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Raspberry Pi Now Has Distributors -- and Will Soon Have Boards for All (Video)
In an exclusive Transatlantic Skype conversation with Slashdot editor Timothy Lord recorded on Feb. 22, Raspberry Pi project leader Eben Upton talks about the state of Raspberry Pi, and tells us that yes -- finally -- they now have distributors in the U.S. and other countries instead trying to ship every unit from the U.K. Even better, instead of buying a batch of boards, selling them, and only then ordering another batch, the new distribution agreements mean they can keep a steady flow of orders coming in and going out. One slight downer is that people who have donated to the project may not get their Pi(s) right away; the distributors have spoken for all of the current order. Eben talks about this, and about how Raspberry Pi is going to take care of contributors, starting at about 4:15 in the video. You can also look at an in-person interview Tim did with Eben in January -- or wait until the end of today's video for a list of other Raspberry Pi videos.
Mind moving the cursor somewhere else, please?
They promised worldwide delivery to all and the ability to use PayPal. Instead, they gave us company-orders only, minimum order amounts of €50, creditcard only and only to a select amount of countries.
Don't promise want you can't deliver. Massive disappointment.
Can you not activate videos unless and until I click 'Play'? Not everybody has unlimited broadband
They went on sale this morning, and almost immediately downed the websites of two large electronics suppliers (RS and Farnell). By the time I had got to work, the sites were back up but that is largely because they didn't have anymore Raspberry Pis to sell.
That is the kind of reception that Apple wishes the iPad 3 would get (although it probably won't.)
If we can put a man on the moon, why can't we shoot people for Apollo-related non-sequiturs?
So... Those who donated to the project prior to completion have to wait for their boards while the folk who order direct get them shipped first?
I can't help but think that this is a giant "fuck you, revenue comes first" to those who believed in the project from the start. Yeah, even charities have to pay their staff, and I understand that, and I hope I've just misunderstood. Otherwise, poor form guys.
Finally had enough. Come see us over at https://soylentnews.org/
Unfortunately it didn't really work out as planned. Farnell and RS was DDoSed a long time from 6 am to about 12. And there is still problems for people outside the UK to buy the rasp. I'm in Sweden and Farnells liks to the pre-order does not have Sweden in it's list. RS on the other hand requires a company to "express an interest in raspberry" (it says nothing about pre-order). So even now when the sites is working again I'm still unable to order a Rasp.
This makes me wonder why they didn't team up with a firm that is known globally and can handle traffic like e-bay or amazon?
At 6am the "buy" link on Farnell redirected to a "register interest" page, not a pre-order page, where I logged in with my existing Farnell account and "registered interest". Three minutes later their webserver melted.
There is now an oversubscribed pre-order page.
RS seem to be handing this the right way and their "register interest" is first come first served and will help them catch the scalpers and jokers trying to place multiple orders.
Guess it serves me right for being a loyal Farnell customer.
Well, guess what Farnell? I'm your worst fucking nightmare. As an EE designing medium volume products built in the UK, every bill of materials I write for the rest of my working life will include as few Farnell part numbers as is humanly possible.
Managed to order mine from Farnell this morning. Took almost a whole hour of refreshes & timeouts considering that i already had an account on their site. RS Online did not accepted any orders, they only have a "register for updates" page.
The DDoS of the Farnell & RS-Online servers caused by the announcement was massive (and still is for Farnell).
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Is it too much to ask that the poster explain what rasberry pi is in the first damn sentence?
No common sense in how to communicate a story.
You know, apart from the 10 they sold via E-Bay, this whole project has been a self funded "Not For Profit" charity...??
They activity REFUSED to do pre-orders (and accept money), stating that they would only take money once they had the physical devices in their hands in the UK.
They said it would be a world wide release and all profits would be out back in to building the net batch.
A scene in a living room in the Netherlands, just finishing my second cup of coffee...The Raspberrypi.org site displayed a cryptic message late yesterday which trigger a change notification email to me. This morning it has been down.
0700 CET, I hit refresh, again. Suddenly the raspberrypi.org site is alive again.
Huh, who are these Premier Farnell and RS Components companies? I'd expected these in the store on raspberry.com.
Ah well...
Farnell crashes in the first 90 seconds and stays down. RS has a few international sites that occasionally show signs of live. The Raspberry Pi is listed for 27,49 excluding tax. Including tax that $25-$35 computer suddenly sells for $42,50. Ah well.. oh, and 6 euros shipping ex tax. Hm, site crashes again. Hang on, they don't really want to deliver to consumers when an order is less than 50 euros.
