[mattboardman]

>Do you think Tim Cook made a strategic error here, owing partially to his lack of understanding of the involvement of these processes?

Appeal to authority is just speculation at the end of the day. It's just as possible a brilliant CEO with tons of supply chain experience made a mistake or was forced into a bad decision.

>The fact that there are early obstacles and hurdles does not mean we should simply throw up our hands and say "whelp, looks like China is the only option, we have no choice but to stick there!".

Is anyone saying that?

>Because they have 50% rejection rates for iPhone casings at one particular manufacturing facility in India does not really imply anything other than teething issues with scaling up.

It does imply at the least that the processes Apple has used in other regions doesn't translate quickly. There are definitely additional questions raised. Is this a labor quality control issue? Procurement? Worse vendors? Or as you speculate, this is all part of the start-up process.