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3g speculation about why the ship is so late.

S

stev

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Mar 25, 2010
14
0
so, i wonder why apple decided to preview 4.0 right after the WiFi version ships, but before the 3G version ships. is it possible that there is unannounced hardware in the 3G version, which will become obvious when a user gets it (like a camera?) that may not work initially, but will when 4.0 ships?

this would help explain why 10$ in parts warrants a 130$ price increase.

i just wonder about the timing of the 4.0 announcement.
 
they would have show os 4.0 in march but since os 3.2 was in beta apple wanted developers to work on that instead of 4.0
 
stev said:
so, i wonder why apple decided to preview 4.0 right after the WiFi version ships, but before the 3G version ships. is it possible that there is unannounced hardware in the 3G version, which will become obvious when a user gets it (like a camera?) that may not work initially, but will when 4.0 ships?

this would help explain why 10$ in parts warrants a 130$ price increase.

i just wonder about the timing of the 4.0 announcement.
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doubtful, IMO. $130 could also include a subsidy to AT&T for the contract-less 3g feature. if they suddenly added a new feature like a camera, you think a few people might be pissed? plus on the apple website they would have to include that material fact, since they are already taking orders for the 3g model.
 
I'm not expecting Apple to make the slightest announcement tomorrow as to when the 3G will be released. This is just marketing, people. Those of us waiting for our 3G units are extremely antsy and that leads to impulse purchases. Apple's making plenty of money from the app store, so this is a logical marketing tactic on their part.

The announcement of OS4.0 does not surprise me either. After Apple finally allowed the reviews to be published, it was clear what the faults of the iPad were. Every single review mentions the lack of multi-tasking and lack of flash support. We know Apple isn't going to change their mind about flash any time soon, but they can silence all of those negative reviews about multi-tasking by simply announcing that they will allow it with an update later this summer. How many people do you think will then jump ship and buy one that were previously on the edge? A TON!

I have to say that Apple is a marketing genius. I might not like it all the time, but their business model is very sound and profitable.
 
I'm guessing it has more to do with the production run more than anything else. They probably started wifi production well before the event when it was first shown and the order process started. If you remember, they did not secure the AT&T deal until shortly before the event. So until a provider(s) was secured it would be silly to produce a 3G version. Thus setting them back a few weeks in order to generate adequate inventory.
 
The 3G is not "late." It's on schedule - approx 30 days after the WiFi launch. To suggest it's "late" is factually wrong.

I don't think the iPhone OS preview has anything to do with the 3G hardware or lanuch. It's just a matter of timing. Apple wanted to focus on the iPad launch, but now that that is done it needs to get 4.0 to devs. Occam's Razor my friend. Occam's Razor.
 
Chupa Chupa said:
The 3G is not "late." It's on schedule - approx 30 days after the WiFi launch. To suggest it's "late" is factually wrong.

I don't think the iPhone OS preview has anything to do with the 3G hardware or lanuch. It's just a matter of timing. Apple wanted to focus on the iPad launch, but now that that is done it needs to get 4.0 to devs. Occam's Razor my friend. Occam's Razor.
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I am interpreting late to mean why was the 3g version not released the same day as the wifi to begin with.
 
I think they are waiting for approval from the FCC since it is using 3g they need permission to have it enter the market. They probably estimated the date end of April but I am willing to bet it will ship appx 3rd week in April or sooner maybe. I ordered the keyboard dock March 12th, and they have already prepared that for shipment and it was slated for Late APRIL yet it is being prepared now. Maybe with luck mid April we will see some going out.
 
WizardHunt said:
I think they are waiting for approval from the FCC since it is using 3g they need permission to have it enter the market. They probably estimated the date end of April but I am willing to bet it will ship appx 3rd week in April or sooner maybe. I ordered the keyboard dock March 12th, and they have already prepared that for shipment and it was slated for Late APRIL yet it is being prepared now. Maybe with luck mid April we will see some going out.
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I'm thinking/hoping the same thing. I received my iPad dock today from FedEx and tomorrow, UPS will be delivering the keyboard dock - which had an original late April ship date.

@bluehaze013 - Apple cannot sell/allow for pre-orders of an FCC regulated device unless it has approval already. In other words, pre-order availability = FCC approval.
 
Eye4Desyn said:
I'm thinking/hoping the same thing. I received my iPad dock today from FedEx and tomorrow, UPS will be delivering the keyboard dock - which had an original late April ship date.

@bluehaze013 - Apple cannot sell/allow for pre-orders of an FCC regulated device unless it has approval already. In other words, pre-order availability = FCC approval.
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They can't sell it but people can pre order to their hearts content... Pre-order is not a sale. People do it all the time, hell some companies even sell pre orders for concepts that aren't even being developed yet. When you pre order your not buying the actual product your essentially purchasing a place in line to buy that product and in Apples case no money even changes hands so it's not a sale of anything...it's simply a promise to buy from yourself and a promise to sell from them that either side can get out of up until the product is available and an actual sale takes place.
 
bluehaze013 said:
They can't sell it but people can pre order to their hearts content... Pre-order is not a sale. People do it all the time, hell some companies even sell pre orders for concepts that aren't even being developed yet. When you pre order your not buying the actual product your essentially purchasing a place in line to buy that product and in Apples case no money even changes hands so it's not a sale of anything...it's simply a promise to buy from yourself and a promise to sell from them that either side can get out of up until the product is available and an actual sale takes place.
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Eye4Desyn is right. The FCC docs became available very shortly after both models became available for pre-sale. Both had already been approved at that time.
 
I'm thinking it's just a production issue. They made plenty of iPad Wi-Fi's, but they want to make sure plenty of iPad 3G's are available at launch. I'm hoping Apple might say something tomorrow.