Farnell has now been visited by some people and this company is at least as bad. In quite a few countries it seems not to do business with consumers at all.
At almost 1000 I finally manage to stay on a site long enough to actually click something into the basket. By then the feeble stocks have long been depleted.
What I wonder...
- why work with distributors who do NOT want to sell to private individuals?
- why work with consumers who are obviously unwilling or unable to handle a sizeable traffic load?
- Why such a small batch of boards in the first place?
Disappointing all around. I'm sure I'll get one sooner or later but I'm not going to pay a fortune for one.
This seems to have gotten lost in the commotion, but they also announced that the $25 Model A will be produced with the same amount of RAM as the $35 Model B (256 MB). Originally the Model A was only going to have 128 MB, so now the only difference is the Model B has an ethernet port. The Model A is going into production immediately.
Better known as 318230.
That must be the first time I've ever heard of someone wanting to use PayPal. In what way does it beat credit cards issued by reputable banks
PayPal does some level of fraud detection. I work for a company that develops the shopping cart software used by an RC car shop, and there were a bunch of Indonesians that used stolen European credit cards and international mail forwarding services to order expensive ready-to-run vehicles. All this fraud came through the credit card payment flow, not the PayPal payment flow.
You had to realise to find a retailer that sells ("retails"...) stuff from the distributors.
Would it have been so hard for a distributor to add a "Consumers: Find a dealer near you" button?
How about we dedicate a story to every time Microsoft writes a line of code in Windows?
I'd be far more interested to know when they remove a line of code.
One of my most productive days was throwing away 1000 lines of code. - Ken Thompson
actually, they don't have any at the retailers, they're still not in stock. So technically this is pre-ordering, albeit with some kind of guarantee of what you get.
It pays to be obvious, especially if you have a reputation for being subtle.
These guys have figured out how to get people to just GIFT them money to develop the product, which they can then sell at a huge profit, that they can keep for themselves.
They are a charity registered as such in England.
You can see their accounts (presented to the British Government) here: http://www.charity-commission.gov.uk/Showcharity/RegisterOfCharities/CharityWithoutPartB.aspx?RegisteredCharityNumber=1129409&SubsidiaryNumber=0 (but it seems, as they have had a turnover of less than £10000 so far, they don't need to file detailed accounts).
This was really the worst product launch ever. I was refreshing their page from 5 minutes prior and hit their distributor's pages in seconds after the announcement. Nothing... I couldn't get past the first page before the site went down. I have to say it was VERY disappointing. I'd have been happy with not getting one because I didn't click fast enough, but not getting one because of a random server outage? yea, I'm not very happy right now -- especially after following the product for such a long time.
I was hoping that would be available at the same time as the pi
Shipping is included in the Farnell price, but not in the RS price.
I don't understand why they didn't make sure they got all the kinks out and delivered on 03/14.
Sometimes, life itself is sarcasm...
Those who donated to the project prior to completion have to wait for their boards while the folk who order direct get them shipped first?
Why don't you let the people who donated comment instead of putting words in their mouths? How about this hypothesis: many donors saw a charity with a good idea, one that they liked and wanted to support, and they saw their donation as exactly that and nothing more - there was no guarantee that they would be first in line, and they didn't expect that there would be any such guarantee in the future. They just wanted to show their support for a cool project that had little financial backing.
When you donate to a charity, do you always expect to get something in return? Is that how you think the world works for everyone?
Huge bullshit launch ! I ordered one at 6.12 and got confirmation ... then i got an email saying it was out of stock ... result I have to wait 6 weeks to get one that was at farnell ... at RS you could only preorder. what bothers me the most is that they dropped the hot potato into a licensed sales model ... hope the chinese will copy it fast and cheap !
I can't help but feel that Eben took the wrong approach with pre-orders. I think pre-orders and taking cash up front was exactly what was what needed.
Its a good thing that they've done the first 10,000 manufacturing batch, but on top of that they mismarketed the release date by combinging it with the RS Components and Farnell annoucement. They should have made that annoucement separately to test demand through the supplier websites and then making a preorders annoucement with a view to deliver on all preorders (be it 1000, or 100,000). I imagine will pan out ok, and that consumers will get hold of boards now that the major manufacturers are involved and the stellar publicity that the RPi has received. The bad news it will take time for them to gear up to full production.
