There we were, in line for the iPad 2, amongst several hundred of our close friends. That is something you have to be ready to do when standing in line for the newest ‘hot’ Apple release, be friendly and have a good time with folks you don’t know.
Folks from the office where split up across multiple stores, both Apple and Best Buys. No science, it just worked out as people buzzing to a store near the office, on their way home or close to where they were at the time.
We heard the lines were growing quickly around noon so the offices started to darken as people wrapped up what they could for the day. Many of us knew we would have to continue to work from a sidewalk somewhere so checked in our documents to the Cloud. The assumption was that we would be in line till around 7 pm so most work would have to be done via our iPad (1). Your experience may be different but we saw across the stores we were at, Apple getting through over 300 people in the first hour of opening for sale at 5 PM.
A few notes we thought you would be interested in. Several team members that had the original version of the iPad, found that when they updated their iPad 2 via iTunes with a backup of their original iPad didn’t have any apps on their new iPad. The data is installed but non of the apps. They solved this by ‘authorizing’ the device either through iTunes on the desktop or ‘App Store’ on the iPad 2.
Here is a few pics of the iPad and iPad 2 together.
With the iPhone 3 vs the iPhone 4, the change in the curve of the back made a big difference in actual thickness. The iPad 2 in your hands actually ‘feels’ thinner and lighter which means it has to be a dramatic change since small changes aren’t usually easily felt.
The two iPads face down, the outer edge is different, going from a flat edge to a new taper edge.
When you flip the iPads over and set them on their backs, the curve of the back on the original iPad makes a major impact of it’s overall thickness. A surprise to us is that the new thinner size doesn’t feel ‘too thin’. The iPad 2 has a ‘solid’ feeling which makes it nice to hold and write on. We are still debating if it feel fine being thinner because of the loss of the flat edge or actual weight to size formula.
This is the two iPads in their day one introduction cases from Apple. The original completely wrapped the device, while the new only covers the front. There is a lot of press around how you can roll the new cover into a stand so we go into that here. The original iPad case did a great job of protecting the corners of the iPad while the iPad 2’s corners are completely exposed. The new cover doesn’t add a noticeable increase in weight compared to the original iPad thin case. Lastly, the new cover stays attached with magnets making it fast to get off compared to the fold in flap for the first iPad which was just difficult enough that you usually chose to not take it out of the case.
From this view, you can see how the sync cable connector is on the curve of the new back as is the speaker opening. We can see some case makers having to get creative to make the openings work while maintaining protection to those areas.
Without the flat edge of the original iPad, the iPad 2 has all of it’s controls rolled around to the back of the back like the new speaker. Again, not presenting a problem to use but will add to the effort of the aftermarket case makers.
Since the iPad 2 cover from Apple only covers the back, we immediately went out to the several manufacture of vinyl protection providers we have worked with in the past. The folks at Skinit sent this offer back to us: Take 15% off at Skinit.com. Use Code: SKINITSAVER15 you can create an iPad 2 back protective vinyl skin using your photos or choose from one of theirs with this coupon.
