For those of us who woke up at 1AM on March 11th to order our iPad 2s, the last week has mostly been a disappointing one. Although Apple began shipping out some 16GB iPads earlier in the week, it seems like they’re only now getting around to readying beefier iPad 2s like my 32GB 3G model for shipment.
Apple’s holding off on deliveries of initial pre-orders of these units as long as possible. As you can see, my order for an iPad 2 was placed within three minutes of the order page going live, but Apple is only now preparing it for shipment, which will presumably go out later today. That implies that people who ordered a 32GB+ iPad 2 3G shouldn’t expect to see their device until at least Monday.
Meanwhile, my Smart Cover was delivered today, which is like your mail-order bride shipping over her steamer trunk full of frilly underwear and fuzzy handcuffs two months before she boards a plane herself.
My guess is we’re not going to see many other product launches like this from Apple. It appears that even they were surprised by iPad 2 demand, and released the tablet at least a month before they actually had the number of devices produced that they needed for a successful, hassle-free launch. I expect the next iPad launch to go a lot smoother than this one did.
