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My theory on why the iPad 2 can't be pre-ordered on the web

Last year, when the first iPad was launched, I predicted that the lines on launch day at Apple stores wouldn’t be as crazy as those for a typical iPhone launch. One of the major reasons for this was that Apple was allowing people to pre-order an iPad for a guaranteed launch-day delivery to your house. Why wait in line when you can just wait for the FedEx guy from your couch? And if you didn’t trust that day-one delivery promise, you could also reserve an iPad for pickup at the store, which made getting in line very early less crucial. You knew you would get one, no matter what, so why not just go later in the day?These factors, as well as others, led to lines that were still substantial, but no where near as crazy as previous iPhone launch days.

This year, for iPad 2, there is no pre-order option. You will not be able to order the iPad 2 on the web until it goes on sale at the physical stores. Which means you won’t get it until the next day, at best, if you choose the online route.

Some are theorizing that the reason for this change in policy is that Apple wants to be sure that the lines are long this year, in order to generate good press. After last month’s line-less Verizon iPhone launch, they say, Apple doesn’t want anyone drawing the wrong conclusions from smaller lines on iPad 2 Day.

I think this reasoning is flawed, however, for two reasons. First, if the plan were truly to maximize lines at the Apple Stores, Apple wouldn’t be offering iPad 2 at Best Buy, Wall Mart, Verizon, and other retail outlets as well on day one. They’d want to limit sales to the 200+ official US Apple retail stores.

Second, the best way to maximize lines would be to start sales March 12th—a Saturday—rather than 5:00 pm on the 11th—a Friday. A Friday launch day means that only those crazy enough to take a day off from work will be able to wait in line early. (People like me, essentially.) You launch on a Friday evening to MANAGE lines, not maximize them. Apple made it Friday because it KNOWS the lines will be too long on a Saturday. There’s a fine line between getting excited while waiting for a new product, and getting frustrated standing in the cold on a March evening.

So why no preorders, then? In a nutshell, the Smart Cover.

Apple knows that there is a lot of profit in the case market. And they’ve been handing that profit over to third parties for years. With the original iPad case last year, then with the iPhone 4 bumpers, Apple started making a grab for some of this very lucrative business. With the Smart Cover, Apple is taking the case market far more seriously than ever. Note, the Smart Cover earned more than five minutes of stage time during the Keynote, as well as its own video featured on the Apple home page. If you think Apple isn’t serious about getting as many of these into people’s hands as possible, you’re crazy.

So what does this have to do with preorders? It’s all about the up-sell. It’s a heck of a lot easier for an employee to talk you into a Smart Cover at a store than it is to push the same case online. It’s just plain easier to say no to your computer than a person. Plus, like most Apple products, the Smart Cover is bound to sell itself in person far better than in pictures.

So by driving most day-one sales to physical stores, Apple stands a much better chance of nabbing more early Smart Cover sales. At $39 and $69 a pop, that’s a lot of money for Apple. And a lot of word-of-mouth from early adopters to encourage even more sales later. Apple’s goal is to make the Smart Case not only a “must-have” accessory, but an assumed part of the iPad itself. It’s like adding an extra $40-$80 onto the purchase price of every iPad sold. That’s smart retail strategy.

Malware on Android

> More than 50 applications containing malware have been discovered in Google’s application market for its Android mobile OS, a sign that hackers are hard at work trying to compromise mobile devices.
via [macworld.com](http://www.macworld.com/article/158304/2011/03/android_malware.html#lsrc.rss_main)
I hate to say it, but this is the tip of the iceberg. And while I continue to believe that malware is possible on any platform, even Apple’s very tightly controlled iOS, the fact of the matter is that Google has taken almost no steps whatsoever to prevent malware on Android.

Google’s attitude toward these sorts of exploits is irresponsible, to say the least.

From a security standpoint, Android was set up much the same way Windows 95 was. Not only is the door unlocked, but it’s wide open, with a big sign painted on the door saying “no one’s home; take whatever you want.” The fact that the press hasn’t shamed Google into taking some sort of action to prevent millions of users from being exposed to outright personal data theft is irresponsible, as well.

In all that talk of open vs. closed, it seldom gets mentioned that open really means open. As in “open to all sorts of attacks from unscrupulous people.”

Again, I’m sure some clever hacker will break into iOS at some point and try to steal user information from Apple users, too. But at the very least, Apple is trying to prevent this. They put a padlock on the door, at least.

Even forgetting the theft of user data, and who knows what else (We’ll probably be seeing mobile spam bots at some point), Google should still be held accountable for allowing apps to be downloaded, injected with extra code, and then resubmitted and ACCEPTED into its own marketplace. You read that right. If you as a developer spend the time and money to build an Android app, Google will do nothing to stop other people from copying your app outright and selling it themselves on THE OFFICIAL Google store.

Talk about “open.” And people wonder why there are so few real apps for Android.

Take away these counterfeit apps, and the apps that are just ringtones or wallpapers wrapped into an app wrapper, and how many actual useful apps are on the Android Marketplace?

And note, despite this incredible example of apps being hacked and resold for malicious purposes, Google still hasn’t pulled all of them from the store. They’re still “investigating” the matter.

