OH, Shiny!
The new iPad looks great, I managed to hold off from buying the original one first time round, so this time, as the release coincided with my 35th birthday, I thought I’d crack open my piggy bank and treat myself.
Lets get one thing straight, I’m not a fanboy but I do like and use predominantly Apple products at work and at home. After about 15 years of working with, developing and support windows systems, I took the plunge and got a iPhone. That was the crack in the damn. Within the year I’m dropped all windows based kit and even moved jobs from IT support to Web development.
For me, it was the right choice and one I’ve never regretted. I still keep up to date with the goings on in Windows land, but have seen nothing that would make me want to switch back from Mac to PC.
So when the iPad2 was penciled in for release online at 1am in the UK, I did something I’ve never done since catching Episode I of Star Wars in Australia. I waited up till it was online. An hour of screen refreshes later and the iPad2 was suddenly up for sale.
It took till 3am for the online shop to actually accept my credit card and account details but once that was done I was happy in the knowledge that I had secured an iPad2 64Gb WiFi.
Problem is that the scheduled shipping date wasn’t until the 15th of April, with an estimated delivery date of almost an ENTIRE month after placing the order!
Now, I know that some products are delayed for numerous reasons but in this case it simply seems that the product wasn’t ready to ship in quantity, on the mentioned date. Wouldn’t it have been better to move the release date back a month?
Already long story short, I got an email from Apple the other day, saying that my order had shipped. My excitement was growing as I logged into my account to check the progress. You can imagine my disappointment when it turned out that Apple had only shipped the cover for the iPad2 and not the actual product itself, even though at the time of ordering, I had selected to send both products as one shipment.
It smacks a little like they are trying to pacify me by sending me a little something before they tell me that they are delaying the shipping of the iPad2. We’ll just have to wait and see I guess.
At the moment, the online store is still saying shipping on the 15th, for delivery on the 26th.