Apple’s IPad Debut Attracts Crowds, Rivaling IPhone Frenzy

happylux

By Connie Guglielmo and Mina Kawai

April 4 (Bloomberg) -- Apple Inc.’s iPad tablet computer went on sale yesterday, drawing crowds to stores across the U.S. and rivaling the frenzy seen when the iPhone went on sale in 2007.

Hundreds of shoppers lined up to wait for stores to open at 9 a.m., though crowds didn’t camp out for days this time, as they did when the iPhone debuted. Many of the buyers identified themselves as early adopters and Apple enthusiasts, making it harder to tell if the iPad will win over mainstream customers.

“I love it,” said Jacob Arentoft, a 37-year-old digital business developer from Copenhagen. After exiting Apple’s Fifth Avenue store in Manhattan, he unpacked the brand-new silver gadget and waved it at the crowd. “The size fits, the design fits, everything fits.”

The iPad is Apple’s bid to turn tablet computers into popular consumer devices, something rivals such as Microsoft Corp. have failed to do. The product builds on the success of Apple’s iPhone and iPod, staking out the middle ground between smartphones and laptop computers. Apple is betting the design is enticing enough that consumers are willing to pay a premium over low-cost notebooks. It starts at $499.

“It’s ridiculously expensive, way overpriced,” said Josh Klenert, a 36-year-old graphic designer, who still went ahead and bought one. Klenert, whose one-bedroom apartment in Tribeca has “more Macs than people,” pre-ordered the iPad as soon as it was available and came down to Apple’s SoHo store in New York to be one of the first to buy it.

‘Sofa-Based Device’

“You may call it a dumb computer or a smart telephone -- it’s in between,” said Klenert, who plans to use it for reading newspapers and magazines. “It’s a unique, sexier device. More like a sofa-based device.”

Apple retail chief Ron Johnson, who was at the Fifth Avenue store and addressed employees before it opened, said having added two more stores in New York City since the iPhone’s introduction helped spread out crowds of shoppers.

Gene Munster, an analyst at Piper Jaffray & Co., expects Apple to sell 200,000 to 300,000 iPads this weekend. The full- year sales may reach 7.1 million globally, according to ISuppli Corp.

Apple declined to comment, said Natalie Kerris, a spokeswoman for the Cupertino, California-based company.

Apple fans began lining up Friday at Chief Executive Officer Steve Jobs’s hometown store in Palo Alto, California. More than 200 people were waiting before the store opened, and employees handed out Krispy Kreme doughnuts and coffee. The shoppers included tech blogger Robert Scoble, who was one of the first in line, and Bill Atkinson, author of Apple’s MacPaint and MacWrite software programs for the first Macintosh computers.

Executive Help

Scott Forstall, Apple’s executive in charge of iPhone and iPad software, stood on the street filming the crowd as store employees counted down from 10 to the store’s opening. He then helped out at the customer service desk, answering questions and mingling with the early iPad buyers. Jobs showed up later in the morning.

“It’s very exciting,” Forstall said after declining to be interviewed.

Users can surf the Internet, peruse digital books, watch video and play games on the iPad. What it lacks is a built-in camera or support for Adobe Systems Inc.’s Flash software, which runs much of the video on the Web. The device also doesn’t let users carry out multiple tasks at once.

‘Just Another Toy’

Courtney Shedden, who went to the Freehold Raceway Mall in New Jersey to buy an iPad for her boyfriend, says she wouldn’t get one for herself.

“It’s just another toy and he HAS to have it,” said Shedden, 24. It wouldn’t help her as a student working toward a master’s degree at Villanova University, she said. She uses Microsoft’s Excel and there would be “a lot of compatibility issues.”

The iPad’s first wave of reviews praised its ability to deliver digital books and video quickly, saying it measures up well against other devices, including Amazon.com Inc.’s Kindle e-book reader. Bloomberg columnist Rich Jaroslovsky said it may change the way people relate to computers, requiring users to learn a “new language” that Apple has made “both elegant and very easy to master.” USA Today’s Edward Baig called the iPad “fun, simple, stunning to look at and blazingly fast.”

