Apple does it again

On my way to LensCrafters to get my glasses fixed, I stopped by the Apple store. To my surprise, they had the  crowd control ropes up, and a line  of 30-40 people was waiting outside the door.  What the . . . ?

So I asked the nice young Apple saleslady monitoring the  door, "What's up?" She said, "This line is for  buying  iPads." 

"But those have  been available for a month," I replied.  "No, the 3G models have just been released today."

The cheapest 3G version runs $629 before buying the data.   Here was a  line of  people waiting to hand Apple that much money, the first chance they had.   And with little  fanfare--I didn't know today was the secondary release day, and I follow Apple pretty closely.

As I was not buying an iPad, I was permitted into the store, which was literally buzzing with activity.  What a remarkable company.