused on the consumer market and made something people might want to use.

Design is an important part of the whole experience and not an after thought.

Re:Maybe on purpose?

[DusterBar]

Exactly, only more so - a missed opportunity for a sale in the cell phone market is a major loss - not just for the 1 (or more likely 2) year contract period, but also for the mind-share that is then built by the user. Apps that are purchased are extra barriers to moving to another platform after the contract period. Habits that are built using the product that they got vs the one that they did not.

The scarcity marketing ploy would only be useful if there was no significant opportunity to select a competing replacement. (Even if one would ever think of using such a ploy)

No, there are logistical limitations to producing such products in large scale for bulk sales. There can only be so much flow rate and if demand is too high, some may not be satisfied at initial launch.

Re:Maybe on purpose?

[PopeRatzo]

Just accept the more logical explanation that Apple stuff just sells well. That's all.
Occam's razor. Ever heard of it?

If it "just sold well" Apple would not spend over $60 million dollars on marketing.

Advertising. Ever heard of it?

Re:Maybe on purpose?

[Mashiki]

It explains it just fine. I don't actually know anyone that uses one, not even in my line of work. And the people I work with, make in the 80k-150k range, putting them in the 'upper-middleclass' here in Canada.

Re:Maybe on purpose?

[symbolic]

>> I don't even own a cell phone

Neither do I, and every time I hear about a new release of this phone or that phone, and how it requires this contract or that contract at the stated price, I smile and remind myself how much money I've saved.

Re:Maybe on purpose?

[CheerfulMacFanboy]

While Apple kept the idea of a modestly improved iPhone 4 pretty close to the chest (everybody was yapping about the magical iPhone 5 and a 'cheap' iPhone), they can't do it forever.

That's actually not true in the slightest.

Update: 10/04 19:04 GMT by U L :Unexpectedly, Apple did not announce an iPhone 5, but rather an incremental update.

Re:Maybe on purpose?

[SteeldrivingJon]

"Apple was heavily rumored to have hired people to stand in line during the first releases of the iPhone to increase the hype."

If I recall correctly, the iPhone release day had lots of Apple stores doing a big to-do, with clapping Apple Store employees out front and everything. (Being vaguely cult-like, frankly, and I'm about as dedicated a Mac/iOS user as you'll find.)

I suspect the nugget of truth in this rumor is based on a misunderstanding of those store employees, by someone who thought they were buyers in line.

Re:Maybe on purpose?

[Moridineas]

Though slashdot's many Apple articles might aggravate android haters, slashdot does not qualify as an apple rumor site. "Some" people were yapping about an iphone5, but none of the rumor sites were (other than to say it wasn't beyond the realm of possibility)

Re:Maybe on purpose?

[indiechild]

If you want to see artificially restricted production runs, just look at most of Apple's competitors. Do you see it working for them? There's your answer.

Apple doesn't need to restrict its production runs. Its products fly off the shelves as quickly as they can stock them.

Re:Maybe on purpose?

[CheerfulMacFanboy]

Ahh, so the true Scotsmen, errm "apple rumor sites" were those that didn't predict a iPhone 5, all others were just imitators. Thanks for clearing that up.

Re:Maybe on purpose?

[CheerfulMacFanboy]

Just accept the more logical explanation that Apple stuff just sells well. That's all. Occam's razor. Ever heard of it?

If it "just sold well" Apple would not spend over $60 million dollars on marketing.

Advertising. Ever heard of it?

So Apple is the only mobile manufacturer who advertises? Or what's their excuse that their phones don't sell well? And don't give me some crap about Android - I was asking about phones.

BTW, where did you get that "$60 million dollars" (sic) number? Did you actually confuse the iAd revenues for Apple's advertising budget?

Re:Maybe on purpose?

[jcr]

Apple was heavily rumored to have hired people to stand in line during the first releases of the iPhone to increase the hype.

Nope, but there have been cases of people selling off their place in line., or hiring people to keep their place.

-jcr

Re:Maybe on purpose?

[PopeRatzo]

So Apple is the only mobile manufacturer who advertises? Or what's their excuse that their phones don't sell well? And don't give me some crap about Android - I was asking about phones.

BTW, where did you get that "$60 million dollars" (sic) number? Did you actually confuse the iAd revenues for Apple's advertising budget?

No no no. I'm not saying nobody else advertises, I'm just saying that Apple phones wouldn't "just sell well" without the advertising. I'm not saying it's not a good product, just that the heavy advertising is worth the cost.

The $60 million figure comes from $78 million, which is Apple's total marketing budget. I figure at least 60 out of the 78 had to go toward the iProducts.

Re:Maybe on purpose?

[Alomex]

There are smart ways of achieving the same effect:

Orange pays actors to sand in line for the iPhone:

http://channel9.msdn.com/Forums/Coffeehouse/423221-Orange-Pays-Actors-To-Stand-In-Line-For-The-iPhone

Re:Maybe on purpose?

[Alomex]

Frank Sinatra pioneered the move.

"Then George Evans made his move. He arranged for fans, young women, who were paid $10 a pop, to attend and make as much of a scene as possible. They didnâ(TM)t disappoint."

http://socialmediatrader.com/why-frank-sinatra-would-fake-his-feed-numbers/

I think many bands have used it since.

Re:Maybe on purpose?

[MachineShedFred]

Or, if your product doesn't wow the public like you think it will, and you've made 10 million of them, now you're the guy who has 10 million phones that nobody wants.

Regardless, there's no evidence to correlate with Apple purposefully reducing availability specifically for marketing purposes - every single launch of an iPhone or iPad has sold out of initial inventory, and had months of backorder after the launch. What would be the purpose of continuing to have a starved channel months after the launch has happened?

I think they are producing at capacity, and continue to produce at capacity until the next model is ready to be tooled. In order to increase capacity, they would need to increase manufacturing partners, which would exponentially increase the probability of a pre-launch leak.

Re:Maybe on purpose?

[bryan1945]

Oh, Canada. That's because you have the iMoosePad.

Re:Maybe on purpose?

[Moridineas]

No, I think you misunderstand the fallacy here. The problem is that the original post to which I replied said exactly: "everybody was yapping about the magical iPhone 5."

In reality, that is not true at all (this is now the 3rd time I've explained this). The major mac rumors site--and even if you want to avoid my classification of them as more reliable (which they are!), then by measure of traffic the far and away most read mac sites (check the numbers if you don't believe me)--show that no, most people were not talking about a magical iPhone 5. MOST people were talking about a cheap iPhone 4 and an incrementally upgraded iPhone 4s. Absolutely some random poorly trafficked sites threw up random guesses about an iPhone 5, but how is that relevant to what "everybody" was yapping about?

I'm shocked that this seems so hard for some people to understand?

Re:Maybe on purpose?

[DinDaddy]

Upsides to doing the release as they did:

Manufacturing capacity is tooled up to support normal sales volume, not huge surge of pent up demand on rollout day;
Good PR of device's popularity being underscored by sellout;
No inventorying of stock which retailers can't handle all at once;
Extra heavy initial shipment logistics reduced;
Uncertainty reduced;
Unfilled pre-orders smooth out post rollout demand dip.

The downside is the slightly less eager customers have to wait a week for a product they will buy anyway.

Or do you really think Apple knows, down to the 5 or 10% accuracy you suppose to implement a plot of calculatedly producing 30% fewer to force a shortage, exactly how many of a new product they will sell?

The reports are 1 million ordered in the first 24 hours. 166% of the iPhone 4 rollout. Any chance that might have caught them off guard?

Re:Maybe on purpose?

[DinDaddy]

They don't work with snow gloves on.

But seriously, your rebuttal to the ipad selling well in a down economy in contrast to the Samsung and HP products is "no they aren't, because I don't know anyone who bought one"? So the sales figures are lies then?

