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In Cities Around The Globe, People Line Up To Buy Apple's New iPad

Lines outside the Apple Store in Covent Garden to buy the new iPad on Friday in London, England.
Matthew Lloyd
/
Getty Images
Lines outside the Apple Store in Covent Garden to buy the new iPad on Friday in London, England.

It's just an update, but people made lines in cities around the world to buy Apple's latest incarnation of the iPad.

Look at this line outside an Apple store in London:

And this scene at a Manhattan Apple store:

People speak to Apple employees as they wait in line to purchase the new iPad which went on sale around the world on Friday.
Spencer Platt / Getty Images
/
Getty Images
People speak to Apple employees as they wait in line to purchase the new iPad which went on sale around the world on Friday.

NPR's David Folkenflik was in New York City and he filed this report for our Newscast unit:

"In Manhattan, lines wrapped full city blocks at Apple Stores last night as fans waited to buy the new device in person — and that's just for an upgrade on the iPad.

"Selvon Belgrave is 31 and owns his own limousine service. He also owns the iPad 2, for that matter, but he could hardly wait to get the new one.

"'There's a lot of difference for this versus the old one,' he said. 'This one, it's got a camera — you can Skype — that's a major thing for me. I love Skyping. I haven't even opened the thing yet to explore. So When i open it up tonight i will do my best see the difference.'

"But he's so excited, he doesn't even need to know.

"'Dude, I don't even need... It's Apple, man, what can i say. It's Apple,' he said.

"Again, it's just an update. But Apple's stock briefly exceeded $600 a share on Thursday in anticipation of its release."

Computer World reports the same thing happened in Boston, but in Huntington, New York the Apple excitement was also met with protest.

A few people from Change.org protested the poor working conditions at Chinese factories manufacturing Apple products.

"We know Apple is listening," Jessica Morales told ComputerWorld. "We just want Apple to be the leader they are. We're Apple consumers ourselves, we have iPhones, iPads and MacBooks."

Copyright 2021 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

Eyder Peralta is NPR's East Africa correspondent based in Nairobi, Kenya.