I recall during a info session the Adcom said "early" was before the holidays, as in they see a large spike of applications in the final two weeks before jan deadline. In that sense, I think Oct/Nov are definitely "early."
The 2 weeks reasoning makes sense. If you submitted in Oct, and they read in order, if people in Nov begin getting interviews, its hard not to think they passed you up already. So 2 weeks after the November people, how strong of a chance would you have, when they supposedly read your app before that?