One week after launch, iPad 2 lines are still ridiculously long

Mon, Mar 21, 2011

As Will Ferrell’s Zoolander character Jacobim Mugatu might say, the iPad 2 is so hot right now. So hot, in fact, that people are still lining up outside of Apple stores to get their hands on the iPad 2.

On launch day, lines at many Apple Stores were tremendously long, with some stretching out and enveloping full city blocks. With exceedingly high demand, Apple continues to struggle to meet that demand. New iPad 2 shipments are sold almost as quickly as they arrive and shipping wait times for online orders now check in at 4-5 weeks.

Incredibly, and quite frustratingly for many, iPad 2 demand continues to swell with no end in sight. One full week since originally launching, many Apple Stores still had long lines forming in the early morning as customers tried to get iPad 2s before new shipments ran out. Apple’s flagship retail store on Fifth Avenue has been a particularly tough spot to pick up the Pad 2. The line on launch day there was 1200 people strong and could easily have looked like folks lining up for bread in the old Soviet Union.

Below is a photo of the 5th Avenue retail store taken this Friday and sent to MacRumors.

Readers have reported that the line at Apple’s flagship Fifth Avenue store in Manhattan is essentially a perpetual mass of people numbering in the hundreds, with customers camping out and swapping positions in-and-out day after day as they wait for more stock to arrive. Apple has erected barriers to contain the line, and once the line reaches the end of the barriers each day after stock has been distributed, no new customers are permitted to join the line.