Re:Maybe on purpose?

[DinDaddy]

will go to a store with the intent of buying an iPhone and end up buying something else when their first choice isn't available. And those are customers Apple will lose for at least a year.

I agree the shortage is not "planned", but can't imagine what you say here is true. I think the number of people who go to a store intending to buy an iphone during the launch period, and find it out of stock and buy a competitor is probably pretty small. Most will just wait the week or two.

Re:Maybe on purpose?

[tgibbs]

Yes, we inevitably see these evidence-free claims of intentional shortages, but it almost never makes economic sense for the manufacturer. The release date is likely to be a balance between producing enough product to meet your most optimistic projections, and getting the product onto the market in a timely manner. Internet pre-sales are not even a particularly good way to build buzz. In fact, there were news reports last time around along the lines of "iPhone 4 released to short lines" because most of the sales were pre-orders, giving customers no reason to join long lines out of concern that stocks would run out. If Apple really wanted to generate buzz, they wouldn't have had pre-orders at all, but made everyone line up on release day where the world could see them. Apple did this with the iPad2, but the iPhone is an established market. Apple doubtless had a good idea that there was enough pent-up demand to sell as many units as they'd managed to build (even if the pundits hadn't managed to figure it out).

Re:Maybe on purpose?

[dohcvtec]

If you want to see artificially restricted production runs, just look at most of Apple's competitors. Do you see it working for them? There's your answer.

Apple doesn't need to restrict its production runs. Its products fly off the shelves as quickly as they can stock them.

Exactly. I believe Apple will have fortified its inventory as much as possible to withstand the pre-order and general availability rushes, but how much stock to people really expect to them to horde? It sounds like they had at least 1 million units for pre-order, and probably that much ready for in-store sales as well. That's at least 2 million units, and I don't care who you are, that's a lot of inventory.

Re:Maybe on purpose?

[rbcowboz]

Reactance is a well-exploited marketing instrument. Of course, all you have to do is to _announce_ scarcity. Just one of the tools that Apple uses among others: social visibility, lock-in, planned obsolesence, etc... On the other hand, they might just be overwhelmed because of Jobs' death just before the release. Hmm. Conspiracy anyone?

Re:Maybe on purpose?

[afabbro]

>> I don't even own a cell phone

Neither do I, and every time I hear about a new release of this phone or that phone, and how it requires this contract or that contract at the stated price, I smile and remind myself how much money I've saved.

Hmmm, doesn't own a cell phone, Slashdot username is 'symbolic' (LISP machine maker)...rms, is that you!?

Re:Maybe on purpose?

[CheerfulMacFanboy]

Reactance is a well-exploited marketing instrument. Of course, all you have to do is to _announce_ scarcity.

You obviously didn't understand what's written in the article you linked to. Instead of saying "you can't have it today, come back in two weeks" for Reactance to work Apple would have to say "you can have it today, but not in two weeks". Actually, Apple may experience what the article calls the "Sour Grapes effect":

The "sour grapes effect (Clee and Wicklund, 1980; Hammock and Brehm, 1966) provides an explanation of this outcome by maintaining that objects which become unobtainable will be derogated by individuals. The sour grapes effect and the reactance effect are therefore countervailing forces. Lessne and Notarantonio's (1988) findings indicate that the sour grapes effect can be operational even if the object is not entirely unobtainable.

So much for that conspiracy theory.

Re:Maybe on purpose?

[rbcowboz]

The _general idea_ is that scarcity creates value: "The consumer whose decision alternative is blocked (partially or wholly) by a barrier should become increasingly motivated to obtain that alternative". How it is implemented is an entirely different thing. Apple enthusiasts used to camp in front of stores just to get a telephone. Presumably they would also eat mouldy grapes.

Re:Maybe on purpose?

[CheerfulMacFanboy]

The general idea is that you have no clue. Thanks for playing, you never had a chance.

Re:Maybe on purpose?

[shmlco]

40 million iPads sold. In a "down" economy.

Shortage vs. Price

[Ichijo]

If they had sold them on eBay, they wouldn't have run out.

Fuck!

[Anonymous Coward]

GOD DAMN I HATE HATERBOYS USING ALL CAPS-LOCK!

Obvious troll is obvious.
Go, kill yourself and never come back.

Sense of entitlement

[Anonymous Coward]

GOD DAMN I HATE APPLE!

Boo Hoo! Sob. I hate Apple too and I have a HUGE sense of entitlement! I am ENTITLED not to ever see any news about Apple and to have everyone else agree with me! Everyone who disagrees is a (*sob* *sob*) fanboi!

Not Surprised

[Pirow]

I currently work in a call centre for a mobile operator that has around 45% of the UKs iPhone customers (should be easy enough to work out who!), I've been speaking to people on a daily basis for months who have enquired about pre-ordering whatever the next iPhone turned out to be. The stats are a big anti-climax, but since the announcement I've been speaking to plenty of people who are upset that we're not taking pre-orders and are threatening to go to the competition.

Sure the majority of tech savvy people are disappointed with the 4S announcement and were expecting something more, but the majority of iPhone users I've spoken to about it (taking at least 30 calls a day) want one and are returning orders or putting off upgrading in the hopes of getting one, my colleagues have been experiencing the same.

The average slashdot user wont see what the big deal about the 4S is, most of our friends and colleagues wont either, but your average consumer who's been waiting for the latest iGadget is still going to lap it up, it's new, it's shiny, it's expensive and it's Apple so it MUST be the best!

Re:Not Surprised

[jimicus]

I understand O2 stores are officially offering the iPhone "for existing customers" on 14 October. Does this mean new customers will be turned away in store? Or have you guys not been told?

Re:Not Surprised

[Pirow]

Yeah, pretty much although it wont be hard to get around (just find somebody with an unregistered PAYG SIM that's been used at least a month ago). Until stock settles down it'll be for existing customers only, existing customers are called as anybody who has had an O2 phone, dongle or home broadband for at least month before the 4th of October.

Re:Not Surprised

[jimicus]

Heh, I've been a customer for years but I'm really unhappy with my current phone. Assuming the stock's there (does anyone at O2 even have the remotest idea how long stock is likely to last in their average store?), I assume I'll be ok to march in and say "Hi. I'm still on contract and I want to buy that contract out here and now and buy an iPhone 4S"?

Re:Not Surprised

[Pirow]

No clue what the stock will be like to be honest, I'm just glad that I'm mainly in a 2nd line role as I'll be working on Friday which wont be much fun! Assuming there's stock they'll have no issue buying your contract out, taking out a new contract, buying one outright or going for a fast track upgrade (if you're tariff's over £40 you can buy out what's left minus the 20% and minus VAT, if not you can change your tariff and have it come into effect next day if it'll work out cheaper that way).
Unless you already have an iPhone or have a lot of purchases on iTunes I'd save some money and go for the Samsung Galaxy SII which is pretty similar spec.

Re:Have mobile providers have faked a sell out ?

[Lunix Nutcase]

I've spoken to dozens of people in my office and they all say they haven't placed a pre-order and are not interested in the 4S at all.

Wow...that's like....EVERYONE!

Re:Nice to have a market that will buy anything

[vlm]

If Steve Jobs was selling his used toilet paper, Apple fans would have been buying it.

You may have missed the news, but he's dead now.

His death was the first thing I thought of, that there's gonna be a 4S-2 released momentarily with one of his inspirational quotes or maybe a silhouette laseretched into the back of the phone. Or a pic of SJ as the default background or whatever.

I suspect SJ memorial goods (engraved iphone cases, etc) will flood DX and ebay real soon now...

Re:Nice to have a market that will buy anything

[Duradin]

Same for RMS and what falls out of his beard with the hater crowd.

