michael said:
I think I sent the messages just to bowerbird
ok, could've been.
the site I was reading for iPad data, numbers, descriptions, etc., was not good....
also coulda been...
When I got better data, it was more obvious-- but since I had never even seen an iPad then, I had no other data to work with, and Apple, IRRC wasn't saying much in the early days.
that's correct, to a large degree. apple _did_ make an announcement right off, on april 3rd, that they'd already sold 300,000, but that included pre-orders and channel sales.
http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2010/04/05ipad.html http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2010/04/
and right at the time of our bet, apple released its second-quarter numbers, but it did _not_ comment on the number of ipads sold, which _might_ have led some observers to cast doubt.
http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2010/04/20results.html http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2010/04/20ipad.html
so yeah, there was a lot of rampant speculation... but shortly thereafter, on may 3rd, apple said that it had sold one million ipads, in 28 days...
http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2010/05/03ipad.html http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2010/05/
and then, again, on may 31st, apple reported that it had already sold its second million ipads.
so yeah, like you say, michael, once we received that data, the nature of the phenomenon became clear to everyone... but before then, everyone underestimated it, often to a degree that -- in hindsight -- is embarrassingly bad, as john gruber pointed out in an entry on his blog:
http://daringfireball.net/linked/2011/01/18/claim-chowder-ipad-sales-2010 -bowerbird