The hype machine built up a fever pitch leading to todays iPad release. The print and TV reviews all seemed to gush for the iPad. The only mention of anything bad was the usual: no camera, no Flash and no USB. Aside from that they were generally very kind, even from press not normally considered an Apple cheerleader.
Got up early and headed to the Apple store to pickup the 32GB model I reserved. I arrived at the store at 7:45 for the 9am opening. The line was pretty short: 18 people in the purchase line and 6 people in the reserved line.
At 8:30am a couple of Apple store employees begin serving free Starbucks coffee to everyone. This time of year in the early morning gnats are a problem in Charleston, SC. Its not such a big deal if there is a breeze, but when its calm they swarm. Bug spray was passed around to those that wanted it by a kind person in line.
At a few minutes to 9am the black curtains were removed from the store windows and what looked like two dozen blue shirted Apple store employees came to the windows clapping and carrying iPads. At 9:00 the doors opened and those with reservations were allowed to enter the store. The instructions to the crowd were that people with reservations would get in first and once the crowd with reservations thinned out they would start letting in the other customers. Nobody was checked to verify that they did in fact have a real reservation.
We were herded around the tables and slowly Apple employees started targeting us individually for iPad purchases. I was surprised to see that they had the Apple iPad case in stock. The online store showed they would not be available to ship until Apr 15th. I snagged one and made a mental note to cancel the order online. The counter at the back of the store had a ton of iPads ready for sale.
The sales rep that approached me was very nice and quite chatty. I mentioned that I had reserved a 32GB model, but wished I had ordered the 64GB iPad. He said ‘no problem, lets go pick out your 64GB iPad’. He was handed one off the stack, took me to a table and was willing to assist in setup of email and any familiarization I might need. I was good to go as is and stuck around long enough to verify everything worked. I managed to be the first one with an iPad in hand out of the door.
So far it is working perfectly. The Apple case is a tight fit and syncing with my iMac took a long time since I was uploading all my apps, music, pictures, most movies and podcasts. Man am I glad I switched to the 64GB version. I have 13GB free after the kitchen-sync!
I spent the last few days picking out apps I would want right away and ended up spending another $62.86 on new apps today.
Frigging iPhone 