Back in the ’90s, when I actually logged some time at a campus Apple reseller, the Apple supply chain was ridiculously poor, due to its unpredictability and the occasional ridiculous lack of availability of basic accessories. Often our academic customers would spend their hard-earned grant money on complete Apple systems only to receive them 3-4 months later; or they would receive CPUs without monitors or keyboards (or vise – versa).  This more often than not left us playing russian roulette with the Apple ordering system and them steaming at having disappointing out-of-box experiences.

Apple’s Bluetooth Keyboard and Mouse combination is still fairly unique to the industry as an OEM option,but customers just the same are likely fairly accustomed to ordering their PCs and receiving all of the parts required to operate it at more-or-less the same time. Now that Apple is drop-shipping straight from China many of its iMacs, Minis, PowerBooks, and Mac Pros the logistics of having these, the AppleCare certificates, and the accessories (some of which still originate in the US) arrive at the same time are clearly difficult, and at present all of the conflicting arrivals are creating some laughable deliveries.

We’re no exception. Our new demo PC is a Mac Mini 2.0GHz, and we hurriedly unboxed it yesterday and hooked it up to our 47″ 1080p display. Nice. But … oops … no keyboard and mouse. I returned to my order sheet to see if I’d remembered to get one, and noticed that the ship date for our wireless keyboard and mouse bundle is not until September 19 (ship date for the Mini was August 14 — straight outta Shenzen).

Clearly they must have had an unexpected run on these, likely due to the new iMacs, but is your backstock of these so limited that one spike can bog down the whole supply line? Or are we in store for another notorious Apple event: the mysterious product revision?

Probably not. Just seems like even after 10+ years of direct sales, Apple still can’t quite get it right. In the meantime, we’ll control the Mini from our MacBook Pros (thanks again VNC). If this had gone to some ordinary punter then he who need only be called Steve might’ve ruined Back-To-School.