Apple iPad 2 online sales will start in wee hours

If you're in the market to buy an iPad 2 online tomorrow, you're going to have to wake up a bit early.

Apple this morning announced that online sales of the iPad 2 will begin at 1 a.m. PT/4 a.m. ET, many hours ahead of when the new tablet goes on sale at the company's retail stores.

The company had previously told customers that online sales would begin the same day as the iPad 2's retail release, but had not provided the start time.

Retail availability of the iPad 2 remains unchanged, with Apple beginning sales at 5 p.m. local time at its 236 retail stores as well as at partner retailers like Best Buy, Wal-Mart, Target, and carrier stores for Verizon Wireless and AT&T, the company said in its release.

Along with the start time, Apple also announced early arrivals of the GarageBand and iMovie iPad apps that the company demonstrated during the iPad 2's unveiling last week. Available today, these apps had originally been slated to be released tomorrow to coincide with the new iPad hardware, which in iMovie's case is required to be able to run the video-editing software.

The last Apple product to get an early online sale was the Verizon iPhone, which became available for preordering at 3 a.m. ET from Verizon's online stores, selling out just a few hours later.

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Verizon iPhone Unlimited Data Plan Being Axed This Summer!

Good things don’t last for long. As if proving that this could be true in the mobile telephony scenario too, Verizon is said to be mulling over snipping their unlimited data plan for the iPhone. When the summer season dawns, the unlimited data plan for the iPhone is sure to be discontinued.

We used the word sure there, because the statement on discontinuing the unlimited data plan has come from none other than Verizon’s Chief Financial Officer Fran Shammo. In case you aren’t aware, the carrier currently offers a $30 unlimited data plan on the device which they started selling only last month.

What comes as interesting are the carrier company’s words that the unlimited data plan was just a temporary offering. Now that the decision on pulling that offer has come about, we don’t think there’s much to ponder over with regard to this.

So what does that mean to the existing customers? We get to know that they might be allowed to keep their unlimited data plans for some more time now. To be more accurate, existing customers might be able to maintain the plan at least till the date their current contracts come to an end.

There are also chances that Verizon might insist on customers switching over to limited data plans  - may be at different price points. The grapevine has it that Verizon has been charting out tiered data- pricing plans for the iPhone. Not much dope on that at the moment, and so we guess we will go hunting for more on that for you. Watch this space

 

Source: gizmocrave.com