UPDATE: As of 10AM, the 24-hour Best Buy had every iPad model except the AT&T 4G, the 14th Street Radio Shack still had the 16GB, Wi-Fi model, and the line at the Grand Central Apple store appeared to be pretty short.
NEW YORK — "We still have some," said a Best Buy employee about 1 AM this morning when I asked if I could buy a new iPad at the company's 24-hour story in Manhattan.
Best Buy's iPad sale was a bit on the down-low. "We didn't advertise it," said the employee. "But if people called, we told them they could get it." He was holding a stack of folders, each labeled with a different configuration and filled with "tickets" — sheets of paper that corresponded to the number of those models left.
A few of the configurations had sold out by then. According to another employee, the "connected" (cellular enabled) models were very popular and the first to go.
Snagging an iPad wasn't just a trick for people who knew about that one Manhattan store. Walmarts around the U.S. are selling the base, $499 model of the new iPad, and many of them started at 12:01 AM, as well.
No one was sleeping on the sidewalk in front of a Radio Shack on 14th Street in New York. And, like the down-low nature of the Best Buy down the street, this Radio Shack didn't have any signage announcing the new iPad.
But based on a call we made on Thursday evening (March 15), we learned that it would be selling the tablets at 8 AM — the same time that damp, chilled folks camping outside the Apple stores would be shuffling inside. By then, the night owl customers from Best Buy and Walmart might be sleeping late, hugging their new iPads like teddy bears.