Re:RIP Steve Jobs

[RocketRabbit]

Steve Jobs was buried with the first nickel he ever made.

Re:Steve Jobs - Marketing Genius

[Macrat]

Release iPhone 4S... die the next day

Well, someone had to fall on their sword for not having the redesigned iPhone 5 with LTE support ready for this year.

I call BS

[shoehornjob]

This is such a slashvertisment. I'd expect this kind of thing from Google news but we should be better than this.

Re:I call BS

[bryan1945]

Yep, you're new here.

Re:I call BS

[Sabathius]

You must be new here?

Don't understand the iPhone 4S negativity

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm a pleased Nexus S owner myself, but I don't understand all the negativity directed toward the iPhone 4S. It has the same simplicity and UI that people seem to love, along with nifty new software like Siri. People have rarely bought iPhone for its gaudy specs anyway, but even if they did, Apple gave it a good state-of-the-art dual-core processor, good GPU, and 1GB of RAM. Sounds very solid and competitive to me - what's bad about that? They didn't change the exterior or the name? So what?

The only glaringly obvious omission seems to be sticking with 3G instead of adding LTE or HSPA+ support. But, that's not really unexpected, given Apple's history of waiting for greater adoption of 3G before making the 3G iPhone, and tendency to favor battery life with their engineering decisions.

So, why so negative? It just sounds like some of the same old "No wireless. Less space than a nomad. Lame." cynicism. It's a good product. It is not a surprise at all that people like it!

Re:Don't understand the iPhone 4S negativity

[TheGreek]

The only glaringly obvious omission seems to be sticking with 3G instead of adding LTE or HSPA+ support.

Current LTE chipsets are too bulky and use too much power. It also has HSPA+.

Re:Don't understand the iPhone 4S negativity

[swb]

I guess I'm missing what great features it was supposed to have that it didn't end up with.

More screen real estate would have been nice, but really isn't a make-or-break feature. The CPU and RAM upgrades are great, and the iOS overhauls and additions sound very feature-packed.

I have a 4 (that my wife will inherit) and I pre-ordered a 4S.

Re:Don't understand the iPhone 4S negativity

[SteeldrivingJon]

I ordered a 4S to replace my 3GS. That's a worthy upgrade.

About the only thing that would make me bitter, if an iPhone 5 were released in the next six months, would be if it was essentially equivalent to a drone from Iain Bainks' Culture novels: flying around, genius intelligence, 'effector fields' to manipulate objects in the environment, oh, and knife missiles.

Yeah, if I missed a shot to have my own Skaffen-Amtiskaw, I'd be pissed. But that's not going to happen.

Re:Don't understand the iPhone 4S negativity

[SteeldrivingJon]

"If you had justed fscking looked at LINUX then (A.) We would have this tech ages ago and (B.) you would realised that this 'Steve Invention' was already under your nose, moron!*."

Yeah, right.

Re:Don't understand the iPhone 4S negativity

[shutdown -p now]

The fact that people are so stupid and then _DARE_ to praise their bullshit in my face just makes me want to smash their teeth in

I see you're doing your part in spreading around the Linux love...

Re:Don't understand the iPhone 4S negativity

[V!NCENT]

I stopped giving a shit about advocasy a long time ago, because people never value what's better; people value emotion. It goes like this:

John Dickweed is standing in front of some USB data sticks. Someone tells him that the 64GB model is much faster and has way more storage than the USB stick of John. John's old USB stick is alway full, because all his stuff is on a 256MB data stick and John curses at it, because it never writes his stuff without errors (crappy datarate, corrupted due to age and mostly full)

John doesn't give a shit about 64GB, because he already has a storage device that still somewhat works and the 64GB stick costs money, he doesn't like to spend.

Then some clever guy (for example Steve Jobs), tells him that this 32GB stick can carry enough music to listen to while flying to the moon and back, and he still wouldn't have listened to all the songs on the stick. WOW! Now John wants that shit (emotion) and buys it.

That 32GB stick is Apple, that 64GB stick is Linux and his old 256MB stick is Windows XP.

Re:Don't understand the iPhone 4S negativity

[gstrickler]

As a GUI: KDE Windows UI ~= Mac UI
Certainly there are number of people will debate the order of the last two, but very few will claim that KDE is comparable to either Mac OS X or Windows UI. KDE has come a long way, but it is not up to the level of the commercial GUIs.

When Linux has a real new user friendly distro and UI, and when installing software and maintaining it is as effortless as Windows and Mac OS then it will start to gain some ground. Android is evidence of that. The phones that have added a good UI are selling well, other Android phones aren't doing nearly as well. Installing software on Android is relatively simple, but upgrading the OS hasn't been as simple or effortless, and that's been one of the huge complaints about Android phones.

Here's the real reason Apple's iOS devices sell, they put the user experience first. Not the programmer or tech user, but your average, everyday user who has no particular interest is learning about computers, they just want a device that works and is simple to use and maintain. Until programmers and tech users understand that, all your favorite tech products will lag behind in sales because they don't address what 90% of the market wants; devices that do what the user bought them to do with a minimum of effort and/or technical knowledge required to use and maintain them.

Re:Don't understand the iPhone 4S negativity

[gstrickler]

That should be KDE is inferior to Windows UI or Mac OS X UI.

Re:Don't understand the iPhone 4S negativity

[V!NCENT]

very few will claim that KDE is comparable to either Mac OS X or Windows UI. KDE has come a long way, but it is not up to the level of the commercial GUIs.

KDE, in my opinion, is light years ahead of Windows and Mac OS. It's just too much to explain, but here are the big points:
-Technologicaly most advance advanced, fully resolution independant OpenGL and SVG, scriptable canvas (KDE Plasma);
-Has all the features of both Windows and Mac and many more;
-Most comprehensive window management of any window manager on any OS;
-Fully consistant UI;
-Powered by the best toolkit on the planet (Qt);
-Very minimalistic design without sacrificing features;
-All icons are non-distractive (Windows and Mac OS have way too much gimmick distractions, especialy Mac OS icons that look like Disneyland);
-Most advance framework of any desktip environment.

When Linux has a real new user friendly distro and UI, and when installing software and maintaining it is as effortless as Windows and Mac OS then it will start to gain some ground. Android is evidence of that. The phones that have added a good UI are selling well, other Android phones aren't doing nearly as well. Installing software on Android is relatively simple, but upgrading the OS hasn't been as simple or effortless, and that's been one of the huge complaints about Android phones.

If this was true, then we'd all be running BeOS by now. It's not what you think it is. It is marketing. It is marketing and enless marketing and then some more marketing... Android wasn't getting any attention before Google bought it and guess why? Because it didn't have a Google stamp on it.

People all over the world, even the most horrible techno noobies knew where every feature of their phone was. Apple hasn't changed anything in that regard, even if you think it does.

Here's the real reason Apple's iOS devices sell, they put the user experience first. Not the programmer or tech user, but your average, everyday user who has no particular interest is learning about computers, they just want a device that works and is simple to use and maintain. Until programmers and tech users understand that, all your favorite tech products will lag behind in sales because they don't address what 90% of the market wants; devices that do what the user bought them to do with a minimum of effort and/or technical knowledge required to use and maintain them.

Giving credit where it's due, I can't deny that Apple made some realy slick phone. But then I have to turn around and observe the thousands of screaming "iiiTTTTTUUUUUNNNNEEEESSSS!!!!!! ANSWEEEERR MEEEEE!!!!!!!!" voices in the background. I realy have to disagree and say that the iPhone largely became so popular due to it's iPodness. Thinking about the iPod, I realy have to conclude it's the marketing and the sheep that bought it because everybody else bought it because WWDC.

