4 years of development time, 1 year of production to build inventory projected to last 6 months or something.
Take pre-orders a few weeks in advance, then everyone can have it day 1. No scalpers reselling them on eBay for 10 times the cost. No stampede at Apple stores because they already have a few weeks of inventory.
The accelerated product cycle is why you have awful launches like consoles. The product is barely finished and rushed into production in time for Christmas. There's not time to build the actual units. Slow down a bit and you can solve that problem.
Let's put it into perspective. A11 had 3x less bandwidth, 5x less flops, node that's a lot worse(since then we had N7, N7P, N6, N5 and it's many variations). Such big leaps are problematic in terms of project management. Just ask C++11 people. Or Intel, with their EUV nodes. Or anybody else who decided to shoot to the moon. Having intermediate deliverables has an immense value on its own. I'd argue that we are getting much better phones this way than we would have otherwise.
All of those ‘bad’ thing in launches serve a marketing purpose. Scarcity makes consumers think something is in demand. Additionally, every day of stockpiled inventory costs money.
Yes, artificial scarcity and the accompanying artificially high prices are a bad thing for consumers, in all situations.
Inventory in a warehouse does not have the kind of cost you think it does. Most of the "cost" people talk about are hypothetical profits that a different product occupying that space might generate in the same time. The real costs are insurance and warehouse leases. Per unit, it's almost nothing.
A company like Apple could easily stockpile months worth of inventory and never even notice the real physical cost of storing it.
If you think there's no value to present money flows, I'd love to take $1MM from you. I'll pay it back later, so there's literally no cost to you, right?
Opportunity costs, or any other "virtual" cost, are still meaningful figures.
