Piper Jaffray reports that iPads were walking out of the stores at a rate — 8.8 units per hour during the Black Friday. That translates into 25,000 iPads sold nationwide. There are no other Black Friday iPad sales to compare with. The iPad is expanding Apple’s market and that is significant, even though the per-hour number cited looks small by comparison to those when the iPad debuted in April. Macs were leaving the stores at 8.2 units per hour per store, down from 8.3 last year and 13 two years ago.

Last week we reported that the next iPad will be equipped with a gyroscope, a Retina Display and USB ports and it’s very likely will get FaceTime capabilities with a front-facing camera. Unfortunately, there is no mention of how many megapixels the cameras might be. So, resent rumor claims that Apple already selected the camera lens maker for the iPad 2.  As expected, such suppler might be the Taiwanese company called Largan Precision. Largan reportedly supplies 5-megapixel lenses for the iPhone 4. It’s also unknown whether the company was selected to ship a VGA front-facing camera, a higher resolution rear one or both.

Recently Apple posted the new iPad commercial called “iPad is amazing” on their official webpage. New ad is aimed to showcase new iOS 4.2 features, including AirPlay, AirPrint, multitasking and the usual selection of apps. Surprisingly that no folders are shown in the video. Enjoy!

The head of Apple's global data center operations Olivier Sanche died at the age of 41 of a heart attack last Thursday.

Olivier Sanche was well-known as a pioneer of data center efficiency technologies, who was appreciated for its way of thinking and eventually became a leader in planning and construction of data centers. Apple and the data industry in general were shocked by his loss.

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