TV Shows

Tablets have been available in one form or another since the 1990s, without ever catching on. They account for less than 1 percent of the personal-computer market, according to research firm Gartner Inc.

The iPad’s success will depend partly on the attractiveness of applications that run on it. CBS Corp., the most-watched U.S. TV network, announced plans last week to offer episodes of shows such as “Survivor” and “CSI” on the iPad. Walt Disney Co. will release iPad applications for ABC shows and ESPN games. And Netflix Inc., the movie-rental company, will let subscribers watch programming streamed to the iPad.

Leo Mitchell, a 14-year-old shopper at an Apple store in St. Louis, will use his new iPad to replace his Nook, an e- reader sold by Barnes & Noble Inc.

“I probably will bring it to school occasionally where I have a book report and the book is on my iPad,” he said.

Mitchell used babysitting money to pay for the iPad, he said.

“I save most of my money,” he said. “I don’t spend it frivolously.”

New Markets

At the Fair Oaks Shopping Center in Fairfax, Virginia, Bill Daniels was buying the computer primarily for his five-year-old son.

“I think there will eventually be one in every school classroom one day,” he said. Daniels, a 48-year-old marketing consultant from Vienna, Virginia, said he owns three other Apple products.

“I was a PC guy,” he said. “Just converted to Apple last year.”

Apple, which has more than doubled in the past year, rose 97 cents to close at a record $235.97 April 1 in Nasdaq Stock Market trading. U.S. markets were closed April 2 for the Good Friday holiday.

Like the iPhone, the iPad will test Apple’s ability to conquer new markets. Since returning to the company in 1997, Jobs revived the Macintosh computer business, reshaped digital music with the iPod and pushed Apple into the mobile-phone field. Adding those products propelled revenue and profit to record levels.

Sales Estimates

When the iPhone debuted, Apple struggled to keep it in stock. Most of its stores quickly sold out, and resellers on EBay and Craigslist hawked the device to desperate shoppers for as much as $12,000.

Even if the iPad fails to repeat that kind of frenzy, its initial sales could be higher than the iPhone’s, says Toni Sacconaghi, an analyst at Sanford C. Bernstein & Co. in New York. He projects sales of 300,000 to 400,000 iPads this weekend. That compares with the 270,000 iPhones sold in its 2007 debut.

Apple may sell about 5 million iPads in the first 12 months, compared with 6.1 million iPhones in its first year on the market, according to Sacconaghi.

At the outset, iPads will connect to the Web through localized hot spots that use Wi-Fi technology. Some shoppers may wait for a version with 3G, which lets the iPad connect to mobile-phone networks. It’s due later this month.

Luis Martinez, a 30-year-old from Brooklyn who repairs computers, bought a Wi-Fi iPad yesterday and already put in an order for the 3G version.

“People who criticize iPad are basically saying it doesn’t fit their lifestyle. It fits mine,” Martinez said. “Overall, I’m sold.”

sooners

回复 1# happylux


   

ppteam

As usual, Apple makes money from those people who like to be 'cool'.
It sucks.

ppteam

the sheep went out and bought a $600 device because it looked pretty... because a standard $300 netbook can run thousand more software tittles and it not crippled to run "Apple-approved" apps

ppteam

Just a glorified iphone. Only runs a single lousy app at a time. It does nothing that an iphone can't do

ppteam

Dear human race,

First of all, you’re welcome. In the last few days I’ve been overwhelmed by your letters and calls expressing your gratitude to Apple, and mostly to me personally, for inventing yet another life-changing, mind-altering product. All I can tell you is that with iPad, as with all of our products, all we did was create something that we want to use. We’re just so glad that you want to use it too. It’s humbling, actually. When you devote your entire life to the endless, selfless quest to improve the lives of others; when you live a monk-like existence, and focus all of your power and genius on the singular goal of creating objects that nourish souls and transform people’s lives with magic and wonder; and when people tell you that this is, indeed, what you’ve done — well, it’s gratifying. Namaste, entire population of Spaceship Earth. I honor the place where your desire to consume becomes one with my desire to create.

