In Malaysia, Chinese families are scrambling to purchase paper replicas of the iPad 2 to burn for their dead, honoring an ancient tradition.
The Tomb Sweeping, or Qingming, Festival, is a time duting which Asian communities honor their ancestors by burning replicas of luxury items and money. The tradition comes from Confucian belief in the importance of family loyalty.
“Some of my customers have dreams where their departed relatives will ask for luxury items including the iPad 2,” explained Jeffrey Te, a prayer item shopkeeper. “I can only offer them the first iPad model,” he continued. He went on to explain that he had ordered 300 iPad 2 replicas, but they were sold out before he could even unpack them.
At the shop, iPads sell for a dollar each, and they all include 888GB, an important number in Chinese culture. A device with 16GB costs $499 for the living.
Some Chinese believe that the iPads have no place in the ancient tradition. “They belong to the older generation. If you give all these so-called iPads, they don’t know how to use it,” explained Thomas Soong, 61. “So traditionally we give them shoes, shirts…. All the necessities.
]]>Aside from creating more convenient methods of communication and entertainment such as the iPad 2, technology has many other important uses. For example, the Kenyan Wildlife Service recently fixed eight elephants with GPS collars.
These devices will help the organization study the elephants’ migration patterns in the Tsavo East National Park, as well as monitor the elephants’ health. The tracking devices will also enable the park rangers to better combat poaching, and resolve other human-elephant conflicts without difficulty.
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Stores have completely run out of the new iPad 2 following its debut weekend. Gene Munster of Piper Jaffray Co. publicized that Apple has sold as many as 500,000 devices.
Target, Apple, and Best Buy Co. stores are completely sold out, and the Apple website is now stating that orders will take up to a month to be delivered. Just a week ago, delivery was marked at one week. The original iPad was also a major hit back in April, selling 300,000 units in 24 hours.
Munster said: “iPads aew sold out across virtually all channels. We are unable to find any availability.”
A spokeswoman for Apple said “Demand for the next generation iPad has been amazing and we are working hard to get iPad 2 into the hands of every customer who wants one as quickly as possible.”
In New York, a college student thought of a creative way to use Apple’s success to her advantage. Pitching a tent in front of the store, Amanda Foote waited in line for 41 hours before selling her spot for $900 dollars! For a video of an interview with the young businesswoman, click here.
]]>The event will take place on March 2nd at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco. Reporters were invited via email this week. The invitation was made to look like a calendar page with the number 2 enlarged in the center. The number is peeled back slightly to reveal a peek of the familiar iPad. The invite states “Come see what 2011 will be the year of.”
The new iPad, which will have to compete with dozens of new tablets this year, is expected to hit stores in April. Last year, Apple sold just under 15 million iPads. Analysts claim that the company should double the amount this coming year.
Industry experts believe that at next week’s event Apple will showcase a thinner, lighter, speedier version of their tablet, with the addition of a front-facing camera to enable video chat. Some hold that Apple has added a chip that enables the use of CDMA networks such as Verizon Wireless.
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