We were half-expecting Twitter to break entirely when Steve Jobs took the stage Wednesday morning to announce the new Apple iPad. It was a little slow, but it didn’t break.

The New York Times’ Labs website was tracking all Apple-related Tweets in real time during the event. A screenshot is shown above — a simple page that updates around once every two seconds. The data is pulled in via JSON requests, and the super-clean refreshes are handled with jQuery.

Twitter sets limits on API calls. Currently it’s set at 150 calls per hour, which, for apps that send regular requests, is 2.5 calls a minute. This app appears to be updating far more quickly than that, so unless we have our numbers wrong, we’d guess the NYT has a backstage pass here.

View the deceptively simple source and .js files on the NYT Labs site. Also look for the special warning about sharks.