9to5 Staff

Engadget finds that the FCC (1),(2) has been testing out a LEET iPad, namely the A1337, otherwise known as iPad 3G.  With the FCC’s blessings, we’ll be seeing that hitting customers hands in late April.

In a interesting twist, the FCC has sent Apple an app, which they’ve now approved, to measure bandwidth from iPhone (images below).  

A number of reports are coming in today with extremely high iPad sales numbers and potential shortages.  

First, Fortune follows the Apple Sanity Board (oxymoron?)who have been tallying order numbers from iPads purchased today.  They’ve figured that between the start of sales at 8:30am ET until 10:30am ET, 51,000 orders were taken.  While “50,000 iPads sold in two hours” makes a good headline, there were probably a few iPods and Macs sold during that time period as well.  Apple receives 15,000 orders on a normal day.  

Silicon Alley Insider thinks 20,000/hour are selling, which from the above, seem pretty reasonable.

MacDailyNews reports that people who change their order for in-store pickup won’t receive their iPads on April 3.

Multiple iPad buyers have been told that in order to do such a change, the delivery order would have to be cancelled and a new in-store pickup order completed, but that iPad orders (which began this morning at 8:30am EST) have been “so overwhelming” that new iPad orders may not be available for in-store pickup on April 3.

Earlier estimates were that Apple wanted to make 700,000 iPads in March and a million in April.

“When something exceeds your ability to understand how it works, it sort of becomes magical.” -Jonathan Ive

People.  When something is ‘magic’, things like static physical keyboards mean absolutely nothing. One second you have the iPad dock keyboard below with a row of function keys

The horizontal iPad has a mystery app.   What is it?  

Update: Looks like National Geographic App.  They are getting a little promotion by Apple.  (Winner on Twitter: Civrock)

Update 2: Apple has deleted the app on their site.

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The iPad is magic! That was then, this is now!  Voila!

Apple has a new iPad News Email signup.  Head here to get iPad spam email sent directly to your mailbox.

Interesting tidbits include (but are not limited to): iPad 3Gs have phone numbers (they have to to get data just like a Mifi).  You can buy your plan directly from your iPad (awesome – the less AT&T the better) and you can watch on your iPad as your monthly 250MB get eaten up by one iTunes movie.  

Never fear.  You can also jump to the unlimited plan in the middle of the month.  (Shouldn’t this just happen automatically?  Isn’t the iPad magic?)   http://www.apple.com/ipad/3g/

Today Apple announced on their website that the iPad App Store will have a special section for iPad designed apps. This is great for developers trying to push iPad versions of their apps, and consumers with iPads looking for something great. 

After a few minutes of this,

we got this:

Just in case you were wondering…

It seems that Apple has separated the iPod and iTunes websites on the navigation bar which is weird. When you go to those individual sites, they are almost identical except for a couple images. Why did Apple separated them? Wouldn’t two separate tabs take more room on the navigation bar then one tab like before?  Also “Downloads” is now gone.  The whole site is still a bit wonky.  Refresh your cache people.

The time is almost here folks, Apple has taken the online store down to get ready for iPad Pre-Orders (and maybe some Mac Pros too). Starting March 12th you will be able to pre-order any iPad model. WiFi models are shipping April 3rd and 3G models in late April.  

Non-US residents get to sit on the sidelines and watch us buy up all of the faulty first-runs.

Get your wallets ready and head to store.apple.com at 5:30 am PST, or 8:30 am for you lucky east coast folks who get their morning coffee first. 

By the way: why are all of the international stores down?

Both guys have good points. I write for an Apple blog (OK two) so it is a business expense/no brainer for me. On the eve of pre-order, are any of you out there still on the fence?

Apple has been extremely busy in the field of “exercise gaming” lately.  They already take part in the very popular NikePlus system but they are looking at doing much much more.  Today, Patently Apple details a future user interface for the iPod Touch/iPhone interface for exercising called Quickstart:

This might be one of my first purchases. [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j6nDbE1CK3o&w=700&h=530]

Are we starting to see our first iPad applications in the App Store?  Flickr just got updated to 3.2.  As far as we know, that means iPad, doesn’t it?    Too bad the iPad doesn’t have a camera:(  Thanks Jan!

Update: Tweetie 2 was updated for 3.2 today as well. (thanks commenters and Tweeters!)

We’ve heard numerous reports today that Apple Corporate customers are getting calls from their reps asking how many iPads they want.  Orders are then taken over the phone.  They still have to wait until April 3rd but they are at the front of the queue.  How nice.

In other news, these corporate reps are saying that individuals will be limited to two iPads/person initially until supply catches up with demand globally…which might be awhile.

Is Apple finally showing the suits some love?

According to an Apple PR rep, customers can pre-order online at apple.com at 5:30am Pacific time on Friday, March 12. That’s 8:30 AM for you East Coasters. All models will be available for pre-order and wifi models will arrive on April 3rd, 3G models in late April.  We’ll have a link as soon as it becomes available.

via TUAW.

Safari 4.05 is out. Hit Software Update or go here to update yourself.  Best comment so far: “Still has flash….”

You’ll need to do a restart(!).

Update: We’ve received multiple tips that there would be Pro updates in the coming days.  This latest one about the MacBook Pros may have been fake.  Shame on us.

We’re hearing that MacBook Pros are ready to be unveiled as early as tomorrow but could be pushed back to Tuesday.  Our Apple tipster seems to think that the the updated pro laptops will be released alongside the Mac Pros in the coming days. 

He’s saying that the base models will have Core i5 processors and premium 15 and 17-inch models will rock Core i7s.  

Got your credit cards ready?  

Developers have been combing through the recent build of the iPhone OS SDK and have found new references to multitasking in a files throughout the SDK.  The below mention of a “multitasking dialog box” is but one example:

Many of Apple’s built-in applications already multitask, including phone.app, iPod.app, Safari.app, Mail.app, etc. so theoretically, the dialog box in this case could refer to current functionality.

Thanks AL!

The interesting thing about Steve Jobs’ $5.5 Billion (making him the 136th richest person, up from 3.6Billion/172nd richest last year) in assets is that only around $1 billion of that is from Apple.  His Pixar-sold-to-Disney shares are worth $4.2 billion, down from the original $7.2 billion at the time of the deal.

Jobs did completely cash out of Apple (at not a great time) after his first stint and used some of that money to buy and grow Pixar and start NeXT.  But, Apple’s market cap has gone from $4 billion in 1997 when he started to over $200 billion this week.  That’s 50 times the value if you’ve been sitting on AAPL Stock since then.  Considering Apple was in a death spiral at the time he returned, you can pretty much chalk all of the $200 billion up to the guy.  That is a lot of shareholder value.

So it is without much question, that he’s been a bargain for Apple over the past 13 years.

Also, not a fan of that picture from AP/Forbes.