It had all the makings of a typical release of a new Apple products. Hoards of rabid fans, who pulled an overnighter just to be "one of the first." But that wasn't all. A few lucky fans even got to mingle with some Apple royalty according to the Mercury News.
In San Jose, people who pulled an overnighter or got up in the wee early hours of the morning got to mingle with Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, who actually joined some in a "pre-iPad vigil" at 6 pm Friday at the Valley Fair mall. Later on in Palo Alto, Apple CEO Steve Jobs wandered in unbeknownst to those who were at the University Avenue store shortly before noon. Jobs was reported to have mingled with a group of shoppers for about 30 minutes.
According to Fortune, there were even scattered reports of stockouts and Piper Jaffray's Gene Munster, estimated that when the doors of the Fifth Avenue store in New York opened on Saturday, there was a headcount of already 730 people. At about 7:30 p.m on Saturday, 19 of 20 Apple stores that Munster's group had been in contact with still had iPads in stock. However, a conglomeration of Twitter updates on Sunday morning led to reports of none being left at many Best Buys, as well as several Apple retails stores, including locations in Palo Alto and Santa Clara, Calif., Portland, Ore., and Lancaster, Penn.
In light of this fact, Munster issued a note to clients on Saturday night, estimating that by midnight tonight, Apple will have sold about 600,000 to 700,00 iPads, which would include pre-orders. This would be more than double his initial conservative estimate of 200,000 to 300,000. By comparison, Apple only needed 74 days to sell a million units of the original iPhone, and three days each to sell a million units of the iPhones 3G and 3Gs.
CEO Jobs showed up wearing a black hoodie and jeans, appearing with his wife, Laurene Powell-Jobs, and their daughter, and watched Apple employees give various iPad how-to demonstrations.
"I love the iPad!" a 20-something female shopper reportedly shouted out to Jobs. And Jobs, being the man of many words that he is, replied, "Good!"
Have any MaclLifers out there run into any iPad supply problems on Day 2? What's it like in your neck of the woods? Feel free to leave comments below!
