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Filed under: iPad

It seems that a lot of Apple-related events happen while I'm on cruise ships. Back in 1998, for example, I was aboard a cruise ship when I read the headline that Apple had decided to drop the Newton MessagePad. Before we went on this trip, I knew that Apple would start taking iPad pre-orders and reservations on March 12, so I expected that I'd just be able to pull up the Apple website early in the morning, pop in my reservation, and then go on with my vacation. Little did I know that it was going to take me until 4 PM local time (3 PM ET) on March 12th to get my reservation into the system. Just before I went to sleep the evening of March 11th, I saw a post here on TUAW that outlined when the Apple Online Store would open for pre-orders and reservations. Doing a quick time calculation in my head, I determined that I'd be able to pop in at 9:30 AM local time and make my order... no, wait a second. At 8:30 AM, I was going to be taking a ship's tender over to shore. Dang. We were scheduled for the proverbial "three hour tour" in this beautiful tropical location, so I decided to be patient and wait until I got back to the ship at about 11:30 AM local time. Of course, when we were ...