Whoops (revisited)

I was able to go for a walk after the storm passed - half an hour or so later.

The big whoops, though, belongs to Apple. In a message posted in the Apple Store, they said:

iMac Availability

Apple has stopped taking orders for the current iMac as we begin the transition from the current iMac line to an all-new iMac line which will be announced and available in September. We planned to have our next generation iMac ready by the time the inventory of current iMacs runs out in the next few weeks, but our planning was obviously less than perfect. We apologize for any inconvenience to our customers.

How often does Apple do something like that? Normally they never pre-announce anything, so this is odd on their part. Or is it? They've pretty much run out of iMacs in their inventory (I'm sure there are still some available in the Apple Stores, at distributors, and in 3rd party resellers), and there aren't any more coming over on the boat from Taiwan, so what's the harm in stating that there aren't any more on the way? Maybe now some of those would-be iMac buyers (and iMac sales have been fading as the current design is over two years old) will be steered into at worse the eMac (still available, and recently updated to hardware specs identical to the now-defunct iMac), and possibly the new lower-end PowerMac G5 systems or the iBook/PowerBook alternatives.

Worst case is that folks wait until September. Apple's moved pretty much all their existing inventory, so it shouldn't hurt their numbers this quarter too badly. And if the new line is on shelves by September, fall sales should be strong. Assuming "September" means "early September", then we're only looking at about two months or so of this being a problem.