Today's mess was that they tried to annouce public release with news about new (untested) suppliers, and pulled all the strings in their long running BBC News campaign. Too much focus all in one place. Now the general public is involved and expecting cheap computers, when what is actually being sold is nothing more then a motherboard. The public needs to wait for technical folk to get there hands on them, to test out SD cards, distros, cases, wireless adapters, etc. and then do a proper launch. The only thing that seems to have glued it all together was Twitter, so congrats to those guys.
Found the "Urgent Order Information" in the inbox - mine is due 26 March. I called Farnell this morning and they said they are yet to receive any RPis in stock (in EU), so all their orders were pre-orders, and if they get them faster, they will be shipped faster.
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Shipping is included in the Farnell price, but not in the RS price.
Which, as the account sign-up/registration page (when you finally get to it) claims that Farnell offer "free shipping", makes their pricing even more questionable.
This sig left unintentionally blank.
Am I the only one losing interest in this? I was really stoked at first, dreaming of all the possibilities of what could be done with such an inexpensive computer. I was considering it's use as everything from a very powerful microcontroler to a server and even a desktop. Right off the bat I wanted two to build car computers, one for a lightweight, power sipping and silent development server and another to use as an X-terminal on my workbench.
The problem is the display. The lack of VGA output means all those cheap monitors that everyone has in their closets are useless. I'm not even talking about bulky power hungry CRTs, I can't even use the older LCDs that I have lying around. That really kills the price advantage this board would have had. I know, I'm not the target market, schools or kids are. Apparently it's the less financially advantaged schools, the one I went to had a computer lab as early as 1994 (and few knowledgeable teachers to take advantage of it). Are they going to be able to buy all these new monitors? I understand there was an idea that kids would take these home. But it's still only going to work for kids with newer TVs in the family (and probably more than one since mom, dad and siblings are busy watching reality TV crap on the main one). Aren't families like that going to already have real computers?
I guess there is the composite out. I've never seen anything on composite out that looked much better than late 1980s 8-bit games. Is that going to get kids of today excited?
By the way, no, converters are not really a practical option. Yes, there are cheap adapters that are just pin remappings. Yes, many of us have even used those adapters successfully on our computers. No, that's not going to cut it for the Raspberry Pi. The cheap adapters work on our computers because they are just remapping Analog output pins that our computers already have active. The raspberry Pi does not have anything attached to those pins. For the Raspberry Pi you need to spend about $90 for a converter that converts the digital output to Analog VGA. That multiplies the money you are spending by over 4! Another option might be a USB to VGA adapter but those aren't much cheaper and would then require a lot of work to get the drivers going.
Yeah, I did it too. I was there, hitting refresh. They sold out almost immediately, and now whole swaths of folk have to wait to get one just a little bit more.
For that, people are pissed, Eben's a jerk, worst launch ever, etc etc etc.
Guys, they're a non profit. Demand was too great. That's not a BAD thing. Yes, you have to wait. That does not mean that it was the worst launch ever... It means you need to be patient a while longer. Instead of being upset that you didn't get yours, how about taking a step back. You can wait. It won't kill you. This is a good thing. The raspberry pi team did something cool, and that coolness is not diminished just because some of us didn't get one.
Sheesh. Calm Down.
Tony
Where raspberry pi is really failing at the moment is messaging. We were initially told that we could order internationally direct from the foundation. The post on the website says that you can buy them now from RS and Farnell, which would also be fine. While I think this is true for Farnell if you live in the UK, it isn't true for RS or Farnell if you live in the USA, so a lot of people feel like they've been deceived.
Furthermore, Farnell doesn't even seem to sell to USA consumers, and RS only has an "express an interest" site, and nothing on their USA site.
So, consumers are very confused about what is going on. Because of the inconsistent messaging, USA consumers have no idea if we'll ever be able to buy them online, at least without significant retail markup.
What I think would improve the goodwill would be for the Raspberry Pi team to:
1.) Contact RS and Farnell and figure out what the heck is going on, particularly for international customers. Put a post on the website to the effect that you're doing this.
2.) Once they do figure out what's going on, TELL US.
If, in two weeks time, when all the traffic has died down, international customers will be able to get them, that's fine, but people currently don't feel like that's the case. The two distributors are ruining Raspberry Pi's goodwill (which often happens when you give this power to someone else) but Raspberry Pi isn't compensating by over-communicating on their end.
