It’s iPad pre-order day, so that means there’s some interesting tidbits coming out of Cupertino today. I thought I’d mash two together since they’re a bit short to have their own posts.
Apple’s selling 20,000 iPads an hour?
Take an ID number, and subtract a lower ID number and you’ll get a nice little surprise, or at least Andrew Erlichson did after ordering two iPads about a half hour apart. There was a difference of 10,000. Now, we’re not sure if Apple’s logging transaction IDs sequentially or not, but if they are, they’re likely selling iPads at a rate of 20,000 iPads per hour. That’s 480,000 a day. Better yet, that’s 240million dollars in sales at the end of day one.
This astronomical sales rate won’t continue throughout the month, but it’s surely a commentary on the hype that has surround this thing since the big announcement.
Talk about padding your quarterly stats!
New additions to the iPad.
Rumours leading up to today’s release have ranged from a camera being included in the device to the device solving third world hunger. The jury is still out on both of those, but there have been some interesting developments today. Upon updating their website for the iPad pre-orders, Apple added some interesting copy to their page that clarifies a few things.
Jim Dalrymple, from Loop Insight (on of my favourite Apple blogs, after ours of course.) noticed that there’s a screen lock on the device.
This makes a ton of sense, and a lack of a switch would have been a glaring oversight by Apple. I’m glad they caught it. If there’s one thing that annoys me it’s the lack of intuition by my iPhone. It jumps around a lot, and rotates between landscape and portrait mode way too easily. I’d imagine this would be a lot worse on the iPad, so a way to lock the screen is a welcome addition.
There’s also mention that Apple will let non-drm books on their device. So if you have a pile of ebooks from other vendors, and you’re absolutely paranoid that you won’t be able to use them, fret not. Apple’s got your back.
