marco wonders how to best time development and release of iPad apps, given that developers won’t get units any sooner than users will:
This leaves a few possibilities for developers:
- Develop the entire app without using a real iPad, submit the binary to Apple, and have it available on day one. But, having never run it on a real iPad, the app will probably have a lot of issues, and it will get panned in reviews for being buggy while you wait in the very long app-review queue for your updates.
- Get an iPad on day one, rush home, test the app, iron out any little bugs or inopportune design choices, and submit it to Apple. This doesn’t really give much more of a testing and design advantage over option 1, and you’ll still be stuck waiting in the app-review queue for weeks as every other developer does the same thing.
- Wait for initial app submission until after you’ve tested extensively on a real iPad. You’ll have the best release, but you will have missed the launch window, which could cost you dearly in revenue and market share. And even when you finally submit, the app-review queue will still be bogged down with people who took the first two options, delaying your presence even further.
All of these options are terrible. Not only are they bad for developers, but they’ll be bad for Apple as initial reviews ding the iPad for the first batch of sloppy native apps.
This is one reason why I suspect there’s something we haven’t been told yet: I don’t think anyone’s iPad-native apps will be available on day one. My best guess is that the iPad will be released with only the built-in apps and iPhone-native app capability. After a few weeks or months, as the SDK gets another revision or two and everyone has solid, universal (iPad and iPhone) apps submitted and (hopefully) pre-approved, the iPad App Store will officially open. This could happen sometime closer to WWDC in June.
I admit that all these options have downsides; but then again, so does every option I can think of. I’m not sure what other process and order of operations would safeguard against rushed, sloppy apps or long approval queues.
Think about Marco’s final suggestion - that iPad apps will be delayed until, say, June. How is a stampede of app submissions in June any different than a stampede in March? (Except there’d be even more apps in June.)
Now think about app quality. Not being able to test on an iPad will suck for sure. That’s why responsible developers won’t ship before they’re happy, and irresponsible ones will churn out crap with the same speed and vehemence as always. You can’t stop stupid. Apple will hopefully reject unusably crappy apps, but beyond that, expect the same mix of pearls and dogcrap in the store as today.
I wouldn’t be surprised if top-rate developers such as EA, Rockstar, Activision, ngmoco got early units to test on. I also wouldn’t be surprised if a huge number of apps got iPadded without too much fuss, real units in developers’ hands or not. So let’s say the store opens in March with:
- Nearly all of today’s iPhone apps running in compatibility mode
- A selection of top games (and apps)
- A smaller number of well-running iPadded apps
I think the market would handle that just fine. Some devs would be quicker to redesign, others would take longer, and the wait times for approval would be pretty rough. And that’s fine as far as users are concerned - I don’t think this would enrage them at all. It would be an experience-bummer on the level of the much-discussed lack of Flash; annoying at first, then quickly dealt with given that the iPad provides a million other ways to distract yourself.
It’s not unlike when the iPhone first came out: did you really miss the lack of third-party apps? It took me months before I was done taking in the out-of-the-box experience. I would’ve barely had time to check out any more apps.
Keep this in mind also: whatever apps we get in March will be just ok, even if every developer got a free iPad today. It will take time for people to fully grok the device and its possibilities, and then milk every inch and CPU cycle out of it. Expect head-turning demos in June and mindblowing apps this summer.
And until then, well, the iPad may be only a very awesome gadget.