Wrong.
This is the first Pi :)
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Yep, that's also what the Farnell sales guys told me on the phone this morning - their had 0 Raspberry Pi stock before sales begun so all orders placed were pre-orders.
1% APY, No fees, Online Bank https://captl1.co/2uIErYq Don't let your $$$ sit in a no-interest acct.
I might as well look at the bright side and let someone else solve all the problems with the first run. Thanks, early adopters!
bah.
I'm in the US and had a heck of a time figuring out a way to order. Pre-order links not working, no results searching for Raspberry Pi on partners' site ...
But in a chat with Newark rep, found that you can just enter part # 83T1943 and it will come up. $20 handling fee if you order online, less if you call the order in.
"83T1943 is the Newark Part # for the Raspberry PI and has an approximate lead time of 30-40 daysyou will get charged shipping if you order online, you should call in 800-463-9275"
You will still probably be charged some shipping - but according the Newark rep less.
Disclosure: Not associated with Newark, other than an occasional customer.
The retailers don't, but the initial shipment was sent directly to the foundations address and they are then being forwarded to RS and Farnell as required.
It's a totally roundabout way of doing it, but think this was due to the timing of everything as well as the foundation wanting to get them into the country as soon as possible.
I was hoping they would hold back a few hundred for sale directly through their own site! but alas! looks like i'm stuck with RS or Farnell for now
Laters Sol "Have you found the secrets of the universe? Asked Zebade "I'm sure I left them here somewhere"
"I couldn't get one immediately! Well, I guess I won't buy one any more!!!!"
Who cares? Certainly not the non-profit you're slating. Voting with your wallet doesn't work against a non-profit with a massively in-demand item. That's you just sitting in the sad corner by yourself.
You know what the foundation want? They want people with intellegence to get into developing, and to get others into developing. Half the comments I've read in this thread show personalities that need more development than the Raspberry Pi.
Their partners are much more experienced but this is a very unusual event, remember AT&T and Apple had their launch problems too.
Farnell uses Newark as its U.S. distributor and though their website is getting pretty hammered and the customer support guys say it is kind of crazy, they are taking both online and toll free number orders.
I wouldn't expect R-Pi foundation to have a staff that is any better in reaching the partners' customer support staff for info, than you or I or any of the other 100K plus people figuratively pushing and shoving in line. :-)
From a Newark Rep:
"83T1943 is the Newark Part # for the Raspberry PI and has an approximate lead time of 30-40 daysyou will get charged shipping if you order online, you should call in 800-463-9275"
My, my, how pragmatical. With that attitude, I wish them all the success that any other commercial business deserves, particularly with regard to eating the costs of defective units returned by their paying customers.
Still putting my stick in the sand saying "Out of business by the end of March."
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
US $5,543.30 ???
FUCK!
Though they may have changed it, Amex charged 4-5%, so you are never charged for it (except by exorbitant APR and nagging) but the retailer on all transactions is. And when your margin is 1-2%, you have to pass that expense on.
I believe that the MPEG-2 licensing issue is for hardware decoding. The rPi should still be able to software decode it (though I don't know how well) if you have the appropriate codec installed.
What I'm hoping for is that this establishes a "reference platform" -- they're already talking about trying to influence syllabus development, and one of the problems with developing a CS and/or IT curriculum is the moving target of platforms. A decent HDMI screen is future proof, as is a USB keyboard and mouse, so if people move to Pi on their next refresh cycle, all the money's going on screens which they can continue to use even if they ditch Pi -- no huge loss of cash here.
And besides, a reference platform doesn't even need to be hardware. I doubt it'll be long before there's a very accurate software reproduction of the Pi environment. Stick it on a server and run it on old PCs as terminals. Stick it on a newish PC as a runtime.
The main thing is that there will be a single target for coursework and courseware, rather than a bodged-up constant shift from platform to platform.
Got them moderator blues I blieve I walk out the do', With these mod-points I been gettin', I 'most never post no mo'
And I think this is an example of my point.
If I knew that Newark was where to order from Farnell, then I would have known to order from there. Farnell's web site doesn't make this clear anywhere that I could find, and while that is primarily Farnell's problem, it reflects badly on Raspberry Pi, even if it isn't their fault.