Some pundits have posed the question: Why do anyone need this thing? Indeed, even those of you are lining up and standing outside stores may be wondering, Why am I doing this? Why am I lining up like a zombie for an expensive piece of consumer electronics, a product for which there is no shortage and which, let’s face it, nobody really needs? Back in the early days of our design process, Jonny Ive came in to see me and we spent a long time trying to decide where on Mazlow’s triangle this product would sit. Because we knew if we couldn’t be way up above the very top of that pyramid, floating above it, totally outside the needs it describes, then this wouldn’t be a product we wanted to make. Some of our early iterations, in fact, had to be tossed out because when we looked at them we realized that parts of them were too, well, necessary. Don’t get me wrong. That’s fine for other companies. It’s just not what we do here at Apple.

But let’s get back to you people who are waiting in line. I mean it’s not like you’re in Bolivia and there’s just been an earthquake and you need to line up to get food and clean water. It’s not like you’ve time-traveled back into the Depression and you’re waiting in line at a soup kitchen. And yet, in fact, that’s exactly what you’re doing. Spiritually speaking, we are living in the Great Depression, and you are waiting in line for sustenance. We, all of us, are experiencing the world that Deleuze and Guattari described so presciently in Capitalism and Schizophrenia. If you haven’t read this incredibly important two-volume work, I highly recommend that wait for us to make both volumes available on our iBooks store and then order them right away. The cool thing is that then, as you’re reading, you will have the strange and circular experience of discovering why you bought the iPad in the first place.

The truth is, this is all about spiritual emptiness. That is why you’re standing in line. Except for Scoble, who is an attention whore and just doing it to get attention.

The truth is, all over the world, across every culture, there exists a sense of yearning. A kind of malaise. An emptiness. At the risk of sounding like Dr. Seuss: There is a hole in your soul. That is what we’re addressing at Apple. That is the hole we aim to fill. Sadly, as you may have begun to suspect, that hole can never really be filled. The truth is that modernity, the condition of living in our modern world, has inflicted terrible wounds on your inner self. These wounds can never be healed. They can only be treated. At best we provide palliative care. Not a cure. Because, my dear fellow human beings, there is no cure for what ails you. The products we create provide only temporary relief. Their magic eventually wears off. The sense of childlike wonder they impart will, over time, begin to fade. And then you need a new product. Think back to June 29, 2007. Do you remember the rapture? The wonder of iPhone? The magic? Now that is gone, but here we come with another shot of digital Dilaudid. Sleep well, my friends. Sleep deeply and rest, cradled in the arms of my electronic medicine.

I’d also like to take a moment to thank all of the engineers and designers and programmers inside Apple who worked so tirelessly on this product, toiling way in total secrecy. I know it wasn’t easy. You had to work on a machine that was inside a sealed metal box, so you couldn’t actually see what you were doing. The box itself was chained to a desk, which was bolted to the floor in a windowless, lead-sealed concrete bunker. And you were chained to that same desk by your ankle. I know some of you considered it humiliating. I know many of you did not enjoy having to use a chamber pot instead of being allowed to leave the room for bathroom breaks. To be sure, the chamber pot was designed by Jonny Ive and is a model of simplicity and elegant design. Nevertheless, not a lot of fun. I know some of you grumbled, privately, about having your personal email read, and your phone calls monitored. You did not appreciate having your children followed to school and interrogated to see if Mom or Dad had been talking about work. The cars parked outside your house at night, the strange calls to your neighbors and relatives, the questionnaires about your sexual history, the lists of all your past lovers that you needed to provide — I know. It’s not easy to work at Apple. But I think you’ll agree with me that it’s worth the trouble. I honor your dedication, and I hope you will all enjoy the new wonder device that you have helped bring into the world.

Hold your iPad. Gaze at it. Pray to it. Let it transform you. And do it soon, because before you know it we are going to release version 2, which will make this one look like a total piece of crap. Peace be upon you.

Dear Leader