On Thursday night West Coasters had the opportunity to sign into the Apple site and order their new iPads at 1:00 AM. I set my alarm but was tired and did not notice I set the alarm to PM not AM. So I did not order until about 3:00 AM. I ordered a 64 GIG (most people are) 3G model. By the time I was able to order the wait time for delivery - I wanted to get mine engraved - had jumped to about 7 business days - that means a delivery date of about March 22. When I woke up about 6:45 I logged in again and the wait time was 2-3 weeks.
The preliminary first day sales numbers were between 500-600,000 units. That is about double what the first version sold; pretty impressive. According to the Piper Jaffrey survey - 70% of the buyers were new to the platform - but there was also data that many of the buyers were upgrading. There was some commentary in the trades press that the release would stop the Motorola Xoom in its tracks. The Xoom has both Flash and Android software. I have not felt deprived of Flash but I have been interested in watching the Android platform develop on phones - it seems quite nifty.
In the afternoon I went to the USC Bookstore - which got the actual machines in at 5 PM - so got to hold one in my hand. The front camera is not great - low light capabilities seem to be more limited than the iPhone (by a lot) - but the heft of it is noticeably different than Gen 1. I suspect that it will be more comfortable to read with - although I found the original model quite good. The Bookstore did not have a cover (which I bought in my order) so I will be interested in seeing how that works. I bought the leather one. The White version of the iPad looks great (although I bought the black).
When I get one in my hot little hand I will offer a more substantive review.
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