Re:Don't understand the iPhone 4S negativity

[toruonu]

I used to use Linux for ages ever since RedHat linux 3.0.3 (so eons ago). Then around Fedora Core 1/2 timeframe I got my first iBook just to try out what the fuzz was about Macs and the stuff. I was quite tech savy, had my own Linux suspend tools (swsusp was just recently added to development kernels that I of course ran), tools to automatically find which WiFi's were available and connect etc etc. I had really spent weeks in finetuning and tweaking the laptop I had before. Then I opened the iBook and it worked. Just out of the box it worked and did everything I could possibly wish. It actually took me three days to get past the yearning to tweak things until I understood that I didn't really need to tinker with anything, but could spend the whole day doing what I actually wanted to do: physics.

So now, ca 8 years later I've got a MacBook Pro, an iPad 2 and an iPhone 4 and because my day work is working at CERN I'm forced to use Linux daily, maintain a datacenter and because my wife works in my office on a Linux I'm also helping her out with it. Just recently it was running SuSe 11.2 and now is running the latest ubuntu. The reason I had to upgrade it to ubuntu was that it was impossible to upgrade some random package that she needed (can't remember right now, but was quite common) and while debugging for it I found the usual cornerstone of all Linux problems. Library version mismatch. So to get the newer version of the package (no upgraded version in standard repo) I'd need to swap out two other packages. To do that I'd need in turn to swap out five others and so the domino wall continues to collapse until it's just easier to reinstall a pure fresh linux because you don't really want to fuck around with libc versions etc.

So I'm sorry, but Linux isn't a real alternative. I'm using it daily for HPC computing because our software is developed for it and is heavily regulated at the experiment and CERN level and because CERN takes care of the whole pain of library versions for me (custom repositories for the software that we use). Actually the way it's done is that the experiments keep a seeded RPM copy repository under a different path and fully manage the packages and ALL dependencies there to make sure that software that was used to take data in 2008 can still be used in 2011. Had we just stuck to trusting RedHat or what not for it we'd have been screwed over many times.

So Linux is nice and dandy if you install the latest version and you NEVER venture outside the default repository base. Forget about getting a third party app that you may want because there's a high probability that within a certain not-so-long timeframe you end up with a system that cannot be touched because it just breaks down. So your very weird comments about turning to Linux when Vista came along to solve the tech shortcomings really is just your ass talking. For an average person (the kind that makes up 99% of computer usage and of which 1% know the internals) linux is not an alternative no matter how much you advocate it (I used to about 10 years ago, but gave up once I had experienced a number of other OS's enough to understand how bad Linux really is).

The real reason people buy iProducts is because they work. The battery lasts ages in real life scenarios, not just clinical tests to get the spec sheet out, the OS is easy and comfortable to use without losing on the desktop side any benefits (it's a full blown UNIX so I've got a lot of the experiment software easily ported to it and most of the final analysis I run on my laptop developing the analysis code in Xcode and tinkering the stuff in shell). And on my phone or tablet the last thing I want to do is tinker with it. It's supposed to just work and provide the comfortable environment to consume media and content. I will not comment much on Android here because I haven't used Android based devices for prolonged time, but from what I've understood from others, it's based on Linux with the relevant shortcomings as it's not fully tuned and done for mobile devices (main

Re:Don't understand the iPhone 4S negativity

[gstrickler]

When Linux has a real new user friendly distro and UI, and when installing software and maintaining it is as effortless as Windows and Mac OS then it will start to gain some ground. Android is evidence of that. The phones that have added a good UI are selling well, other Android phones aren't doing nearly as well. Installing software on Android is relatively simple, but upgrading the OS hasn't been as simple or effortless, and that's been one of the huge complaints about Android phones.

If this was true, then we'd all be running BeOS by now. It's not what you think it is. It is marketing. It is marketing and enless marketing and then some more marketing... Android wasn't getting any attention before Google bought it and guess why? Because it didn't have a Google stamp on it.

People all over the world, even the most horrible techno noobies knew where every feature of their phone was. Apple hasn't changed anything in that regard, even if you think it does.

And that doesn't address what I said at all. Re-read and respond to the actual points I made, because clearly Android has received plenty of marketing now and that still doesn't explain why some Android phones sell while others don't. The UI and how simple the phone vendor made it to use Android does explain it.
Or continue living in denial, it makes no difference to me.

Giving credit where it's due, I can't deny that Apple made some realy slick phone. But then I have to turn around and observe the thousands of screaming "iiiTTTTTUUUUUNNNNEEEESSSS!!!!!! ANSWEEEERR MEEEEE!!!!!!!!" voices in the background. I realy have to disagree and say that the iPhone largely became so popular due to it's iPodness. Thinking about the iPod, I realy have to conclude it's the marketing and the sheep that bought it because everybody else bought it because WWDC.

Calling non-technical users "sheep" won't help you win anyone over to Linux or KDE.

Re:Don't understand the iPhone 4S negativity

[V!NCENT]

You said that user friendlyness will gain Linux ground. Well... User friendlyness has never resulted in anything. Example is BeOS.

Android doesn't prove anything, because its adoption started because Google bought it. That's all there is about it.

And that doesn't address what I said at all.

I'm sorry for not getting what you meant; I still don't.

clearly Android has received plenty of marketing now and that still doesn't explain why some Android phones sell while others don't. The UI and how simple the phone vendor made it to use Android does explain it.

Specs, reviews, price and brand asociation don't?

The UI and how simple the phone vendor made it to use Android does explain it.

I still don't get it. If usability is such a big thing, then why did people use Windows for years? I think it's marketing.

Or continue living in denial, it makes no difference to me.

I'm the kind of guy that really has a strong formed opinion, but that doesn't mean that you can't convince me. Try harder.

Calling non-technical users "sheep" won't help you win anyone over to Linux or KDE.

I'm not here to 'win anyone over'. I'm just hating what I hate and loving what I love. This is /. and I'm here to throw my daily buildup nerdiness, so I don't have to engage in it in RL. I call 99% of all iPod owners sheep because everyone I talked to needed to come up with a reason before they could answer. That means that they have put zero efford into thinking why the hell they bought it in the first place. You typical iPod owner isn't just a sheep because he bought one, but bought one because he/she is a sheep. That doesn't limit itself to electronics; it's clothes, opinions, character style, etc.

Re:Don't understand the iPhone 4S negativity

[gstrickler]

You said that user friendlyness will gain Linux ground. Well... User friendlyness has never resulted in anything. Example is BeOS.

Android doesn't prove anything, because its adoption started because Google bought it. That's all there is about it.

Android has been on the market for a couple years since Google bought it and it's been heavily marketed. Yet the phones that have been successful are the ones where the phone manufacturer has added a simple UI (since Android has had no standard UI for most of it's life). That the Android phones with a decent UI are selling very well demonstrates my point quite clearly. Linux on the desktop has a slightly tougher road because it doesn't run all Windows software, so the applications users are most familiar with and/or need to use either won't run, or maybe they'll run under WINE with a few glitches. Android has the advantage that a phone is a completely separate platform and the 2-3 items of data people are concerned with preserving when changing phones are their contacts, music, and photos. Since most of the phone apps are cheap, that's not a major investment they care about preserving.

I'm sorry for not getting what you meant; I still don't.

My point exactly. You have no idea what users want, or what drives the market. Users don't care about specs, they care about ease of use, price, looks, and whether it does what they want it to do. Marketing is part of letting users know your product is available, but users don't care about marketing either.

Specs, reviews, price and brand asociation don't?

Most users don't read reviews and don't care about specs, especially on a phone. They've been trained to "care about specs" on computers, but they use those only because they don't have any other method of judging a computer. People don't want to learn about computers, any more than they want to learn about cars. They want devices that do what they need, at a price they can afford, and that they don't have to take classes to learn how to operate. Brand image is part of the appeal, as it is in cars, clothes, jewelry, but it's not the only factor, nor the largest factor.