The companies do have an interest in informing the Raspberry Pi team in order to reduce load on their own sites, if nothing else. That only works if the Raspberry Pi team goes through the effort of sharing what information they get. Also, the Raspberry Pi team probably has an internal phone contact that the rest of us don't have.
All of this isn't to say that I think Raspberry Pi is a bad organization or that I'm angry or anything. I'm frustrated at not getting one (which I expected) and confused about how to get one in the future (which I did not expect.) I think resolving the confusion would tame at least some of the anger that other people are experiencing.
BTW, are you saying that you don't get charged the $20 handling fee (or get charged something smaller) if you order by phone?
This is good news for all hackers and techie people. I personally can't wait to get my hands on one, I've been itching to see how good of a web server one could be by itself.
In other news, the recorder of the video has the same mouse cursor set as me! Jimmac forever!
http://www.ebay.com/itm/Raspberry-Pi-Model-B-Computer-BRAND-NEW-/290677544076?pt=UK_Computing_DesktopPCs&hash=item43adbb548c
Unless I'm mistaken all "donors" such as myself received their stickers. At no time did the foundation imply that donors would be first in line or get any special privileges. I suspect only non-donors are raising a stink.
That won't be a problem for long. This SoC shares the video part with enough other devices that in no time at all there will be 'places' one can go to obtain the required libraries. Much like there is one stop shopping for the Win32 codecs to make Mplayer able to play darned near anything. And nobody is going to care, Broadcom won't, the **AA groups won't care, nobody will. As long as it is just a geeks building media boxes and crap like that, any large institutional user will of course simply work out a licensing agreement. But Broadcom has to charge the Pi Foundation for the codecs they ship and officially support or the whole phony balony shakedown on codec licensing would come crashing down so we are all going to have to do the wink wink nudge nudge schtick.
Democrat delenda est
The color scheme of the GP reminded me of one of my colleagues @ one time, who adapted that sort of a color scheme for Windows (albeit NT 4.0). It was tough to look @. This particular one looks like a whole bunch of valley girls just put together their ideas, and in the spirit of all-inclusiveness, threw it all on the web page. And since it was too difficult to put all their names there, they all assumed the collective name of Sean Terrance Best, and ran w/ it.
You can have the schematics once you've learned how capital letters work.
It had to happen -- there was never a retail markup included in the original pricing scheme. 60% is quite high, though....
Got them moderator blues I blieve I walk out the do', With these mod-points I been gettin', I 'most never post no mo'
I didn't get a raspi but my experience with RS Components and partners was a little out of the ordinary.
Together with everyone else I got up at 06 UTC to see the announcement and witness the DDoS. Like many others I went through the registration and ordering process at Farnell just to realize that they don't sell to anything but businesses in my country.
After around an hour or so the RS Components site came back briefly with a static page saying that they were under heavy load and to simply phone this and that number. I thought "Ah well, whatever I'll give it a try" and dialed the number. To my great surprise the call was connected instantly (and I do mean that litterally - less than 1 second) and was answered by a knowledgeable young lady who, in my native language, quickly and precisely explained the whole situation as well as how things would be handled during the next weeks.
I was completely flabbergasted:
- Instant telephone support
- Knowledgeable supporter with good awareness of the case
- In my native language
- At around 7 in the morning during a major website breakdown
Never seen anything like it.
One huge difference though between a typical pre-order from a start-up vs. what these guys are doing is that the actual devices have been manufactured and physically exist at least somewhere on the planet. A typical start-up pre-order is based upon a device that is still "under development" and where the schematics haven't even been sent to a manufacturer, or even that a manufacturing facility hasn't even been decided upon yet.
In other words, this isn't a vaporware pre-order, but something that is merely in pre-order because the distribution chain is merely lagging a little bit until you can get a copy of your own. That is an important distinction.
The Raspberry Pi Foundation has someone playing wack-a-mole and having the bogus ebay ads taken down. That one has already been removed.
Correct. The $20 fee appears to be a direct ship from Farnell in the UK charge. My understanding if you call it in, you only pay typical Newark shipping. ... If you order by phone, Newark USA probably has a way of ordering a batch shipping to Newark USA and then Newark uses their regular distribution methods. That's a bit of speculation, but seems to fit the bits and pieces of info I got from Newark. In the end, I decided it was worth the extra 10 to 15 bucks to have it ship direct from the UK - maybe it would knock a week or two off the process. It could be just the opposite though. A bulk order to Newark USA, that Newark splits up might move a lot faster.