Even Microsoft eventually learned that you have to take the users interests into consideration once in a while. There’s no excuse for any computer company in 2011 to be simply ignoring the potential for hacking, and then hiding behind the “we’re open” philosophy as an excuse for letting it continue.

We put incredibly valuable information on our phones. These devices track where we are, where we go, our shopping patterns, who we email and text, who we talk to on the phone. Google is essentially handing that information over to anyone who wants to take it. Is that the sort of company from which you want to buy products?

My favorite quote of today

> The Xoom tablet is trim, light, and very pretty > … but when you place it next to the iPad 2, it looks as though it > was designed and built by angry Soviet prison labor instead of by > Motorola.
via [instapaper.com](http://www.instapaper.com/go/135636816/text)
From Andy Ihnatko, of course.

I think Apple has something up its sleeve for tomorrow

I’m surprised at the lack of speculation about the scheduled Apple event tomorrow. Sure, the rumor mill is going on full steam as always, but everyone is assuming tomorrow’s event is all about the iPad 2.

It certainly will be partly about that. But I think there’s more to this than most people think.

What has most people thinking “iPad only” is the invitation Apple sent out to the press, which shows a calendar date of March 2 peeled back to reveal an iPad underneath. Fair enough. Not a subtle message. But that’s just it. Since when is Apple so obvious with these things?

[![Apple-ipad-2-invitation-march-2011](http://posterous.com/getfile/files.posterous.com/temp-2011-03-01/tEaAcuDEqEyyrgEHxfgEiAklcBgostxqhHlExJiomufdbaEmteBtnjqDneuc/Apple-iPad-2-Invitation-March-2011.jpg.scaled500.jpg)](http://posterous.com/getfile/files.posterous.com/temp-2011-03-01/tEaAcuDEqEyyrgEHxfgEiAklcBgostxqhHlExJiomufdbaEmteBtnjqDneuc/Apple-iPad-2-Invitation-March-2011.jpg.scaled1000.jpg)
 

Now, I’m the first to dismiss most people’s pie-in-the-sky speculations about what the invite images might mean, but this time, there’s literally been almost no discussion of it. I find that really odd.

And then the tagline on that invite: “Come see what 2011 will be the year of.” Again, most people are assuming “iPad,” but last year was the year of the iPad. So that can’t be it. If anything, this is the year of the iPad knockoffs, so wouldn’t that be a great time for Apple to make it the year of something else, just to change the subject and throw the competition into another tailspin? Announce something that no one expects?

And then there’s this image I took outside the Yerba Buena Center, where the event is scheduled to take place.

[![Photo1](http://posterous.com/getfile/files.posterous.com/temp-2011-03-01/rcEuBCujnkdgaFodzFukCvxtABIwexDrcJhymBmhczhwluhEgycGthCftkrC/Photo1.jpg.scaled500.jpg)](http://posterous.com/getfile/files.posterous.com/temp-2011-03-01/rcEuBCujnkdgaFodzFukCvxtABIwexDrcJhymBmhczhwluhEgycGthCftkrC/Photo1.jpg.scaled1000.jpg)
What’s with the colored dots? And they aren’t just dots, either. They actually have a paper-ish kind of texture, and some of them are a bit wrinkled up. They sort of look like confetti from really close up.

I have no idea what that image means, but it certainly doesn’t say “iPad” to me. Unless that’s the back on an iPad with some confetti on it. Is that it? iPad’s 1st birthday? I don’t think so. For starters, if iPad has a birthday, it would be either in January, when it was announced, or April, when it was released to the public. Not on the 2nd of March.

Next, we can consider that last week, Apple released new MacBook Pros with a brand new port (Thunderbolt), and sent developers the first preview of Lion, the next version of OS X. Two things that would have been part of a live event in themselves not so long ago, that now only get mentioned in a press release. Arguably, both Lion and Thunderbolt are more important than a simple refresh of the iPad.

These media events tend to last around 2 hours. How long does it take to do a demo of FaceTime on an iPad?

My point is that there’s more to tomorrow’s event than what most people are talking about. Apple still has the ability to throw us a curve ball at these things, no matter how many times we’ve seen them do it. Maybe tomorrow we’ll see a preview of iOS 5. That would make sense. Maybe we’ll get some more info on all these cloud services we keep hearing rumors about. There HAS to be something other than an iPad with cameras. That’s not something you want people to get on a plane to come see.

What the “other” things will be tomorrow, I have no idea. But I’d be very surprised if the iPad2 were the whole story.

Thunderbolt is exclusive to Apple until 2012? Not sure that's a good thing.

> **At a press conference earlier this morning, Intel offered additional information about its new Thunderbolt interconnect technology being pioneered by Apple in its latest batch of MacBook Pros, noting Apple will have a year long head start in deploying the technology.**
via [appleinsider.com](http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/11/02/24/intel_details_thunderbolt_as_exclusive_to_apple_until_2012.html)
I actually think this is a bad thing for Apple. Not sure why they’d want exclusive rights to Thunderbolt, when it’s in everyone’s best interest to get this port into as many devices as humanly possible as quickly as possible.

Hard drive, Audio I/O box, monitor makers etc. won’t take the new port seriously until there are enough computers out there sporting it. So why would Apple want to hold back adoption on the PC side?