I still don't get it. If usability is such a big thing, then why did people use Windows for years? I think it's marketing.

As I said, marketing is one part of it. People used Windows because that's what they were exposed to at work/school, because that's what their tech friends said to get, and because it was usable (even though it was/is clumsy, insecure, and unstable at times). Linux wasn't usable by a casual user, installation was completely out of the question, and it had far less software available. And "everybody knew" Apple was going out of business. So much for what "the experts and pundits" had to say. Windows by default. When you don't know, your follow others advice.

Re:Consumer Tools

[shoehornjob]

I think you mean Consumer Trolls.

I love America

[xstonedogx]

You're very clever, young man, very clever. But it's conspiracies all the way down!

pundits

[feldsteins]

Many tech pundits should be surprised. They were so busy writing about what a disappointment iPhone 4S was that they neglected to notice the fact that preorders sold out in one day.

Re:pundits

[Pollardito]

To be fair they wrote their reviews before Steve Jobs died and stirred up a mass hysteria over all things Apple, and definitely before preorders opened. Or are you telling me that you don't think that 10,000 articles about Apple nostalgia wouldn't drive up sales?

Re:pundits

[fermion]

I think many analysts missed one key statement at the introduction of the 4S: that Apple believes the feature phone market is gone and everyone is going to want a smart phone. Apple is going to work very hard to meet the needs of the feature phone switchers. The 4S was not designed to upgrade from the 4

Look at what is in the phone. An upgraded camera that will appeal to every parent when combined with the iCloud service. An antennae that solves a well publicized issue. Not things current iPhone owners desperately want, but something that could be the difference between a feature phone owner buying a Android of Apple phone. The other thing are older iPhones for nothing. Clearly Apple is aggressively positioning phones for the mass market.

Re:pundits

[CheerfulMacFanboy]

To be fair they wrote their reviews before Steve Jobs died and stirred up a mass hysteria over all things Apple, and definitely before preorders opened. Or are you telling me that you don't think that 10,000 articles about Apple nostalgia wouldn't drive up sales?

No, but I fully expected that people like you would find some lame excuse when the iPhone 4s would sell well.

Re:pundits

[gstrickler]

They also missed something key about the cell phone market (in the US anyway). You don't need a major upgrade every year because most of last year's buyers are in the middle of a 2 year contract. The majority of buyers for this year's model are people with a 2+ year old model (Apple's or a competitor's). The 4S doesn't have to be a big upgrade over the 4 because iPhone 4 buyers aren't the big market for the 4S, it's iPhone 2/3G/3GS and owners of non-Apple phones that will buy most of the 4S phones.

Still, the 4S is a big upgrade over the 4. Single core A4 to dual core A5, double the RAM, faster GPU, better battery life, faster HSPA+ upload/download speeds, CDMA + GSM worldwide compatibility, and an improved camera (both sensor and optics). Not exactly a minor upgrade, despite what the pundits and critics claim.

Re:pundits

[Pollardito]

To be fair they wrote their reviews before Steve Jobs died and stirred up a mass hysteria over all things Apple, and definitely before preorders opened. Or are you telling me that you don't think that 10,000 articles about Apple nostalgia wouldn't drive up sales?

No, but I fully expected that people like you would find some lame excuse when the iPhone 4s would sell well.

"people like me" meaning anyone that disagrees?

Re:pundits

[CheerfulMacFanboy]

To be fair they wrote their reviews before Steve Jobs died and stirred up a mass hysteria over all things Apple, and definitely before preorders opened. Or are you telling me that you don't think that 10,000 articles about Apple nostalgia wouldn't drive up sales?

No, but I fully expected that people like you would find some lame excuse when the iPhone 4s would sell well.

"people like me" meaning anyone that disagrees?

Yeah, anyone disagreeing with facts, logic and sanity.

Re:RIP Steve Jobs

[peted56]

Yes this does make me somewhat sad.

News feed

[93 Escort Wagon]

(AP) - Latest iteration of popular phone series sells out! Mythical Slashdot user "one one" expresses shock and surprise!

Update 3:10 EDT (AP) - Former Weezer bassist Mikey Welsh has died. In a prepared statement, the coroners office of Burlington, Vermont stated: "At the present time, there appears to be no causal link with the unavailability of the iPhone 4S - however these results are preliminary."

Re:RIP Steve Jobs

[LucidBeast]

The iPhone 4S will remain a tribute to Steve Jobs and the lasting impact he has left on the tech community.

Lasting impact in tech world? Do we count it in weeks or months?

Re:RIP Steve Jobs

[xstonedogx]

As if there weren't enough reasons to not watch G4 they added a black band with "SJ" over their logo.

I'm tired of the pretense. He was a man. He had admirable qualities. He had some not so admirable qualities. He's dead now. You didn't know him. You probably never even met him. He's been dead for days. The time for you to use his death to make yourself look good to others is over. (This is not directed at the parent - I mean the general 'you'.)

Let him rest. Let his family mourn in peace.

Re:Have mobile providers have faked a sell out ?

[Quiet_Desperation]

I have spoken to dozens of people...

Translation: "I talked to my buddies XxxGamerDoodxxX and StarCraftStud22389, and we unanimous in our worldly judgement."

Headlines if they did NOT sell out:

[Sebastopol]

"Consumers sour on Apple: Unsuccessful launch leads to glut of 4S supply"

"Apple i4S a flop"

"Apple at the end of its line? i4s overstock causes book to bill ratios to drop in Q1'12"

"Apple has lost its spark: failure to sell out like other products proves i4s is a failure: stock down 20% on concerns of apple's future"

And so on...

its a lose lose.

Interesting

[Daetrin]

So Google and Samsung decided they ought to delay their press conference to announce the Galaxy Nexus Prime (or whatever they're calling it) out of respect for Steve Jobs' death, but Apple went ahead and started doing pre-orders for the iPhone 4s on the day of his funeral.

I'm not sure if Google and Samsung were being overly sensitive or if Apple was being callous.

Re:Interesting

[gnasher719]

I'm not sure if Google and Samsung were being overly sensitive or if Apple was being callous.

Call me a cynic, but...

If Apple had asked Steve Jobs whether to delay the release of the iPhone 4S, what would he have said? "No way!". If Google and Samsung had asked Steve Jobs whether to delay the release of their next phone, what would he have said? "Of course, for at least two years!".

Seriously, nobody thinks that Steve Jobs would have wanted them to delay anything, so I don't think anything was delayed out of sensitivity.

Re:Interesting

[Daetrin]

I'd be willing to accept that argument, but if that's the way Apple/Jobs do/would have actually felt it doesn't seem reasonable to me to expect other companies to delay their work out of respect while Apple keeps on doing their work out of respect. If you believe Android is part of his legacy than they should keep on doing that work out of respect too, and if you don't believe Android is part of his legacy then his death doesn't really impact it at all.

Re:Interesting

[jimicus]

For the tail-end of last week, there would have been absolutely no point in announcing a major techie thing like "Fancy New Phone Launch". The media was too busy canonising Jobs.

Re:Interesting

[TheGreek]

[...] it doesn't seem reasonable to me to expect other companies to delay their work out of respect while Apple keeps on doing their work out of respect.

Who expected other companies to delay their work? Apple clearly didn't.

Re:Interesting

[AndrewStephens]

So Google and Samsung decided they ought to delay their press conference to announce the Galaxy Nexus Prime (or whatever they're calling it) out of respect for Steve Jobs' death

Ummm, I hate to break it to you, but large multinational corporations do not delay the launch of a new product that has been anticipated for months because of sensitivity.

Re:Interesting

[DinDaddy]

As TheGreek notes, doubtful Apple "expected" them to. I tend to think it was more the guys at Google honestly feeling they ought to, and Samsung being brought along for the ride (I'm less than convinced Samsung would have done this for a solo announcement, although I may be wrong).

