iPad Number Speculations - Wozniak and Jobs Make Public Appearances

The iPad arrived in stores throughout the country on Saturday with the usual Apple flourish; the stores were prepped for fired-up fans, some of whom had waited in lines throughout the night to get their hands on the device. A number of Apple customers experienced more than the thrill of holding the shiny new device, they got a jolt of tech royalty as Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, who joined the pre-iPad vigil at 6 pm Friday at Valley Fair mall. The ever-buoyant Wozniak brought along his Segway, which he used to cruise the empty mall halls. "To me, the waiting in line is like reliving the days you waited in line for concert tickets in college," Wozniak said. "Yeah, I could easily arrange to get an iPad in different ways. But I like to do this like everybody else."

In Palo Alto, the presence of Apple guru Jobs gave everyone a brush with the highest of Silicon Valley high-tech fame. Wearing a black hoodie and jeans, Jobs, who came with his wife, Laurene Powell-Jobs, and daughter, scanned the displays of tech goodies and watched Apple employees give iPad how-to demonstrations. And he drew amazed gazes from shoppers already expressing excitement overload. Many in the crowd pulled out cameras and iPhones to capture the Jobs chatting with a handful of shoppers, but even his 30 minute invasion didn’t get in the way of the serious business the customers were there for – the buying and playing with the new iPads at the store.

Some of the people in the tech industry question whether the iPad or the competing gadgets which are coming out in the next few months will ever be more than just a niche product. Others though see the mouse-less slender device as one that could redefine the portable computing industry. The device, with its sensitive multitouch screen, allows users to access videos, books, newspapers, and the web with the swipe of a finger.

Apple’s powerful new device was on display Saturday as the company rolled out iPads that run on a WiFi network and are priced starting at $499. The most expensive iPad to run on both WiFi and 3G networks will for $829. The company is expected to start selling 3G iPads within a few weeks. WiFi iPads have already popped on Craigslist and we found a 64GB WiFi iPad which retails for $699 being sold for an asking price of $1,000. Apple didn’t provide any details on opening-day sales but Gene Munster, an analyst at Piper Jaffray, predicted that as many as 300,000 iPads would be sold this weekend revised his numbers upward Saturday to between 600,000 and 700,000 units purchased on the first day alone. This contrasts with the 270,000 iPhones sold during the products first launch.

On the contrary - rumor has it that Apple failed miserably in selling out these device so much so that, Steve Jobs himself had to make an impromptu appearance at the Palo Alto Apple Store to survey sale of the iPad in person. As we said before all this is speculations hopefully when the numbers comes out we will certainly be sure of whether or not we backed a dying horse.