That seems like a senseless process. Considering the ginormous cost of EVERYTHING hardware related in Australia, you'd think the sales divisions of these companies would understand that releasing them to the US or UK first would make more sense. Then again, I guess when you can't supply even 30 of them over the course of two weeks, the anger from a lack of supply would probably create an undesirable backlash anyhow.
No offense to you, I realize it's just your job, but I think we ought to stick to stories that cover the release of products people can actually obtain. I don't know about anybody else but I'm not terribly enthusiastic about paying extra shipping and any other duties they may tack on, for the privilidge of waiting what looks to be about a month out for delivery. TBH, I rather wish I'd not read the article now, so I wouldn't feel disenchanted by the fact that I'm probably unlikely to see one of these anytime soon.
At the very least it might be prudent to not headline a product review like this with "shipping next week", unless they are actually shipping the following week. I'm not having much faith in the "preorder and stand in line" aspect either, since as I said, the numbers on RAMcity have been unchanged, 15 on backorder, 30 expected mid August, since they day you released the article. Seems like if orders were being made and fullfilled, there would be some fluctuation in those numbers at some point. I've been checking multiple times daily for a week. No change, at all.
Props for the article, just wish it was something I could actually purchase, rather than pay for and then hope to see eventually. I really dislike these type of single vendor endeavors. Make your product, built some stock up, then release, when you can actually fulfill orders. Since RAMcity is the only vendor currently taking orders on these, it certainly can't be due to the fulfillment being spread around. If they can't fulfill 15 pieces over the course of two weeks, something's wrong. Even the GTX 1070 and 1080 supply issues were up and down, rather than just non-existent.
Ok, rant over. Thanks for the extra info anyhow.