Edible Apple

Apple, this past Friday, officially invited developers to submit their iPad apps for approval to the app store. In an email sent to developers, Apple writes:

iPad will begin shipping soon and your opportunity to be part of the grand opening of the iPad App Store starts today. Submit your iPad app now for an initial review by the App Review Team and receive feedback on its readiness for the grand opening.

Submit Your App by March 27.

Build and test your iPad app using iPhone SDK 3.2 beta 5 available on the iPhone Dev Center. Only iPad apps built with iPhone SDK 3.2 beta 5 will be accepted for this initial review.

Upload your distribution signed app through iTunes Connect by Saturday, March 27, 5pm PDT.

The App Review Team will review your app on iPad and email you details about the readiness of your app.

You will also receive additional information about submitting your app for final review before iPad ships.

Only apps submitted for the initial review will be considered for the grand opening of the iPad App Store.

Naturally, 99.9% of developers still don’t have an iPad and have instead had to rely on an iPad simulator within the iPhone 3.2 SDK. While you can do some thangs’ with a simulator, there really is no such as the real deal, and some developers are worried that shipping versions of their apps might be a bit ‘off’ and seemingly buggy when they finally make their way onto the iPad. That being the case, some developers continue to work on iPad apps but are deciding not to submit an app to the iTunes App Store until April 3rd. The obvious tradeoff here is that there might be a lot of money to be made by being on the app store as quickly as possible.