Tim Cook Would Have Preferred to Announce the New iMac in January
During the Q&A portion of today's earnings call, Apple CEO Tim Cook was asked about the number of product releases in the fall of 2012 and whether he wished Apple had done things differently.
His answer was somewhat revealing, as Apple is usually hesitant to disclose internal discussions and deliberations, but Cook said that looking back, he would have delayed the release of the new iMac until 2013 to avoid some of the delays that many customers experienced after ordering a new Mac.
I don't spend a lot of time looking back except to learn from it. If we could run it over, I'd announce the iMac after the turn of the year. We felt customers had to wait too long for that specific product.
Apple's new iMacs, first announced in October, experienced significant delays in shipping, presumably due to the thinness of the machine. The displays required a new manufacturing process along with advanced welding techniques, causing some customers to wait for weeks before receiving their orders.
During Apple's Q1 earnings call, Tim Cook admitted that the iMac was constrained for the entire quarter, resulting in a "significant shortage".
The above quote is from a rough transcript of the earnings call
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Top Rated Comments
How long ago was Maps released? Why are people still complaining about Maps? It's not even a big deal. Don't like it, download one of the other billion map applications.
My 2009 is still running perfectly as well.
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But it wasn't. Supplies were significantly constrained. But let's just keep attacking anybody that isn't Jobs :rolleyes:
I completely agree with you, Apple seems to be getting rather OCD about shaving off another 0.Xmm just for the sake of it, which is completely unnecessary on a desktop. When was the last time you heard anyone say "I wish my iMac was thinner"...?
It's pretty ridiculous too that they have to use an expensive and slower mobile CPU and GPU just so they can save a few millimetres... I'm pretty sure they wouldn't loose any sales by having perhaps an internal PCI slot with the GPU in, which would have fitted in the older aluminium design no problem. How about user-upgradable RAM too? What happened to that?
Definition of a product that's ready to go: I click order, and they assemble it and ship it to me in a reasonable amount of time (under three months). It was not "ready to go."
There's more to releasing a product that you want to sell than designing it. You need to be able to supply it to the customers who buy it.
It was a mistake to announce it before it was ready to ship in any quantity. Glad he owned up to it.