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Hurricane Sandy Fails To Stop Line For iPad Mini Launch

Posted by Soulskill on from the neither-rain-nor-sleet-nor-$30-adapter dept.

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."

9 of 103 comments (clear)

  1. Register article by ledow · · Score: 4, Informative

    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).

    1. Re:Register article by Anubis+IV · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Yeah, even the Apple rumor sites are reporting shorter lines. Which is to be expected, since the iPhone is much more popular than the iPad in terms of sales and there wasn't as much pent-up demand as what you'd see when you've waited a year to release a new product, but even so, I'm guessing it's less than what Apple was anticipating. It remains to be seen, however, just how this will reflect on total sales through the holiday season. It may very well be a little foreshadowing in the story.

    2. Re:Register article by ewrong · · Score: 5, Funny

      Yep these were the scenes of chaos outside Apple store Covent Garden this morning: https://twitter.com/mmalex/status/264296937665212417/photo/1/large

  2. People are stupid by bleh-of-the-huns · · Score: 4, Insightful

    That is the only possible answer.

    --
    I came, I conquered, I coredumped
  3. Re:Another DST bug? by ekgringo · · Score: 3, Informative

    Actually EDT is currently in use. Daylight Saving Time ends this Sunday, after which EST will be in effect.

  4. Re:This is very sad by squiggleslash · · Score: 3, Funny

    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.
  5. Can't blame 'em by Andrio · · Score: 3, Funny

    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.
  6. iPad Mini: be Apple's most profitable product ever by blind+biker · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.
  7. Re:stooopid editorializing by tlhIngan · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Batteries drain in storage, and I believe are usually shipped at 50% charge due to other issues with the stability of the batteries under shipping conditions.

    Although since the Apple store has power, they could take half of them out and pre-charge them to 100% and give the buyers a choice. Or the buyer could probably charge in the store.

    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.