I also truly appreciate F-Trains organization and updates. I think F-Train, like me, perversely enjoys picking apart 'closed' systems like this in order to understand and find little tricks to get details, discover patterns and in addition, help others figure out what the heck is going on!
Personally, I really like peeking underneath the shinyn Apple veneer to get clues on how they think about these things.
It's such an interesting problem to try and understand:
You have a set processor design that you 'print' that contains what I imagine are a grid of maxed out Ultras, you investigate each printout and look for errors and then mark each item. Then you've got a little puzzle to reverse out to see what different processor types and configurations you can pull out of each of these little gridded prints. Maybe sometimes you get no maxed Ultras, so that's a wash, so you move on down the line. Maybe you could get two Maxes with 64GB, or maybe one with 64GB and one with 32GB out of one of those Ultras, maybe you allocate the whole thing to the stock configs. Or maybe they just get what they can based on order patterns and fulfill from there?
Then you take the possibilities and run that agains the fulfillment demands: Online Apple orders (stock orders versus custom orders), Apple retail store stock, Apple retail partner stock, global orders from different areas, custom orders from retail partners, orders that go to the UK, orders that go to asia, orders that go to the US and Canada and Mexico, South America, etc, all over the world and make sure you're balancing supply against the communities of Apple users everywhere, not to mention holding a portion of replacement products to send off to customers who get a bum unit.
And then you have to balance that against COVID restrictions, occasional civil unrest, air traffic, delivery partner requirements & timing, locations and regulations, import/export processes, random accidents, weather, etc.
Fascinating.
But also, v fast computer.
