Apple noted on Wednesday that the new iPad goes on sale at 8:00 AM local time on Friday in the United States and nine other countries: Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Japan, Singapore, Switzerland and the UK. It’ll also be available in Puerto Rico and the US Virgin Islands. It’s priced at $499; the iPad 2 will remain available and will cost $399 in a single 16GB Wi-Fi version.

Over the weekend Apple said that new iPad pre-orders had “sold out”, which has led some wide-eyed moonbats in the blogosphere to charge that Apple artificially throttled iPad production to make demand seem higher than it actually was.

Same old paranoid, anti-Apple hogwash.

Because unlike 2011, the new iPad’s rollout is happening in ten countries simultaneously. Last year Apple introduced the iPad 2 in the US first but held it back from international distribution for another two weeks to accommodate demand in the US.

I’m sure the first time one of these jackasses sees a new iPad on store shelves they’re going to declare it an abject failure because clearly, Apple overestimated demand and people just aren’t lining up to buy them.

Some people are going to see a problem regardless of what Apple does. I call them “assholes.”