iPad

Attention all iPad app developers: if you'd like to have your application in the App Store in time for the iPad launch, submit your app by March 27th. According to an email sent to all developers, Apple is now accepting iPad apps into the App Store. From the email, "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."

The full email follows below:

If you were irked about the fact that the iPad isn't in your hands at this very moment, there may be someone to blame. PerDigiTimes, local Taiwanese newspaper Liberty Times is claiming that Apple's touchscreen manufacturing partner Wintek is the source of issues that have slightly delayed the release of the iPad to April 3rd from Apple's originally planned window of late March and have reportedly resulted in lower launch quantities of the device than desired by Apple.

The report claimed that Wintek is facing a manufacturing bottleneck in its touch panel production, and its low yield rate for touch panels has hampered its shipments to Apple.

Since becoming available for pre-order last Friday, Apple claims that customers have purchased "hundreds of thousands of the device," per the Wall Street Journal. The number is comparable to the roughly 1.2 million iPhones Apple sold in the three months following the June 29th, 2007 launch of the handset.

The newspaper also claims that Apple is 'racing' to tie up a broad number of content licensing deals before the iPad officially hits the market on April 3rd. In particular, the company is trying to convince television networks to drop the price of TV shows that users would downloaded directly to the device.These efforts and others have reportedly seen the Cupertino-based company temporarily reduce its emphasis on working with newspaper, magazines and textbook publishers on new ways to display their digital content.

BusinessWeek is reporting that select developers have been provided access to the iPad ahead of its official April 3rd launch, allowing for chances to build and test their application directly on the device rather than having to rely on simulator tools built into the Software Development Kit offered by Apple as part of its developer program for the platform.

This level of access apparently comes at a steep price and developers are obligated to sign a 10-page confidentiality agreement requiring them to utilize a number of security measures to prevent unauthorized access to or removal of the iPad in their possession.

Today Apple released an updated version of the iPhone SDK 3.2 beta for iPad development on the iPhone Dev Center (developer account required). So far we haven't heard of any significant changes in beta 5, although previous releases generally provided bug fixes and minor improvements for developers.

Beta 4 was released earlier this month for developers to work on iPad applications ahead of the launch. Apple plans to begin shipping the iPad on April 3rd.

Per AppleInsider, Apple has announced shipping delays on some of its forthcoming iPad accessories with both the keyboard dock and 10W USB power adapter now being listed as having ship dates in May.

In addition, the $39 iPad soft case, which was originally scheduled to ship on April 3 when pre-orders began last Friday, has been delayed until mid-April. The $69 keyboard dock was originally scheduled to ship in mid-April, and the $29 USB power adapter in late April.

Although generally known for top-of-the-line 3D games, id software's John Carmack has become a passionate iPhone app developer. Per Kotaku, Carmack has personally cited the platform as a return to the older school of game design, where a single enthusiast can turn out a great game in a matter of a couple months, id software’s  iPhone ports of Wolfenstein 3D and Doom were basically pet projects of Carmack himself.

Carmack has recently offered the following: "Apple doesn’t give us anything ahead of time either, so haven’t put hands on it ourselves, but we certainly are expecting to try to have our Rage title for the iPhone, iPad, whatever, working across there."

Multiple sources have reported to MacDailyNews about telephone conversations they've had with Apple reps regarding changing their iPad orders from delivery to in-store pickup in the case of multiple iPad buyers.

In these cases, the purchasers have been told that in order to do such a change, the delivery order would have to be cancelled and a new in-store pickup order completed, but that iPad orders (which began this morning at 8:30am EST) have been "so overwhelming" that new iPad orders may not be available for in-store pickup on April 3.Apple's online store is still reporting that customers who reserve Wi-Fi iPads will be able to pick the units up at their local Apple Store location "between 9:00 a.m. and 3:00 p.m. on April 3."

iPad owners will apparently be able to lock the position of content on the screen, according to new images of the device posted today on Apple's online store. The external switch originally shown to 'mute' the device, as on the iPhone, will instead be used to lock the screen orientation preventing the display from switching between portrait and landscape views. The subtle change was very quiet with no known announcement from Apple regarding the reasoning behind favoring screen rotation locking over muting the built-in speaker.

Here are before and after images...

Coinciding with today's iPad pre-ordering, Apple updated the iPad section of their site. Buried deep in the iPad section is a page providing more information about the data plans available on the Wi-Fi + 3G model of the iPad. The first paragraph reads like an advertisement for AT&T's "quality" service, but the second paragraph reiterates some of what Steve Jobs said in his introduction keynote. Options are limited data (250MB) for $14.99 per month, or unlimited data for $29.99 per month. The most significant piece of information is that a contract is not required.