How soon you think it will be until they pop up on the Apple Store? How long does it normally take a new product to show up there? I realize the iPad 2 is still sold out all over, but I would think it has to happen soon.
There is no schedule for refurbs of any kind. They are posted to the refurb site as they become available.
Why would you think that? Refurbs will first go to supply the stores with warranty exchange units in lieu of brand new units. Only after there's adequate supply of those will they end up on apple.com With the ipad1 it took until September or so before refurbs were available, if I remember correctly. ... and the joke was on the people who waited months for a "bargain" -- refurbs were only $50 off retail price. If that holds true for the ipad2, that translates to maybe $10-$20 in real savings compared to buying from Target (5% discount w/ RedCard) or a mailorder place so you don't pay sales tax. Is it worth $10-20 to wait three or four months? I wouldn't be for me.
Although there would be exceptions, as a general case I'd question the true need of an ipad2 vs refurb ipad1 or other device if $10-$20 made a huge difference to someone.
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_3_3 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/533.17.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.0.2 Mobile/8J2 Safari/6533.18.5) Maybe in 6 months?
Last year the first refurbished iPads became available in mid-late October (6 months), and even then I think it was only $50 less.