How the iPad Changes Our Business

It’s been a week now since Apple announced the iPad in San Francisco, and that time has given everyone a chance to digest the new product. More importantly, it’s given us a chance to take a look at the developer tools for the iPad. (We’re still not sold on that name, but unfortunately we’re stuck with it.) While the developer tools remain under a non-disclosure agreement for now, I can safely say that the tools have erased any doubts we had about the iPad as a platform.

Prior to the iPad announcement, we’d been in the early stages of designing a new desktop app for the Mac. But now we’ve decided to put that project on the back burner for now and work on an iPad app idea that jumped out at us almost immediately. While we don’t want to be specific just yet, suffice it to say that we’re really excited about this product and it’s potential for success on the iPad.

Mean while, there are a lot of unknowns surrounding iPad development. Of particular concern to us is when test hardware will be available to developers. The iPhone had already been on the market for a year when Apple released the first SDK, so most developers had hardware in their hands on which to test new apps. With the iPad, we’ve had no indication that we’ll get access to the hardware before it gets released to the public, probably in late March or early April.

Moreover, because apps tend to work a little differently on the device itself versus in the simulator, most developers (ourselves included) are hesitant to release apps based only on simulator performance. It seems likely that Apple shares the same concern. That’s let to quite a bit of speculation that there may be a waiting period between the release of the iPad device and when Apple begins accepting apps from most developers. While the device may ship with a small store containing a handful of “blessed” apps by trusted third parties, it seems likely that Apple will hold off a bit with most developers. While we’d love to have our new app available when the device launches, we’re preparing ourselves for a slightly longer wait. Stay tuned!

Posted at Feb 3, 2010 at 7:10pm | Permalink | Tags: ipad iphone