While you were sleeping, the iPad 2 went on sale in Australia, and it seems to have drawn a lot of attention.
This was the queue at 0704am this morning in Sydney...
Photo by BeauGiles on Flickr. Some rights reserved
...and this was the queue by sale time at 5pm:
Photo by BeauGiles on Flickr. Some rights reserved
(Thanks to Beau Giles in Sydney who took a whole set of pictures through the night.
People had been queueing outside the Sydney Apple store for almost two days: some told World News Australia that it's all about meeting people:
Canadian backpacker Alex Lee arrived in Sydney on Wednesday to be first in line to buy Apple's iPad 2 and has theorised on the phenomenon.
"I call it the 90/10 rule for Apple - 90 per cent is about the people, the experience and just the whole feeling and 10 per cent is about the product itself," the IT consultant said.
CNet Australia says there were around 300 people queueing at the Brisbane story in Chermside and that they had started at around 5.30am that morning. Large queues were also seen in Hobart.
And lest you think it's only a game for the whippersnappers, the Australian newspapers found Sally Johnson, aged 73, who "may be hot and tired, but that hasn't deterred her from queueing..." (It's not the heat of summer in Sydney - it's just turning to autumn. Which is still hot compared to the UK, of course.)
Johnson has recently emigrated from Nottingham. She was roughly 250th in line. And why was she there? "Queuing for her son Mark, who was at work."
