Apple Accepting iPad Apps Before We Have iPads

This is an old archived post from my former blog The Idea Shower. It's where I cataloged my product explorations and releases, one of which ultimately became Pocket.

This post was published back in 2010. It may not function as originally intended or may be missing images.

Apple Accepting iPad Apps Before We Have iPads

March 19, 2010

Of all the possible scenarios we (developers) considered for exactly how Apple planned to roll out iPad apps with the release of the iPad, this was the one I dreaded the most.

Apple is now accepting iPad applications to the review process. If you submit before March 27th, you may be included in the grand opening of the iPad App Store.

The only problem? No one has an iPad yet and won't until April 3rd.

Anyone who has developed on the iPhone SDK knows that how an app runs on the SDK simulator can be night/day vs how it runs on the actual device. Even if it runs flawlessly on the simulator, I've never had an instance where the first time I ran a new app on the device it worked to my liking. There are bugs and crashes that didn't occur on the simulator, there are slowdowns in areas that you thought were fast, and usability changes you didn't expect.

So we are now faced with a risky decision: go for fame and fortune, submit an app and cross your fingers that it actually works or wait, miss the hoopla, and submit something you KNOW works.