iPad 2

Hundreds line up for iPad 2 in Tokyo

The first video shows a queue three city blocks long for Japan's post-tsunami launch

Earthquakes, a tsunami and a few nuclear meltdowns don't seem to have cooled the ardor of Japanese Apple (AAPL) enthusiasts for the iPad 2, which launched Thursday after a five week postponement.

The first customers took their place on line at 8 p.m. Wednesday and withstood a night of heavy rain, according to the Wall Street Journal. A MORE

ChangeWave Research: iPad 2 demand 40% higher than iPad 1

A new survey suggests that Apple sold 7 million iPads in Q2, including 2-3 million iPad 2s

RBC Capital's Mike Abramsky joined the 7 million club Tuesday.

That's the small but growing group of analysts who believe Apple (AAPL) sold 7 million or more iPads in its second fiscal quarter, which ran from December 26 to March 26.

Two other Wall Street analysts, Jeffries' Peter Misek and Caris' Robert Chira, came up with MORE

iPad ad as mission statement

Apple uses a 30-second TV spot to sell not just a gadget, but a philosophy

"This is what we believe," begins a gravely voiced narrator over an understated piano in the new Apple (AAPL) TV spot that debuted Saturday (and is available here and below the fold).

"Technology alone is not enough. Faster, thinner, lighter; those are all good things. But when technology gets out of the way, everything becomes MORE

Steve Jobs is still kicking

The six weeks the National Enquirer gave him are up

A supermarket tabloid shows a radio talk-show doctor and a Florida critical care physician photographs of a patient they have never examined. They pronounce him gravely ill and give him six weeks to live.

You might think that the takeaway message from this would be a story about medical ethics. But the patient was Steve Jobs, and what happened instead was a MORE

'Shock and Awe!': Charlie Wolf raises his iPad estimates by 10 million units

The persistence of record-setting queues has Wall Street scratching its collective head

The morning phone call to Apple's Fifth Avenue Store followed a familiar script:

Do you have iPad 2s today? Yes, we got a shipment. Is there a line? Yes, it goes around the block. Do you have enough units for everybody? No, we don't.

That crowds of buyers are still gathering outside Apple Stores every morning, more than two weeks after MORE

Barack Obama has an iPad

And he probably didn't have to wait in line to get it

From MarketWatch:

"I took my BlackBerry off for this show, because I didn't want it going off, and that would be really embarrassing," Obama said at a town hall meeting hosted by Spanish-language network Univision (the network will broadcast the town hall on Monday night). "But usually I carry a BlackBerry around," Obama told anchor Jorge MORE

Staples sells the iPad also-rans

Hoping to cash in on Apple's shortage by hawking Xooms, PlayBooks and Streaks

"Your tablet is waiting."

That was the subject line of the e-mail that landed in my inbox at 4:36 a.m. Monday.

It came as a surprise to me, because the last time I checked, the iPad 2 that I finally broke down and ordered on March 23 wasn't scheduled to ship until April 21.

So I took the bait, opened the MORE

iPad 2: Out of stock by Saturday

A launch perfectly timed to coincide with the end of Apple's second fiscal quarter

Reports are still drifting in, but it seems likely that most of the 25 countries where Apple (AAPL) launched the iPad 2 on Friday had run out of product by Saturday afternoon.

Pocket-lint reported Saturday that the two flagship Apple Stores in London -- Regent Street and Covent Garden -- were completely out of stock and wouldn't be MORE

Thousands in London queue for iPad 2

"I only need to say this one sentence to get across the magnitude of this launch," wrote Julian Alexander (AKA Tommo_UK) on Investor Village's AAPL Sanity board Friday evening:

"The lines were bigger than for ANY launch, I have ever seen, for anything, anywhere. Including for any iPhone launched to-date or last year's iPad.

"Simply awe inspiring," he continued. "There must have been several thousand people lining up outside the MORE

Videos: iPad 2 lines in Europe, Canada

Below the fold: Videos from Hamburg, Haarlem, Rome, Norwich, Manchester, Quebec and Toronto.