I recently decided to buy an iPad. I will be going on vacation soon and later on in the year going to an industry trade show in Las Vegas. I normally travel with a laptop and an Amazon Kindle. I caught a debate on TV, Kindle vs iPad, and what got me interested was the final argument that you could sync your iPad to your Kindle account.
I posed a question on Facebook for any iPad users. Is it reasonable to think you can replace both a laptop and Kindle with an iPad while traveling. I got the answer back from my friend Dudley who is currently living in Shanghai, China. The answer is absolutely, he does it all the time. His final statement was that I would probably never use my Kindle again. That's a pretty strong statement from someone who has a 15 hour plane ride any time he comes back to the states.
Once the decision was made, the question is how to purchase it. I visited Best Buy to test drive one. Do they have one in stock? No. Can I reserve one? No. You have to call them every day to see if any have come in and get someone to put it away for you. Next, I called the Apple Store. After a dozen tries to get through the busy signals and automated answering system, I learned that the Apple Store has none in stock and also does not know when any are coming in. They would reserve one, if I had an Apple account, but could not guarantee delivery before my vacation in June.
So, I went online to set up my Apple account. While there, I saw that I could order the iPad online with a shipping time of 7-10 days. Doing the math, I could expect to get the iPad in time for my vacation. So, on May 16th I ordered the iPad and two accessories, the docking station and the camera input adapter. I got my acknowledgment that the docking station would ship immediately, the iPad delivery date was to be June 4th and the camera adapter would be delivered June 28th.
I got the docking station in two days, shipped from Carol Stream, IL. When I opened my email on May 27th, I saw an email from Apple advising me that the iPad was shipped on May 26th and gave me a tracking button to follow the shipment on Fedex. I clicked the button and saw that my iPad was currently in Anchorage, Alaska. Huh? Did it go in the wrong direction? Then, I scrolled down to see the shipment origin was Shenzhen, China. Who knew? Apple is shipping the iPads directly from China to the consumer. Anyway, the iPad spent a little over a day in Anchorage awaiting customs clearance, then screamed across the US. In a little over 8 hours, the iPad left Anchorage, had a two hour stop in Memphis and was on to Charlotte, arriving at 6:50AM Saturday morning May 29th. Now here on Memorial Day weekend, I am anxiously awaiting my iPad's delivery to me at the office on Tuesday.
Doing a little checking, I found out that this is routine for Apple. They also ship their Apple TV's directly from China. I've also found out that Apple is not alone in doing this. I have another Facebook friend who is currently awaiting delivery of his new Droid phone from China. My office supervisor's husband also has a Droid phone coming from China.
What does this mean for America? If this method of logistics catches on, it means that another whole level of the logistics chain is going offshore. The current method of delivery is to ship a container load of product to a fulfillment contractor in the US. When an order is placed, the fulfillment contractor pulls the item, labels it and ships it to the consumer. Now, even this basic function will be in another country along with the manufacturing and call centers. My only contact with an American on this purchase will be the Fedex driver next Tuesday.
My friends, this is a changed and changing world. Whatever you do for a living, don't think you will not be affected. If you can't do more, you will probably have to accept less. What part of your job can be done in China, or India, or in the case of my employer, Mexico. Our company moved most of it's manufacturing to Mexico ten years ago. And now, we have all of our IT, data processing functions and help desk located in Mexico. What few IT people we still have in the US are now independent contractors employed by EDS-Mexico.
Folks, our economy will never be the same. Look out for yourself. The government can't continue to bail everyone out or we will end up like Greece. Don't stop learning. Think about what you can do if your job goes away and get prepared for it.
