“Ha ha. The guy next to me is using iPad 2. Want to see his face tomorrow after iPad 3 launches,” said a tweep.
The “guy next to” the tweep may be miles away from the tweep who wants to “see his face”. But it doesn't matter. For the tweep, when iPad 3 comes, iPad 2 is junk.
Few companies manage to create a buzz like Apple when it comes to the launch of new products. Of course, Google comes close, as it did when it launched Ice Cream Sandwich.
But tweets and mentions about Apple does seem to have a special flavour. There seemed to be no doubts in people's minds that with features like retina display, it would beat the hell out of the competition. There were also rumours about what it will be called - iPad 3 or iPad HD or whether it would have touch-feedback technology.
There were also those who said they won't buy the new iPad, but would take full advantage of the launch. “My plan. I'm NOT going to buy an iPad3, but I will attempt to be the first in line (when it's released) and sell my spot!,” declared a tweep.
Some tweeps even went to the extent of blaming the huge number of posts about iPad 3 and the resulting overload as the reason for the Facebook outage in Europe.
Some tweeps and blogs had an Indian — and a funny — touch. One decided to hit back at Kapil Sibal again: “Breaking: iPad3 release postponed. Kapil Sibal is yet to approve the design.”
Facebook was also full of links speculating the features. But what took the cake was the number of iPad3 pages and apps, some with over 50,000 ‘likes'. There were also scores of apps and pages that enticed people with ‘free iPad 3'. Again the number of people clicking the page showed how people were desperate to get their hands on iPad 3.
In India, the launch was even more important for some than Holi. While a tweep said he “was skipping Holi” to watch the launch event, another tweet also underscored the importance of the event (iPad launch, not Holi) to Indians: “So an iPhone 4S user just told me that if you ask Siri, “ Holi kab hai ?”, you get, “Aaj iPad 3 unveiling hai, G****u” as a reply.