I'm on the fence for Wi-Fi or 3G. 3G is a nice thing to have, but it's not a necessity since the iPhone 3G has 3G. :) If AT&T did tethering for iPhone, I would've gone Wi-Fi on Saturday when I saw a bunch in stock at a nearby Apple Store.

As far as the whole 30 days / 60 days announcement. The iPad Wi-Fi was supposed to ship about 3/28 (60 days since announcement on 1/27), but it wasn't released til Saturday 4/3. The iPad 3G might ship about 4/26 (90 days since announcement). Because 4/26 is a Monday and not a Friday or Saturday, it will either be released 5/1 or 4/24. To make it seem like a solid 30 days since the WiFi release, it'll probably be Saturday May 1st, 2010.
 
stev said:
is it possible that there is unannounced hardware in the 3G version, which will become obvious when a user gets it (like a camera?) that may not work initially, but will when 4.0 ships?
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Do you really think they would include an unannounced camera, or any other unannounced hardware feature, in the 3G version only, after already selling hundreds of thousands of the wifi version? That would be PR suicide. Apple already learned that lesson with the iPhone price drop/refund.
 
Wirelessly posted (iPhone: Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 3_1_3 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/528.18 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0 Mobile/7E18 Safari/528.16)

sanPietro98 said:
Is it possible that the 3G iPad will ship with OS4.0? It's a stretch, but is it possible that they wanted to hold the media event before shipping these out?
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No
 
iPhone OS 4.0 will be released in June/July alongside the updated iPhone handset. Naturally, iPhone OS 4.0 will also be released as iPod touch 4.0 and iPad OS 4.0 on the same day. That's gonna be a bad update day since everyone will be trying to download the update at once. :D
 
i understand that the likelihood of apple introducing any new hardware is not high. adding a camera to the 3g would be dangerous, since a lot of wifi people would get pissed off.

OTOH, at this point, i dont think apple is just throwing things out there when they have a free moment. i imagine that the decision for today's OS 4.0 announcement was made weeks ago, and i wonder why they did not hold it until after the 3G model ships. things are already buzzing pretty well, so keeping their name in the news cycle doesnt seem likely. after the touch came out without a camera, they didnt comment (and still havent, as far as i know) about it since, so i dont necessarily agree with the idea that this was planned to deal with criticisms about what the ipad has or does not have in regard to various features.

two weeks ago, alot of people got ramped up when the billing for the wifi versions started hitting credit cards, and the 3g versions were also "preauthorized". when i called the apple automated order tracking system, it told me that my 3g ipad was "prepared for shipment", even though the online page listed it as "not shipped yet". when i checked a few days later, it would not provide me a status directly, but immediately shuffled me off to an operator. i found this really interesting.

as some else noted (maybe it was on another thread) apple has a pretty tightly run organization. i think that there will be something in this announcement that will effect the 3g ipad. i am probably wrong, but i think that the 3G ipads have been in a dock in SHENZHEN CN since the end of march, waiting for something else to happen.

oh, well, not long to wait now before the OS announcement starts, and then i will either look pretty clueful or pretty clueless, which is actually the only time i hear the word pretty directed at me . . . . .
 
3g is "late" because it's a more complicated product to build and roll out, and they didn't want to hold up the wifi model unnecessarily. This allowed them to start building sooner, which allowed them to get them boxed up and distributed sooner, which allowed those who want wifi models to buy them sooner. A lot of the manufacturing capacity that was making wifi models six weeks ago is now making 3g models. Somebody somewhere is putting 3g models in boxes right now for shipping.

The 3g model has hardware, software and marketing differences and also has an external dependency on AT&T to be ready.

If you know anything about product launches, there is no mystery here. And as for the price difference, I imagine the biggest factor isn't how much the additional parts cost, the biggest factor is probably how much they think people will pay. Although fyi, the parts alone would understate the true cost to Apple, which needed engineering, industrial design, marketing, business development in collaboration with AT&T to get this done.
 
wombat888 said:
3g is "late" because it's a more complicated product to build and roll out, and they didn't want to hold up the wifi model unnecessarily. This allowed them to start building sooner, which allowed them to get them boxed up and distributed sooner, which allowed those who want wifi models to buy them sooner. A lot of the manufacturing capacity that was making wifi models six weeks ago is now making 3g models. Somebody somewhere is putting 3g models in boxes right now for shipping.
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well, all this would make more sense if they had not announced all the AT&T stuff on launch day. i suppose it is possible that there was a lot of work left to do for the 3G version, but they did manage to get them both to the FCC at the same time (at least it appears so), but even if they were short run prototypes, they have to have had everything settled, since the FCC wont allow for substantial changes (or so i understand).

If you know anything about product launches, there is no mystery here.
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i have lived thru a bunch of product launches, although from a software only perspective, although i have also had the pleasure of dealing with network hardware that was "hand" built.

And as for the price difference, I imagine the biggest factor isn't how much the additional parts cost, the biggest factor is probably how much they think people will pay. Although fyi, the parts alone would understate the true cost to Apple, which needed engineering, industrial design, marketing, business development in collaboration with AT&T to get this done.
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i tend to agree on these points. careful leaks about what might come are very effective for judging what people will pay for what features (and what they will get excited about in the first place.). apple certainly has raised this to an art form. i am sure that 130$ was the best place to price the option, and it seems reasonable that AT&T might be getting a small piece of that action for agreeing to the contract free ride (as others have suggested).

as i said, i am probably wrong about something in 4.0 causing the delay in the shipment of the 3g version. but based on SJ's fascination with timing and showmanship, i still began to wonder about the order of events.
 
there waiting for the 14day return policy to pass on the wifi ipads then apple will release the 3g model.

thats what im thinking
 
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