Imagine after shelling out your money for the iPad, and a week later, your company sends you overseas to Israel. Then imagine that when your plane lands, the customs agent confiscates your iPad and you never see it again.

That is the report that is coming in. And Israel will not allow Apple to sell iPads there. It seems (and get this) the wifi on the iPads are to US standards and exceed the Israeli standards. So until Apple detunes the wifi signal, they are contriban and will be seized. So far they have confiscated ten iPads as they arrived.I should also mention that the Israeli wifi standard is the same as the european standard.

I wonder if the european models will have modified wifi? Is there a purpose to the different standard, or just a hold over from some less capable day? How could this affect things if they start confiscating iPads on the streets? Imagine going through Paris and deciding to look for directions to the Arc de Triomphe. Suddenly you are slapped into irons for displaying an iPad in public.

****...I am going to Amsterdam at the end of may...and my iPad wifi won't work there?...is that possible?...I thought wifi was wifi. My daughter has a router inhere house and I assumed i could just log on with her passcode.

It is not that the wifi does not work. It just transmit a stronger signal than is the standard for Europe and Israel. It is sort of the same as confiscating a boom box because it will go to 100 dB and the standard is 90 dB.

The latest coming out is a story that the son of the Israeli leader, Perez, runs the company that is in charge of Apple import sales. Because of the delay in getting a European model out, daddy is making the state use this ban to keep US purchased models out so son does not lose any sales. However, an anonymous source says that there are hundreds of people that make a living in Israel from writing apps. A lot of them managed to get an ipad into the country before the ban.