Kidney for an iPad. A 17-year-old Chinese boy has made headlines this week, beginning in the Shanghai Daily, for selling one of his kidneys for about $3,100 so that he could buy an iPad. Reportedly, the boy went through a black market organ trader to sell his kidney after getting it removed at a hospital - then wound up back in the hospital with an infection from the ill-advised operation. Separately, the iPad sparked a riot by over exuberant buyers at a Beijing Apple Store.
iPads in the afterlife. Reports emerged from Malaysia earlier this year that Chinese families there were scrambling to find paper replicas of iPads, which like the real thing was in short supply. It turns out these families were looking to burn the tablet replicas - and replicas of other luxury items as well as fake money -- at the tombs of their ancestors, a practice that is part of the annual Qingming festival. This year, the iPad replicas are the hot item, literally and figuratively.
iPad a real riot. A riot broke out at a Beijing Apple Store when store personnel and would-be buyers clashed, reportedly sparked by a line jumping patron and overzealous employee. Five people were hurt during the melee and the store was forced to close over the May weekend.
$900 to get in line. The iPad 2 starts at $500, the device cost one eager buyer a lot more than that when the tablets went on sale in March. Hazem Sayed forked over an extra $900 to a college student to take her spot first in line at the Fifth Avenue Apple Store. Macworld quoted Sayed as saying the transaction was totally worth it in that it got him a bunch of publicity for his iOS development project. He'll need to pay us $900 to mention it here.
Fingering an iPad thief. A Colorado man's joy over buying an iPad for a friend at a mall quickly turned to pain when a thief swiped the device from him and tore off part of one of the the victim's pinky fingers as well. The iPad buyer said the thief kept pulling at a bag containing the iPad that was wrapped around his finger, and according to an AP report: "He kept pulling until something had to give, and it wound up being my finger." A partial amputation resulted.