From what we know - and I sure wish we knew more - the holdup seems to be with the production process. Well, at least how long it is taking before they give final approval.

I think it is around a month now that we’ve been told that firmware is not a gating issue and that the hardware testing on fixes has been good. We know they did a small batch on regular assembly lines that seemed to have gone well. We know that they then began a larger batch to test last week, I believe. Well, at least the week before that they said that was the plan. We don’t know what day it may have actually begun so it could have been Monday or at the very end of that week. We are waiting to hear how that went.

We still don’t know how many such batch tests they’ll do or how long they’ll test each one, assuming testing stays good.

So, until they make another update that addresses these questions, we’re kinda stuck. It does seem like a long time for this assembly process to be locked down. Are there problems getting QC good enough? Or are they being too picky? Or are they building up inventory for a massive shipment? No idea.

There has also been some theorizing that WWDC may have been a factor as they may have wanted to be sure they were ready for any OS changes. That, if it is an issue, should be addressed in any update they give.

In about 11 more hours, it will have been a week since the last update. Personally, I think that should be the longest time between updates, but I can sorta accept weekly, but not necessarily every 7 days. That would take us through to Saturday night. I really hope for something much sooner than that. But what I hope for and what we get usually won’t match up.