Apple iPad was unveiled by Steve Jobs on Jan 27,  in a mega event held at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco. Some features and applications are still not available in all areas. Application availability and pricing are yet to be approved and by Apple Apps store. The pre-ordering for iPad started March 12 and by now almost 2M orders have been booked. Apple also started receiving pre-orders for its awesome and gorgeous diamond studded US$19,999 iPad Diamond on March 19. One question still remains unanswered; what about Apps for iPad? As one big selling point of Apple’s iPhone OS based devices has been apps Stores which in this case was not addressed till now despite the fact that a separarte section by the name of  iPad Apps Store was already created within Apple app store. The iPad App Store will have it’s grand opening on April 3, when the iPad is officially released.

Truly speaking, iPad is indeed an oversized iPod touch/iPhone except for iBooks Store and iWorks Suite of apps. iPhone, iPod touch and iPad uses the same OS and the look and feel of the three devices is almost similar except for the few tweaks here and there in theiPhone OS 3.2 running on the iPad. It was therefore thought that new apps with slight modifications catering for larger display of iPad, will have to be developed. With iPad shipping date (April 3rd) almost two weeks from now, Apple has intimated its willingness to start accepting iPad apps for the iPad App Store. Developers will have until Saturday, March 27 to submit their iPad apps for review by Apple. Apple’s requirement is that they must build and test their apps using iPhone SDK 3.2 beta 5. Once submitted their iPad app through iTunes Connect, the App Review Team will review it and developers will receive additional information for submitting their apps for final review. Today, an email has been sent out by Apple in which it has asked developers to test their applications using beta 5 of the iPhone OS 3.2 SDK, and submit them to the company before March 27, in order to ensure their place in the store when April 3 rolls around. Here is a screenshot of the e-mail:

Image Credit Cultofmac

TUAW has rightly pointed towards some involved risk in the process:

The simulator uses many Macintosh frameworks and libraries, offering features that are not actually present on the iPhone. Applications that appear to be completely operational and fully debugged on the simulator may flake out or crash on the device itself. You simply cannot fully debug any program solely by using the simulator and be assured that the software will run bug-free on the iPhone. Here at TUAW central, we’re assuming (or at least hoping) that Apple will be testing device builds on real devices.

Let’s see how Apple handles this situation!   [Via Cultofmac]