AppleInsider noticed something peculiar about some build to orders iMacs, they went from a shipping estimate of one-to-three days to five-to-seven weeks. Specifically, the delay effects any iMac equipped with a 2TB hard drive. What’s going on?
The answer could lie with the floods in Thailand right now, as Thailand supplies a significant portion of the world’s supply of hard drives and the flood has stopped factories from manufacturing any more drives. AppleInsider noted that Tim Cook had expressed concern about the situation (as it pertains to hard drives), saying:
“It is something I’m concerned about. We do expect — I’m virtually certain there will be an overall industry shortage of disk drives as a result of the disaster. How it affects Apple, I’m not sure.”
Is the 2TB delay an instance of the shortages effecting Apple? It’s only the inevitable, right? No one knows for sure. What’s interesting is that these shipping delays for 2TB hard drives only affect the iMac (note: they don’t affect solid state drives at all). If you equip a Mac Pro with 2TB drives, shipping estimates remain at three-to-five days. [Apple Insider]