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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.
Perhaps to one one's surprise
Slashdot, please get rid of rubbish like 'timothy' and hire editors.
Advice: on VPS providers
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.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
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.
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.
If I wanted a sig I would have filled in that stupid box.
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.
You like your Macintosh better than me, don't you Dave? Dave? Can you hear me Dave?
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.
Write boring code, not shiny code!
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.
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.
That brings me to an interesting point, / . is just "the ramblings of socially-inept, technology-literate news-mongers".