Apple opened orders for three new products last Friday. 72-hours later, some are harder to get than others. Apple Insider ran a report midday Friday saying that shipping times had already slipped for iPhone 12 mini, iPhone 12 Pro max and HomePod mini. I can tell you, most of what they said for the U.S. is no longer accurate, though I did that thing I usually do - looked at the devices I would order as a sort of example case.
As of Sunday evening - iPhone 12 Pro Max - Pacific Blue, 128GB, unlocked was showing delivery between 1 December - 8 December. Get the same phone with AT&T as your carrier, and you can still have it this Friday 13 November. Choose Sprint and you’re looking at 25 November - 1 December. Same date range for T-Mobile - not surprising since they're the same company now. And finally, going Verizon goes back to this week - people who pulled the trigger on the same model Sunday evening would be staring into their giant new phones this Friday 13 November.
Now, changing from Pacific Blue does change availability - at least for the unlocked phones. Graphite, 128, unlocked 12 Pro Max shows a shipping range of 25 November through 1 December. You get the same date range for Silver, though Gold looks to be nearly as popular as Pacific Blue at this point. As of Sunday evening - iPhone 12 Pro Max - Gold, 128GB, unlocked was showing delivery between 1 December - 8 December.
Turning to the mini and, again, doing my less than exhaustive check - Looking at locked or unlocked, 64GB or 128GB, Blue or (Product)RED models - those configurations ordered Sunday evening in the states would have your teeny-tiny phone in your suddenly gargantuan seeming hands this Friday 13 November. I didn't do the checks of various carriers on those, because... I didn't.
With fewer configurations from which to choose, sizing up HomePod mini availability is easier. Trying to buy a Space Gray model Sunday evening would have you listening sometime between 2 December and 10 December. That's pushed out a day from Friday afternoon when the range had already slipped from 1 December through 8 December. And God bless it, people are finally settling for the white HomePod mini. When I checked Friday afternoon, ship times were still in the first-round range of 17 November through 20 November. As of Sunday evening, that had moved a bit. Leading into today, white HomePod minis were showing a shipping range between 24 November and 3 December.
While I’ve not ventured into the Online Stores for other countries, another piece from Apple Insider had some crazy sounding wait times for HomePod mini on Friday afternoon. They saw the same thing I did for the U.S. on Friday - a 2-3 wait time for Space Gray and no wait for White. The wait for Space Gray was a bit longer in other countries, clocking 3-4 weeks in the UK, Canada, and France. The craziest wait, though, was in Germany. On Friday afternoon, “a newly-ordered Space Gray HomePod mini [would] not arrive for between 6 and 7 weeks.” That wasn’t the crazy wait. The crazy wait was for the white one, which had a wait time of 7-8 weeks.