Apple 'Stalling' in Replenishing Reseller Stocks of Apple TV as Shortages Hit Apple Retail
While shortages of the Apple TV at numerous high-profile resellers have been documented for weeks and part numbers indicating an update alongside the iPad 3 next week have been revealed, AppleInsider now notes that Apple has specifically been stalling in delivering promised shipments of the device to resellers.
For three consecutive weeks, the Cupertino-based company has failed to make good on its promissory to restock indirect channel partners with fresh inventory of the existing $99 Apple TV product, say people familiar with matter.
Instead, partners and channel members have seen Apple push back deliveries each consecutive week by one additional week -- a practice that almost always foreshadows a formal discontinuation of a product ahead of new models.
Even Apple's own stores are beginning to see shortages of the device as Apple draws down supplies ahead of the refresh. While the company's online store is still reflecting an "in stock" status, those customers opting for the in-store pickup option will find that many Apple retail stores are currently out of stock.
For those locations currently out of stock of the Apple TV, the company can still ship orders to the stores for pickup, but even those shipments are starting to see extended timeframes. While U.S. stores east of the Mississippi could generally have an Apple TV ordered today available for pickup by March 3, delays increase moving farther west across the country. Stores in the middle of the country are showing availability on March 6, while those in the Southwest and Southern California are citing March 7 availability and those in the Pacific Northwest down to the Bay Area can't promise availability until March 8.
Apple's iPad 3 media event is scheduled for next Wednesday, March 7, and it appears that the updated Apple TV set-top box will be making an appearance at that time.
Popular Stories
Apple has announced it will be holding a special event on Tuesday, May 7 at 7 a.m. Pacific Time (10 a.m. Eastern Time), with a live stream to be available on Apple.com and on YouTube as usual. The event invitation has a tagline of "Let Loose" and shows an artistic render of an Apple Pencil, suggesting that iPads will be a focus of the event. Subscribe to the MacRumors YouTube channel for more ...
Apple has dropped the number of Vision Pro units that it plans to ship in 2024, going from an expected 700 to 800k units to just 400k to 450k units, according to Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo. Orders have been scaled back before the Vision Pro has launched in markets outside of the United States, which Kuo says is a sign that demand in the U.S. has "fallen sharply beyond expectations." As a...
Apple today released several open source large language models (LLMs) that are designed to run on-device rather than through cloud servers. Called OpenELM (Open-source Efficient Language Models), the LLMs are available on the Hugging Face Hub, a community for sharing AI code. As outlined in a white paper [PDF], there are eight total OpenELM models, four of which were pre-trained using the...
Apple is finally planning a Calculator app for the iPad, over 14 years after launching the device, according to a source familiar with the matter. iPadOS 18 will include a built-in Calculator app for all iPad models that are compatible with the software update, which is expected to be unveiled during the opening keynote of Apple's annual developers conference WWDC on June 10. AppleInsider...
The upcoming iOS 17.5 update for the iPhone includes only a few new user-facing features, but hidden code changes reveal some additional possibilities. Below, we have recapped everything new in the iOS 17.5 and iPadOS 17.5 beta so far. Web Distribution Starting with the second beta of iOS 17.5, eligible developers are able to distribute their iOS apps to iPhone users located in the EU...
Top Rated Comments
You're dreaming! :D
I'd like some more apps. Maybe BBC iPlayer etc.
No - it needs to be the same size, so that I can replace it without my wife noticing!
----------
As far as I know - this is what makes it such A Great Thing.
Just make it have 1080p and i will have one.
Surely Apple needs to expand their iTunes in the Cloud functionality to include the re-download of movies.
Once this is added, being able to stream purchased movies on the appleTV from your account, got to be the logical step to take.
No need to have a computer running, or hard-drive spaced filled with movies.
Obviously though, this is entirely down to licensing issues.
Apple definitely did include a hard drive in the first generation for local storage. And a jailbreak solution with that generation made it possible to turn the USB port linked to a much bigger hard drive into a large, local repository of iTunes media. For many, they could turn those computers off because all the video they had could be stored there.
And by the way, the second generation has a USB port too (but it is not unlocked for that local storage use).
Good for you and using the streaming from central storage hooked to a computer makes great sense for you. Not everyone is you though. Some have 1 :apple:TV hooked to 1 television. They would like the OPTION of storing their media on it so that they can enjoy that media when the computer is turned off and/or when the computer is away from the home. Giving them that option makes the device more appealing to more people so that Apple can sell more.
You don't want that option? Don't use it. But it's not wrong for others to want that option even though you don't. In my own situation, I'd love that flexibility and take great advantage of it. I still have generation 1 somewhat because the local storage is useful to me.