Official The New iPad launch at Machines Mid Valley

It’s that time again, where I’m anticipating for something big, where I have a pile of money ready to be spent.

It’s the official launching of Apple “The New iPad” is Malaysia. Seriously, I don’t quite like the name that Apple call this now. For that reason, I see people is referring to this batch of iPad as iPad 2012 or iPad 3rd generation.

Decided to be in the queue earlier this time. Had my alarm clock set at 3:15am, although I hit the snooze button at the first time. Managed to get to Machines Mid Valley at 4:27am. This is how the queue looks like when I’m arrived.

I’m in the queue at last, where there are 17 people before me with me being the 18th. This photo is taken where I stand. Not so bad I guess.

The first few person in the line. I got to know from Machines website that they started queuing since 11pm last night. Bloody hell.

Things are started to heat up at 8:55am, where there are a group of Machine’s staffs are already gathering around the entrance.

At 9:22am, the door is finally opened, and the Machine’s staffs doing the final preparations before they start setting at 10am.

Finally, there is light coming from the store, and it looks alive. Time moves too slow now, while I impatiently waiting for 10am.

This is the model I’m getting today, well the most expensive one from the product line.

Why 64GB? Well, I bought 16GB for iPad 2 last time. With iPad apps being quite big, I filled up my 16GB iPad rather quickly last time. So I was thing of getting 32GB this time. But looking for the price, I just need to pay an extra RM300 for double the storage.

Why 4G where obviously, this technology is not available yet in Malaysia. Basically, below are the things that convinced me to spend an extra RM400 for the 4G version.

• I don’t want to be bound by finding a place with Wifi available. I can always tethered with my iPhone, but my iPhone 4S is barely survived with the 1GB data quota that Maxis plan gives (my usage is around 850MB monthly)
• From what I read, using Mifi for portable Wifi router is much troublesome. I have to carry additional device, additional charger
• I feel that iPad is handicapped without AGPS. GPS sensor only comes with 4G model

Other people may have different view, but I find those justify my reason to get the 4G version.

Well, back to my journey of getting iPad this time. The shopped is opened 10 mins earlier than 10am. At 9:59am, I’m in the store already, waiting for the people before be to buy their iPad.

At 10:15am, I’m a happy man walking out from Machines with a plastic bag with something heavy inside.

As for the queue, this is how it looks like at the time when I walked out from the Apple store.

The queue is not as long as iPad 2 launching last year. One of the main reason that I think is the date. iPad 2 last year started selling on April 29th, just a few days after everyone got their salary. As for this year, it’s April 20th, where it’s really at the end of the month where this is the time that most of us are broke.