guys, especially many of your macrumor long-time veteran, stop fueling the conspiracy theory!
many clear-headed people reasonably and logically explained to you that,
1. a company cannot design a manufacturing capacity for the initial surge. if apple is able to meet the demand of 1,000 people in line for every apple store, it means when there is no one queueing in front of Apple store a month from now, Apple will over-produce 1000x of its products. it will be a huge nightmare.
if you are selling lemonade for example, and you prepare to sell 100 cups a day. a worker can make 50 cups a day. how many workers will you hire? you will hire two. but what if i tell you all 99 people will order in the first minute, and the last guy will order at the end of the day, are you going to hire 99 people so all 99 cups could be made once, to eliminate a line? Then throughout the day you will have 99 idle workers.
This example is similar to a manufacturing plant, except you can simply lay off these 99 workers. But in a factory, you cannot just eliminate a production line, or lay off real workers.
2. Apple cannot allow pre-order because it would undercut all the retailers that are onboard to sell iPad. Why would people shop from Target or Best Buy if they can pre-order from Apple?
3. iPhone 4 launch allowed pre-order but it also led to a lot of complaints from people who weren't able to pre-order, and had to wait in line for 10+ hours while watching people who pre-ordered walked into the store after waiting after only 2-3 hours. People who couldn't pre-order thought this process was very unfair to them (after all they waited all night in the cold weather). Perhaps their complaints had prompted Apple to change its policy to release in the afternoon (Better weather and easier to start the line). Also, it's fairest to everyone whether you have internet or not, whether you have heard of pre-order or not. It's very simple. We are selling iPad 2 at 5pm. If you want it, you come and get it in line.
