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Hurricane Sandy Fails To Stop Line For iPad Mini Launch
Nerval's Lobster writes "Hurricane Sandy may have plunged part of New York City into darkness, drowned its basements and subway tunnels in saltwater, and even set part of a neighborhood on fire, but it couldn't stop New Yorkers from standing in line for hours to purchase the iPad Mini. Hundreds of people lined up in front of Apple's Fifth Avenue store for the chance to get their hands on the 7.9-inch device. According to CNET, which was on the scene and running a live-blog ahead of the store's 10 AM EST opening, 'many people in line are not fluent in English and are either Asian immigrants or visitors.' That opening was originally supposed to take place at 8 AM, and likely delayed because of the obvious citywide transportation issues. But for those in New York City who manage to get their sweaty hands on a new iPad Mini, there's an unusual wrinkle in the situation: power is still out below 39th Street in Manhattan, as well as portions of Brooklyn and Queens. (Apple's Fifth Avenue store is well above that power line.) While some private homes and businesses in electrified areas have set out power strips for strangers to charge their phones, it's hard to imagine a crowd of New Yorkers standing idly by while someone spends a significant amount of time charging a new tablet. Fortunately, many of those without power have found refuge with friends and family, if they haven't left the city altogether."
According to The Reg, the reception in the UK was a little more lukewarm:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/11/02/ipad_mini_queue/
"UK iPad Mini FRENZY: Queues stretch SEVERAL FEET from till" (till = checkout).
That is the only possible answer.
I came, I conquered, I coredumped
of the next super-storm.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Actually EDT is currently in use. Daylight Saving Time ends this Sunday, after which EST will be in effect.
You have that backwards.
http://www.timeanddate.com/library/abbreviations/timezones/na/edt.html
EDT is 4 hours behind of Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) Note that EDT is a daylight saving time/summer time zone. It is generally only used during the summer in the places listed below, during the winter EST is used instead.
EST starts Sunday.
is all I'm sayin'
And how are they supposed to fix New York without the latest in technology to help them? What are you saying, they should use an ANDROID TABLET or something?
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
Exactly what do you think the average "wait in line to buy an ipad buyer" has too offer in terms of getting back on track?
It's not every day something as innovative as an 8" tablet comes out.
The Internet King? I wonder if he could provide faster nudity.
Looking at the specs of the iPad Mini: crappy dual-core CPU, crappy screen, 0.5 GB RAM, glued battery etc. and the fact that it's basically the iPad 2 shrunk, I came to the conclusion that this is a product on which Apple spent nearly 0 engineering and it is made from super-cheap components. In other words, at US$ 330 for the cheapest model and a whopping US$ 530 for the 32 GB model, Apple is going to make a fucking profit genocide! This goes beyond printing money, this is like stealing candy from toddlers, except the candy is made from platinum.
From a purely profit POV, this might very well be Apple's most successful product, ever.
Sadly!
"The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam" - Japanese ministry official.
Actually, Apple's products don't tend to sit on shelves - from manufacture to the time it's sold, it'll probably be around a week, and most of it has been just waiting for the pallet to fill up, waiting for the shipper it pick it up, shipping it from China to the warehouse in the US, then distributing it out from there.
If you go by date codes, the whole process can easily be as little as 4 days (same week) to basically "last week". Since iPads and iPhones don't normally linger on shelves too long, Apple charges them up all the way so the user can use it immediately.
The 40% charge is a shipment charge for products that move slower as it's been empirically determined that it ages the batteries the slowest.
It's actually sort of unusual to find an Apple product out of the box that doesn't have 95+% charge. They just don't sit on shelves that long.
Apparently, being overdrawn at the bank didn't stop them either.
When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
Hate to get in the way of a good Apple-bashing but I wanted to say two things.
> it's hard to imagine a crowd of New Yorkers standing idly by while
> someone spends a significant amount of time charging a new tablet.
They come from the factory fully charged, or close to.
And, unrelated to the story in particular, mine arrived this morning and I'm very happy with it so far. Ever since tablets were first on the horizon (post-iPhone and Kindle but pre-everything else) I always wanted one the size of a paperback. When the iPad came out, I thought it was too big. Tried it, didn't care for it much. I bought one to do a bit of testing and development on and figured I'd see if I grew to like it. I didn't, and sold it a few months later. (I bought a refurbished iPad 1 shortly after the 2 came out, so it was cheap, and I sold it for not much of a loss -- basically I rented it for like $8 a month which wasn't bad since it was for work.)
I ordered the Mini as soon as I could and it arrived this morning and it's great. It's a great size and very light. The screen, while not retina, is still good -- we were all happy with our old iPhones before the 4 came along, right? :-)
It's not for everyone but for a lot of people it will be very appealing.
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