Apple Always Screws Up the Supply Chain

[Doc Ruby]

Whenever Apple introduces a new model or product, there's never enough to meet demand. To fans, that must look like quite a desirable achievement, and why not? Selling out seems the definition of maximum success.

But why doesn't Apple just make more? They aren't making the maximum amount. They're leaving some customers with money and no satisfaction. What Apple does is underestimate the needs of their customers. And is encouraged by all the PR from the "selling out - maximum success" fallacy.

Since the 1980s Apple has been scaring businesses away from using their products for this very reason. Which business wants to depend on PCs for every one of 150 people quickly hired in Q4, but then those amazing Macs just aren't available? Who cares how good they are when you can't get them? This is not some speculative argument. I worked for Northern Telecom in the mid 1990s, when it was (famously) Apple's biggest customer. I was part of an R&D group that was in the debate there to drop Apple for Microsoft (and, I think, HP) instead. The reason was the undependable Apple supply chain. The risk (that often came true) of no PC on the desks of new hires was a constant roadblock there. And this was a company very well dedicated to Apple, in public and in capital investments. They dropped Apple.

So long as Apple keeps having this problem, and keeps treating it like a triumph, Apple will continue to be ignored by serious businesses.

Re:Apple Always Screws Up the Supply Chain

[am 2k]

Apple seems to be even more business-unfriendly these days. I'm pretty sure that the professional product line (now only MacPro and Logic, since Xserve, WebObjects and Final Cut Pro are already gone) will be extinguished in the mid term. They have found greener grass on another side (consumers), and so they want to focus on that. As Guy Kawasaki said in his speech about what Steve Jobs taught him, Apple got where it is today by not clinging to the old ways.

Re:Apple Always Screws Up the Supply Chain

[Doc Ruby]

As I said, the problem has never changed. So in fact the supply chain management now has the same problems as it did then. As we can see from the actual same problems.

Northern Telecom changing its name to Nortel is a completely irrelevant point. As is indeed the way that Nortel has fared in the past few years, a decade and a half after the events in question.

Your snotty counterpoints are meaningless.

Re:Apple Always Screws Up the Supply Chain

[Doc Ruby]

Consumers suffer from the same problems businesses have: no product to buy when they sell out. That supply chain mismanagement is probably less a marketing problem among consumers, since they're less likely than a corporate procurement department to commit long term to a different product because of the risk. But it does still interfere. And it's still a poor reflection on Apple, which could make more money even among only non-business consumers if it had more units ready to sell to eager buyers.

Supply chain mismanagement isn't some new Apple innovation. It's got a long history among vendors of all kinds of products. I like Apple and its products enough that I wish it could fix this fundamental problem. I personally can jockey any kind of computer that's ever been made, but I've worked in, with and for many companies where I wished the rest of the office could have a Mac because it would have been easier for them to do their jobs with it.

Re:Apple Always Screws Up the Supply Chain

[Doc Ruby]

Whether or not they're better is irrelevant. That's the point. You're stupid.

Re:Apple Always Screws Up the Supply Chain

[am 2k]

I'm not an expert in this area, but there's a fundamental problem for Apple here: It's obvious that they have a huge amount of preorders compared to the regular sales later. If they'd equip enough production lines to get an iPhone 4S to everyone who wants to preorder, they'd have a lot of overproduction later on. If they'd stockpile a lot of them, they'd delay the release date and they'd have high warehouse renting costs. Apple has to find a balance there, and that's very tricky to get right. They can't please everyone who wants to preorder. Most of those potential customers will just buy it two weeks later at the same price anyways, so Apple doesn't lose anything.

Re:Apple Always Screws Up the Supply Chain

[Doc Ruby]

Plenty of other consumer products vendors handle this kind of problem without a hitch. Sony comes to mind.

It's not easy. But that's why they make the big bucks.

Re:Apple Always Screws Up the Supply Chain

[am 2k]

Sony doesn't make that big of a deal out of product releases, thus they probably have less preorders relative to the regular sales.

Re:Apple Always Screws Up the Supply Chain

[Antisyzygy]

The problem is that Apple makes their products seem scarce artificially. They have tried to seem like a small "for the consumer" company, they try to seem like they cater to their "elite" customers whims, they have a reputation for producing products for the wealthier, their advertising tends to portray Mac users as some kind of savvy elite class, and then even though they know their products routinely sell out, they don't even bother to try and get production up so it will accommodate demand. Im sorry, but Apple products are over-priced for what their actual costs are. Apple has the highest profit margin of any company because it doesn't sell its stuff cheaply, and it does so by over-limiting supply and over-inflating demand.

Re:Apple Always Screws Up the Supply Chain

[aiken_d]

Well, you're pretty sure of yourself. So please let me know if you ever get a job in operations so I can short your company's stock.

Sales projections for devices like iPhones tend to spike at the introduction, curve down, then level out. It would be insane to gear up for production at peak demand levels, because some or most of it would be idled as demand dwindles after the big launch. Companies address this by estimating average demand over a 6 or 12 month period, estimating initial demand, starting production early and stockpiling inventory, and then adjusting production volume based on actual demand.

And I guess you're calling the 7% of for fortune 500 that don't have official iPhone programs the serious ones? The other 465 of them are stupid amateurs who know better?

Re:Apple Always Screws Up the Supply Chain

[aiken_d]

Remind me of the last Sony launch that sold 1,000,000 devices in 24 hours without stockout issues?

Re:Apple Always Screws Up the Supply Chain

[King_TJ]

This is rather frustrating, but I'm not so sure it's a matter of Apple underestimating the demand. I think by now, they know very well what the demand will be when they launch a product like a new iPhone. The problem I've seen seems to be more a matter of Apple's new products being in such high initial demand, there's no way to adequately prepare for it without building the products for months in advance and stocking up warehouse after warehouse full of inventory. That business model doesn't really work for them, because if the new, unreleased products sat in inventory someplace for even a matter of a week or two, people would get ahold of some of them prematurely and reveal / review them, spoiling any secrets Apple tries to keep until the product is announced.

And yes, if you're an enterprise business customer, you don't care much about corporate secrecy. You'd rather know, in advance, everything about the future release schedule of a product line you're using so you can plan around it accordingly. That's really not something Apple wants to do, since it'd absolutely gut the excitement they generate for their products in the consumer (and even educational) sector.

Re:Apple Always Screws Up the Supply Chain

[SteeldrivingJon]

Plus, if the early production runs turn out to have any problems, it's better for those runs to have been relatively small. Get them into the hands of the early buyers, then if any problems arise, fix them. In the meantime, you don't have a huge inventory of defective devices in warehouses or out in the customer's hands.

Basically, there's no real upside for Apple, and not much upside for the customers except not having to wait a few weeks.

Re:Apple Always Screws Up the Supply Chain

[SteeldrivingJon]

There were months of shortages of the PS3 when it hit the US. And *again* in early 2010.

Re:Apple Always Screws Up the Supply Chain

[SteeldrivingJon]

Run Xcode, Cocoa, Instruments, etc.

Re:Apple Always Screws Up the Supply Chain

[Doc Ruby]

So by definition, everything Apple does is the best it can be, right? Wrong. Apple would be worth even more if it were even more satisfying to its customers. Its profits would be higher.

Besides, "they" doesn't really mean anything in "they have the 2nd largest valuation". Apple stock is very widely held, and its valuation is the sum of all its shareholders. Apple rarely if ever issues any stock anymore, so the stock valuation doesn't return any money to Apple itself. The people holding the stock benefit when the stock price goes up (higher than they paid) if they sell it, but the buyers don't benefit - by the same amount in the other direction. In any case even more customer satisfaction would mean stock prices rising even higher.

