Those of you who ordered at the end of pre-order selling period in August should have received our email with an update that your order will be fulfilled by the end of November, rather than October as was advertised in August. I understand that this is disappointing news, and if you would like a refund, all you need to do is file a request
here. (A note about refund requests, they are always processed as soon as we receive them, but your bank may take several days to post the credit.)
Now, for some news about what's going on with Joule.
We are still in the accelerating phase of manufacturing, which means we've been going up from hundreds per day to a much bigger number. Doing this requires that everything gets a bit more efficient each day; and not just for final assembly, but across our entire supply chain. Excluding the components on the printed circuit board assembly (which has hundreds of parts), Joule has 51 parts and 47 of them are entirely custom designed and fabricated for us by several specialist sub-suppliers. Some of these parts are pushing technical limits of manufacturing processes, which means that from time-to-time a supplier is going to stumble, which will slow down the acceleration of manufacturing.
None of this is unexpected per se, but it's impossible to predict who will stumble, on what, and how long it will take to resolve an issue that is holding back a higher production rate for that part. We knew this going in, and we made the best forecast we could with our suppliers, then we added reasonable allowances for delays, but those allowances weren't enough.
All of our suppliers are fantastic, and our critical suppliers are the best in the world at what they do and are used to working closely with companies as demanding as Apple for quality and excellence. We make the same demands, and we support them by taking the time to work together to make sure they can do their best work and serve us well for the long haul. Sometimes this means slowing down long enough to resolve something we don't think is good enough for you, our customers.
Everyone across our supply chain is committed to Joule; for them, their work on Joule is a point of pride. We are all disappointed by the delays, and those who needed to stepped up and worked through the Chinese National holiday during the first week of October. Production continues at a seven-days per week pace, and our manufacturing rate continues to accelerate every day. We're all doing all that we can to ship every Joule sold before Thanksgiving. If there are no major stumbles, that will happen. If there are, a few of you will be unhappy—and for that I am very sorry. What I remain confident in is that you’ll be delighted by Joule.
