
I just went and picked up a lovely new Retina iPad mini – hurray.
This has been easily the weirdest experience I’ve had with getting a new iPad – with the stealthy midnight launch the other night for the Retina iPad mini and more fun and games afterwards. By the time I found out about the overnight initial launch (the next morning) shop times for the model I wanted were already looking like delivery bang on the Thanksgiving break. I initially placed an order purely out of fear that shipping times would soon get much worse. Then after half a day or thereabouts I realized that A) I’d very likely be away when it was delivered and B) no way am I patient enough to wait that long if there is even a slight chance of acquiring one at a local store.
This morning I woke up to stories round the web that personal pickup was now live. Great, I thought until I quickly went to place an order in the Apple Store app on my old, soon-to-be-given-the-boot iPad mini – and saw that personal pickup was not available and ship times were still 1-3 business days.
Then I started looking round and seeing that every Apple store in a 50 mile radius showed as ‘Unavailable for pickup’ and the folks at Best Buy and AT&T had no stock at all and no real idea on when they might.
Long story slightly shortened – I kept the Apple online store order page open in my browser with my model choices all selected and checked back on it every hour or so to see if any stores in my area showed as available for pickup. At around 2:30 Central my closest store (just 5 miles away) popped up as available and I hammered away with mouse and keyboard to get my order in as fast as my hands could go.
And it went through and I picked up my new shiny just after 3:00.
Hope you all are having or already had smoother experiences if you’ve been trying to get hold of a new Retina iPad mini.