I'm guessing the website is tied into Farnell in the UK and they tack that on to cover the individual handling, customs paperwork, postage
I understand your frustration. Just don't think there was much the foundation could do to make Farnell, Newark et al do their job better for a onetime event like this.
No. Once the R-Pi site comes back online you can read the FAQs that explain the many reasons why. One major reason is that the chips are impossible to solder by hand, it requires a special robot (or pick and place and exotic solder machine). Another is that it would cost more to buy the individual parts than it would to buy a couple of units. The suppliers are being kind enough to give them prices like they were buying millions of parts though they are buying only 10's of thousands. As an individual you can't buy so of the key parts at all. If you are a manufacturer you would have to sign an NDA with some of the key part suppliers and commit to a few million pieces. It is more thoroughly explained in the FAQs and forums, because this question keeps coming up.
The Teensy is a nice platform, but nothing like the R-pi, they really are apples and oranges best suited to completely different applications.
I went the other way and paid the $20. Knew about the phone option, but wasn't sure which would work the best. Glad you posted. Maybe you can update when you actually get it for comparison purposes. I don't think this is the only one I'll order this year.
You just don't blog on your site "Set the allarm @6:00am" for Big Day One when there are not enough items and the sites (resellers) are not able to hold the traffic. That was just a BAD idea.
Many managed to be on line just at the *right* time to be unable to buy and DOS the whole thing. ..or maybe it was a PR stunt, but they eventually pissed off many potential buyers who are now seeing pre-preorder request for no one knows when we can sell or how many are available. There it goes the impulse buyers low-cost give-it-a-try...
This just occurred to me -- the B model almost certainly has enough guts to run a MAME emulator, making it a candidate to restore older arcade games. I have an original Tempest stand-up in the garage that bit the dust years ago... This might be an interesting project.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
Farnell has a presence here (Newark)
of course you'll have to wait a few months now.
Sent from my PDP-11
All orders yesterday were pre-orders. The RPIs were not in stock at both RS & Farnell yesterday. So there you have-it.
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Nope. You're the only one.
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"vapourware" ...
With an "u"
It's british.
Tsk, tsk, tsk
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I'm one of the donators. I don't feel screwed as i received some limited edition stickers for it.
The returns will be handled by Farnell & RS - the foundation only licenses the design.
Your "stick" in sand ... ewww ... gross ... you'll get some infection.
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Funny that you mention this, as i've just received email from Farnell that they will be firing support staff and ultimately migrate to a (multilanguage) support site in Polen.
And i think of support as a knowledge tank, so i dont understand how you can "factory reset" it without damage being done to customers..
Hivemind harvest in progress..
Dealers buying products from the distributor would enter the postal code of the address where they want their order shipped. End users would then enter a postal code and search for dealers who have saved an address near that postal code. The match could be based on the first three characters of the postal code, or it could be based on the distance between the postal codes' centroids. I've implemented both searching behaviors in web projects that I've worked on.
The R-Pi wiki at eLinux.org has an interesting table where people are entering their order time, the place they ordered it from and the estimated ship date they were given. One of the entries (mine) matches up with your info pretty closely.
Link to Page
http://elinux.org/index.php?title=RPi_Shipping
I received a "Raspberry Pi Update" email from Newark, today (March 2) at 19:46:08 GMT thanking me for my interest, and including a Buy Now button.
Apparently I had filled out the Register-Your-Interest form prior to finding out how to pre-order (see previous post).
I almost ignored it having already pre-ordered yesterday with an estimated ship date of May 10th.
But... I was curious as to what the current shipping estimates were.
Surprise! April 3rd! (Yes, I completed the order. Sorry if that offends anyone.)
So, now I'm wondering if maybe, I'm now actually in the first batch, or May 10th was just a wild safe guess, and now they are getting better estimates from the factory?
A list of expected ship dates are at eLinux: http://elinux.org/RPi_Shipping
I spoke too soon. As I was checking out the estimated ship date was April 3. The email I just received confirming my order has May 14th. A fairer but disappointing turn of events. :-)
Sorry to have wasted the reader's time.
To be fair to apple though (and I hate doing this :) they probably have enough server capacity to deal with the flood that the RasPi has generated...
Maybe not. I took me about 2 hours of refreshing before I was able to order an Apple TV today. The Apple store, even with the experience of several frenzied product launches, was not looking too good.