Apple intentionally limiting stock of shuffles?

People have been getting shuffles long before it said they were going to ship (see other posts on this board). I would think that you will have your order shipped before it says. Online stores always overestimate the time taken for these things in order to avoid people complaining. What would be more annoying, it saying your order would be shipped in a week and then recieving it in two weeks or recieveing your order on time?

Also demand really was huge for these things. The servers for the Apple store were overloaded and these aren't cheap geocities servers these are big professional servers for a major online store. The traffic would have had to be into the tens of thousands at least.

I read on another forum that Apple was and should be more prepared for this kind of demand. Remember what happened with the mini? But people are right about Apple overestimating the shipping time because mine was on or before 1/20 and mine was sent out on the 14th.
I also live near Apple, in Cupertino. I thought about heading over to the Valley Fair store but even if they had a shuffle I highly doubt I would've been able to get my hands on one.

It would be smart to deliberately limit the supply of shuffles. Sure, consumers would hate it if they found out they were doing it for sure, but the demand can make news headlines, and that equates into higher demand, which means more orders.

So far I think they aren't doing too bad as far as shipping out iPod shuffle orders. They could have waited until the 22nd, when everything else from the expo will be availible, have much more immediate supply.

look guys, at Macworld the products announced either have ship dates a few weeks off or are shipping in limited quantities. they NEVER had a huge supply on hand because then the chance for a product to "leak" (for example if all Apple stores had gotten product one of them would have slipped and someone would have put a pic on the internet etc.)

i think people are unreasonable to think a product should be available just because it is announced, MANY products are announced before they are ready to ship, and many products ship in limited quantities initially. the simple truth is if 100,000+ shuffles were ready to go day 1 there would have been NO suprise and no hype.

the shuffles will sell, you'll be ####ed but you won't care in the long run, you'll get one anyway. and by peak sales periods late this year for christmas you'll be able to buy these things everywhere, target, best buy, walmart you name it.