Being in Silicon Valley, just a few miles from Apple's HQ, I thought I'd pop to the nearest Apple Store and see how sales of the iPad2 are going.
There's a lovely sign saying "we have sold out of today's allocation, come back tomorrow" and one of their staff says "we're opening an hour earlier, we've no idea what stock we will get until tomorrow and you can't reserve one. Come along at 9:00am and its first-come, first-served".
Are Apple useless at stock inventory? No. Are they making new ones each day? I doubt it. Is this just to make the product even more desirable/unobtainable/create more demand/a further frission of excitement? Probably.
Of course, as I'm not a betting man it would be wrong of me to speculate the split of iPads delivered tomorrow, but perhaps a cynic would expect that the number of the smallest configs (16GB and wi-fi only) will be small allowing the successful customers to upgrade/pay more for a configuration that is more than they planned in the morning when they joined the line of hopefuls.
Apple - got to love 'em, a truly exceptional operation. Let's hope that they don't introduce the Apple iPip shortly, a product so desireable that they check your youth and beauty before selling it to you. Can you imagine a ring of doormen checking your "georgeousness-credentials" outside like enering a nightclub, "sorry, you are too old/ugly to buy one of our lovely products, come back tomorrow better dressed and try again"
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