Hurricane Sandy Fails To Stop Line For iPad Mini Launch

Nerval's Lobster writes "Hurricane Sandy may have plunged part of New York City into darkness, drowned its basements and subway tunnels in saltwater, and even set part of a neighborhood on fire, but it couldn't stop New Yorkers from standing in line for hours to purchase the iPad Mini. Hundreds of people lined up in front of Apple's Fifth Avenue store for the chance to get their hands on the 7.9-inch device. According to CNET, which was on the scene and running a live-blog ahead of the store's 10 AM EST opening, 'many people in line are not fluent in English and are either Asian immigrants or visitors.' That opening was originally supposed to take place at 8 AM, and likely delayed because of the obvious citywide transportation issues. But for those in New York City who manage to get their sweaty hands on a new iPad Mini, there's an unusual wrinkle in the situation: power is still out below 39th Street in Manhattan, as well as portions of Brooklyn and Queens. (Apple's Fifth Avenue store is well above that power line.) While some private homes and businesses in electrified areas have set out power strips for strangers to charge their phones, it's hard to imagine a crowd of New Yorkers standing idly by while someone spends a significant amount of time charging a new tablet. Fortunately, many of those without power have found refuge with friends and family, if they haven't left the city altogether."

Re:stooopid editorializing

[tlhIngan]

Batteries drain in storage, and I believe are usually shipped at 50% charge due to other issues with the stability of the batteries under shipping conditions.

Although since the Apple store has power, they could take half of them out and pre-charge them to 100% and give the buyers a choice. Or the buyer could probably charge in the store.

Actually, Apple's products don't tend to sit on shelves - from manufacture to the time it's sold, it'll probably be around a week, and most of it has been just waiting for the pallet to fill up, waiting for the shipper it pick it up, shipping it from China to the warehouse in the US, then distributing it out from there.

If you go by date codes, the whole process can easily be as little as 4 days (same week) to basically "last week". Since iPads and iPhones don't normally linger on shelves too long, Apple charges them up all the way so the user can use it immediately.

The 40% charge is a shipment charge for products that move slower as it's been empirically determined that it ages the batteries the slowest.

It's actually sort of unusual to find an Apple product out of the box that doesn't have 95+% charge. They just don't sit on shelves that long.