It would be better for everyone if Apple's supply chain management never stopped someone from buying their product, enough that Apple could sell into the corporate market better.

Re:Apple Always Screws Up the Supply Chain

[Doc Ruby]

The reason Apple doesn't produce enough is not limited by the supply chain vendors. It's limited by Apple underestimating the demand, or the amount it plans to sell. Perhaps on purpose: the basis of value of physical goods (and some intangibles) is perceived scarcity. Apple's retail prices have a larger profit margin than most competing consumer electronics, by charging high prices rather than by including cheap ingredients.

Apple doesn't fall short by enough percentage to mean it couldn't meet its secrecy, rapid development and SCM resource limits. It's just bad planning. Supported by Apple's announcing "sold out" as a brag, rather than an apology.

Re:Apple Always Screws Up the Supply Chain

[Doc Ruby]

Apple production, like most electronics production, shares production capacity with many other products.

The 93% (if that's correct) of Fortune 500 corps don't all use iPhones as much as they could, or Macs nearly as much as they could. I gave a specific example of a company that demonstrated exactly why they do not. Tell me about all the F500 corps that have Macs on every desk. You can't.

Yes, I'm pretty sure of myself. I used to work for Apple. I've been using and programming Apple products since 1981. I have made a lot of money helping companies deal with SCM among other production issues. Next time I run a public company, operations or otherwise, I will be happy to take all your money in short orders for my stock.

Re:Apple Always Screws Up the Supply Chain

[Doc Ruby]

The money saved on a Mac instead of a Windows PC is lost early in the 3-7 years the machine is used, in increased downtime and lower productivity (from steeper learning curves, etc). There are few apps that most big corps use that doesn't run on Macs, especially with Web apps so prevalent. But if Apple products were more sought by more businesses, there would be even more apps for that bigger market. Typical chicken/egg problem that's solved on PCs by businesses buying the machine/OS, creating a market for apps.

There are indeed many reasons other than SCM that businesses don't buy Apple products. But SCM is a major one.

Re:Apple Always Screws Up the Supply Chain

[Doc Ruby]

Yes, an unusual situation for Sony that did it a lot of harm. But PS3 isn't a business platform anyway.

Re:Apple Always Screws Up the Supply Chain

[Doc Ruby]

If I had Apple's profit margins, I'd want to sell more units to make more profit. Because that's money, not a statistic.

Re:Apple Always Screws Up the Supply Chain

[enkidu]

Uh, you're comparing Apple's totally fucked up product line-up, supply chain, and operations from the 1980's when they were hemorraging money like a stuck pig to the problems they're having meeting unprecedented demand right now? Are you kidding me? Apple's supply chain management and operations are why they have margins way above any other PC or tablet manufacturer. And despite those margins, other makers can't sell similar devices without taking a loss.

Yes, Apple has had trouble keeping the pipeline filled, but that's because of absolutely unprecedented demand. Do you remember the problems Nintendo had producing the Wii? The Wii doesn't even come with a cutting edge screen, yet for more the a year Nintendo couldn't meet demand. It took more than a year to increase production from 1.8M to 2.4M. And this for a device which has only 1 constraining component: the CPU+graphics chips. Apple managed to meet iPad demand less than 6 months after the introduction, and even faster for the iPad 2 despite demand being greater than 4M/month. This with a device that has 3 constraining components: memory, display, and cpu+graphics chips. Apple has gone from 0% market share to 5% total market share in worldwide phones in a little over 4 years. Remember the shit Motorola took for being unable to meed RAZR demand for months? And Motorola's been making cell phones since cells phones existed. Every company I've seen that has had a crazy popular hit has trouble meeting demand. Some take a year or more to catch up. Apple takes a couple of months at most.

Right, ignored by "serious business". got any proof of that? Why would Apple care? They're growing at 6x the rate of the rest of the computing industry. Stop living in the past and look at the present.

Re:Apple Always Screws Up the Supply Chain

[indiechild]

I love reading these delusional posts on Slashdot. Comedy gold!

Just throw some marketing in, artificially limit demand on a shitty product, and make billions of dollars right? Easy peasy!

Enjoying your crack cocaine?

Re:Apple Always Screws Up the Supply Chain

[BLToday]

I figure Apple is using the Ferrari model of supply and demand, always one more person wanting it than the supply available.

Re:Apple Always Screws Up the Supply Chain

[am 2k]

Although come to think of it, some folks think that waiting two weeks is impossible. In my country the iPhone will be available on October 28. However, we're right next to Germany, where it's available on October 14. I personally know three people who are really considering driving 5 hours to a German Apple Store, just to get the iPhone 4S two weeks earlier. I just don't get that.

Re:Apple Always Screws Up the Supply Chain

[anerki]

Well noted. Did you get all that from the numerous statements out there from Apple that they don't give the tiniest bit about business, and would rather focus on the big market, the average joes?

Why go for a market that is harder to work with, easier to annoy, demands discounts, etc. When you could just as well sell everything, at original price, whenever you want, however you want?

Re:Apple Always Screws Up the Supply Chain

[bryan1945]

Oh, I'm now in the savvy elite class! Yay. clap clap clap clap!

Re:Apple Always Screws Up the Supply Chain

[rakaur]

My kingdom for a mod point. How stupid are people? If Android devices sold out like this you can bet your ass you'd never hear conspiracy theories like this. It'd just be because people want the damn things. People just have to invent reasons why products they dislike are massively successful despite their dislike for them.

Re:Apple Always Screws Up the Supply Chain

[donny77]

When I order a new Mac, I get it in about a week. The supplies are only constrained when they are about to expire a device and launch a new one. Less than a 1 month window. You can't build a factory and staff it for 12 months to meet demand for a 1 month block. That's simple economics. The original iPad had the supply issues for a couple of months, but that was a pioneering product that way exceeded expectations. I ordered 4 iPads 2 weeks ago, got them in 5 days. Doesn't sound like a problem to me.

Re:Apple Always Screws Up the Supply Chain

[DinDaddy]

Your argument is predicated on Apple either knowing with rather amazing accuracy the likely immediate demand for a new product, or significantly overproducing by some assumed percentage that unknown demand and having to deal with any resulting excess inventory.

In the case of the first scenario, since none of their competitors, many with a great deal of experience is producing similar items in quantities of millions, have been able to make decent projections like that (don't know specifics on phone models, but for tablets, Asus transformer, still understocked, HP, Moto and everyone else, tablets still overstocked, Amazon, pre-order sold out), I think you would be giving Apple more credit than they deserve, Cook's supply chain accumen notwithstanding.

In the second case, that goes contrary to Apple (and specifically Cook's) whole paradigm for moving merchandise. So they don't see it as a problem. This is not a case of leaving a business hanging, these are consumer devices. So it is a (possible) short term inconvenience for their customers. Not really a problem.

Either way, their supply chain is not any more undependable than anyone else's making similar products.

Re:Apple Always Screws Up the Supply Chain

[zsazsa]

I don't see any problem here. Apple took one million pre-orders before selling out. I'd say their supply chain is absolutely fantastic. Who else can push a million units in such a short time like that? Nobody, that's who.

Re:Steve Jobs - Marketing Genius

[gstrickler]

As soon as someone releases an LTE chipset that doesn't kill battery life, and LTE becomes widely available, it'll be in the next iPhone. Right now, LTE would raise the cost of the phone, shorten the battery life, and only benefit a small percentage of the buyers.

LTE Deployment map, most of the world doesn't even have any LTE deployment. North America, parts of Europe, southeast Asia, Japan, Saudi Arabia, and Uzebekistan are the only current deployments, and most of those offer only spotty coverage.
AT&T is claiming "LTE planned for up to 15 cities by the end of 2011"
Verizon has wider LTE coverage, but it's nowhere near nationwide and won't be for several more years.
Sprint's LTE coverage is in a similar situation.

