Ah, the Product Shipping Delay: plot device #11, and an old standby used almost as often in Apple-flavored melodramas as sitcoms rely on Feckless Landlord Overhears Part of a Tenant's Conversation Which Leads To a Great Misunderstanding About Carnal Activity, or They Almost Make It Off the Island But Dimwit In Stupid Hat Ruins Everything At the Last Minute. If you're not a total newbie to the Apple world, you're all too aware that product demand often far outstrips supply, leading to statistically high incidences of frustration, emotional trauma, and ritual suicide among Apple's existing and potential customers. But how often is it actually Apple's fault?

No, seriously, think about it for a minute: Apple's biggest product delays of the past twelve months have all been attributed to shortages of third-party components. And there have been a lot of delays; consider how long it took for Apple to get the original Power Mac G5 out the door in any real volume following its announcement last summer. When that happened, we figured it was no big whoop; after all, it was a brand new chip and a whole new Mac architecture, and some delays were bound to creep in. Little did we know it would get to be a habit. The Xserve didn't go G5 for months and months, and once it did, it suffered a formal monthlong shipping delay. Meanwhile, the speed-bumped incarnation of the Power Mac was expected months before it finally surfaced, and dual-2.5 GHz units didn't ship for months more, as long-suffering preorderers received emailed ship-date "reassignments" again and again. And guess what? It was all IBM's fault. Yup, Big Blue couldn't squeeze out the silicon, so Apple and its customers got smacked down on G5-based products again and again.

Meanwhile, what about the Apple delay that the public really noticed? iPod minis have traditionally been about as easy to grab hold of as a leprechaun on meth and dipped in Crisco; sure, demand for the lil' suckers has been thirty shades of crazy, but it's clear that Apple hadn't been cranking out nearly as many as it needed to in order to keep the riots and looting to a reasonable level. You may recall that Apple even had to postpone the product's international introduction by three whole months, which led to a couple of border skirmishes and at least one formal declaration of war. True, nothing ever came of it because the countries involved finally went with the full-size iPod instead, but still. And was any of this Apple's fault? Nope; Hitachi couldn't crank out teensy hard drives fast enough, so Apple got stuck with a zillion driveless minis just sitting around twiddling their Click Wheels.

Well, chalk up one more delay: remember the gargantuan 30-inch Apple Cinema Display that Apple unveiled recently? Maybe not, because "recently" is relative; it's now been over two months since the product was introduced, and despite Apple's initial claim that it'd be "available in August," we're now a week into September and it's still a no-show. And guess whose fault it is this time? That's right, "not Apple's." According to The Inquirer, Apple has the displays piled up on the loading dock and is "raring to go," but NVIDIA just hasn't been able to produce enough-- or, in fact, any-- of those surfboard-sized GeForce 6800 Ultra DDL graphics cards needed to drive them. So much for Apple's promise that "this card will be available for Mac only in August 2004."

So if all of Apple's product delays are due to third-party component shortages, the solution seems obvious: Apple should build all of its components itself. C'mon, how hard can it be? Keep cranking on the software development and hardware design, but occasionally whip up a few hard drives, slap together a graphics card or two, and cook up a batch of 90-nanometer G5s whenever no one's using the microwave in the employee lounge. Piece o' cake.

Then again, IBM is reportedly this close to getting G5 yields up to scratch, Hitachi is upping its drive production something fierce (minis are already a lot more findable, and DigiTimes reports that Apple has just signed up a second mini manufacturer in anticipation of the increased supply of drives), and Mac OS Rumors hints that now that NVIDIA's dropped the ball, ATI may be picking it up and running with it, with its own 30-incher-compatible DDL card coming to the Apple Store "as soon as October." So we suppose it'll all work out in the end.

If it doesn't, we blame Motorola.