During the Apple keynote yesterday, Tim Cook and friends announced that the new iPads would be available for preorder today. Hardcore folks like myself assumed this meant like most preorders they’d be available at midnight Pacific time. After giving up at around 3:00 AM, it turns out for whatever reason this time around Apple waited until morning to flip the preorder switch.

Well, as of a few moments ago, the iPad Air 2 and the iPad mini 3 are available for preorder with a ship date of Thursday the 23rd (So far, anyway). I’m excited to see what the actual demand is going to be like on these iPads, as we’re getting to a point where the previous iPads are so good that there isn’t much of a compelling reason to continually upgrade to the latest and greatest unless you just like having the newest thing.

Regardless, I’m excited to see how the A8X in the new iPad performs in the wild. The iPhone 6 has seen a pretty nice bump in overall speed, so the new iPad Air 2 should be similar. It’s a bit of a bummer that the iPad mini 3 didn’t get much of an upgrade aside from the addition of Touch ID, but as mentioned, the iPad mini 2 is one hell of a device that’s hard to improve on.