By the time that LTE is actually available to a sizable percentage of buyers, it'll be time to upgrade the phone anyway. And HSDPA+ @ 14.4Mbps is fast enough for most users in the meantime.

One thing Apple understands that most competitors (and critics) don't is that most users care about usability, not about specifications. Battery life is more important to most users than somewhat faster downloads (that are only available to a small percentage of users anyway). Only the small percentage of technically savvy users care about specs (and those users and critics are the same ones who would complain about the lack of 4G coverage if it did include LTE).

Re:Have mobile providers have faked a sell out ?

[shmlco]

AT&T announced they sold 200,000 in the first 12 hours alone.

Is that more than dozens?

Re:Steve Jobs - Marketing Genius

[Midnight Thunder]

In many ways the CDMA+GSM could be significant, especially in Japan and the USA. It increases Apple's potential customer base and allows people more roaming flexibility.

Sure Motorola tried this before, but it was a poor phone in every other respect. Also, trying to locate anywhere that sold the phone was a challenge.

Apple never said they were going to release an iPhone 5, rather everyone else assumed they would. I think we need to try to understand what might make this phone a success. I am going to see how practical Siri is in real life.

Re:Never underestimate the number of people...

[codepunk]

Never underestimate the number of people who simply want a great phone that just plain works. I have owned my 3GS for quite a few years now and will not hesitate for even a split second to buy this new phone.

Next thing I'll hear...

[ghrom]

is that Steve Jobs fucking died purposedly as a marketing flick.

Re:Never underestimate the number of people...

[jo_ham]

I thought about getting an Android phone, but I don't live in my mom's basement any more, so that rules it out.

I can't buy an iPhone because you tell me it will simply be a status symbol, not something I actually want.

What else is there? Blackberry? I'm not a teenage girl, nor am I a corporate drone.

I'm simply out of viable choices!

I guess I'll stick to my current phone. I'd tell you what it is, but I fear for my generalisation.

Buzz

[bjourne]

Of course it is not news - it's buzz. The marketeers are pre-emptively engineering a situation in which the device can be said to have been "sold out" for example by channel stuffing. The flock mentality ensures that if everyone thinks everyone else wants something, then they will want that thing too. It's a very simple marketing trick.

Re:Buzz

[SteeldrivingJon]

Channel stuffing isn't when the phones go from the factory in Shanghai directly to the buyer via FedEx. There's no channel being stuffed there. FedEx isn't the channel. The channel is retailers and distributors.

Channel stuffing would be dumping truckloads of iPhones on Best Buy and Radio Shack and AT&T and Verizon stores, in quantities far exceeding any known demand.

Re:Buzz

[MachineShedFred]

Channel stuffing... like when we hear about hundreds of thousands of Blackberry PlayBooks being shipped, but don't see anyone actually using one?

Or rather when we hear about hundreds of thousands of Windows Phone 7 shipments, but have never seen one in use?

etc. etc. These are pre-orders from people with credit card numbers. Not Motorola bloviating about how many Xooms they've sent to Best Buy. These are actual sales.

Re:Steve Jobs - Marketing Genius

[maroberts]

Release iPhone 4S... die the next day

Marketing genius beyond the grave!

Makes you wonder if he had died the previous day and they just stashed his corpse for 24 hours to avoid any conflict with the release.

Or maybe Tim Cook forgot to say at the end of the launch "One More Thing...Steve Jobs has passed on"

Won't take long if you know where to look

[DSS11Q13]

I remember when the iPhone 4 came out and there was news coverage everywhere of huge lines, preorders selling out in minutes, etc. Two or three weeks after it was launched I needed to get a phone, so I walked into a Radioshack in the busiest intersection in Cambridge, MA, asked for an iPhone 4, and walked out with one 20 minutes later. Maybe I was lucky?

Re:Have mobile providers have faked a sell out ?

[SteeldrivingJon]

I just looked around the room, and saw no Chinese people. They must be a myth.

Re:Have mobile providers have faked a sell out ?

[CheerfulMacFanboy]

I think this is either fake or at the very least exaggerated. I've spoken to dozens of people in my office and they all say they haven't placed a pre-order and are not interested in the 4S at all.

If there was some guy at my office who asked dozens of people if they had plans to buy an iPhone 4S, I certainly wouldn't answer him that I did. Just to be safe.

Holding inventory is costly

[kubajz]

Holding inventory has some costs that are not so obvious:

* Producing millions of units before you get the revenue from them costs a lot of money. Money is not free - it either comes with interest, or lost opportunities.
* Paying for warehousing capacity that you only use when you launch new products (whether it's central warehouses, retail stores, or partners' facilities).
* Production capacity and speed is limited. Not every supplier would be excited to get a contract for iPhone that uses tons of capacity over 3 months and leaves their production lines empty for the rest of the year.

Focusing on inventory minimization is called Just in Time, only it's most often used in industries other than electronics: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Just_in_time_(business)

Hypocrit alert!

[MachineShedFred]

Anonymous coward calling someone an ass for "hiding behind the anonymity of the Internet." At least that guy used his Slashdot ID.

Re:Have mobile providers have faked a sell out ?

[tehcyder]

I have spoken to dozens of people...

Translation: "I talked to my buddies XxxGamerDoodxxX and StarCraftStud22389, and we unanimous in our worldly judgement."

Plus, as they're online buddies he's never met, he doesn't realise they're the same person. Or, indeed, that they are two of his own online personae.

Re:Have mobile providers have faked a sell out ?

[DinDaddy]

you guys can all bitch and whine all you want, i stand by what i said.

Humorous considering you're posting AC. I personally know about 30 people who are getting one. And all of them reported dificulty getting through the online ordering process due to heavy traffic. Faked traffic no doubt.

Re:No worries....they'll make more

[DinDaddy]

Speaking for my wife (she hates that), her old phone was dying and this was the planned replacement. If you don't get in on the initial order and there IS a sellout, you end up waiting a week or two more.

Outside that situation, yeah. Smacks of "I want to be seen with the new toy first!"

Re:iPhone 4S is a test

[tgibbs]

There's always something new "around the corner." This matters only to the handful of tech enthusiasts who have to have the latest and greatest. Apple's target of the upgrade was clear; iPhone's typically sell on a 2-year contract, so the main target market was (1) iPhone 3gs owners with recently expired contracts, (2) owners of "dumb" phones, (3) Android owners eligible for a upgrade who would like to move over to the more polished and regulated Apple ecosystem. For those in groups 1 & 2, the iPhone 4s is a huge upgrade, while for group 3, the upgrade brings the iPhone family up to approximate hardware parity with recent Android phones. The sales indicate that Apple has fairly accurately gauged these potential customers.

I Pre-Ordered a 4S - My First iphone

[jufineath]

I've been a Droid X user for almost two years, and was waiting for the iPhone 5 (which is apparently called a 4S) to make a move. I pre-ordered on Friday. I'll still have the Droid X (i don't pay for it) but iPhone 4S will be my first iPhone. Anecdotes are meaningless but at least here's one to counter the "no one wants one" posts.

Re:Steve Jobs - Marketing Genius

[gstrickler]

See the impact of current generation LTE chipsets on battery life. Combined with the very low deployment of LTE and the fact that actual LTE speeds are only marginally better than HSPA+, including LTE would have been a huge mistake. The phone would have to be larger to make room for the LTE chipset, larger and heavier to allow room for a larger battery, more expensive for both of those reasons, and being larger, would have required new case designs, dock designs, etc. All for little or no difference in download speed for a very small percentage of customers. That would be bad engineering and bad marketing. Next year, the situation may be different, but LTE is not ready for mass market mobile devices this year.