Apple sent out an email this morning to all of the developers in the App Store giving them the green light on their iPad apps. It’s a very interesting move… most developers haven’t even seen an iPad and have only been able to test their apps in the iPad simulator. TUAW’s Erica Sadun presents an interesting point of view, explaining that “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.”

We’ve recently heard that Apple shipped several key developers iPads but has a 10-page contract about it’s use, storage and other restrictions so that information doesn’t leak out. While that’s great for those developers, it’s really showing Apple’s lack of connection with everyone else. The iPad simulator is not perfect, even the current iPhone simulator has it’s issues… so what makes Apple think that releasing applications without testing them on hardware is a good thing?

Well, the review team will test the apps on hardware, and that makes it good enough. If you submit your app now, the review team will test it and hopefully approve it for the launch of the iPad App Store (we’re guessing April 3rd, obviously). Developers are at a huge disadvantage here. If the review team finds an error when the app is running on hardware, they’ll deny it and tell the developer to fix it and re-submit. That’s not going to work well… at all. First, the app could run just fine in the simulator. Second, how are you supposed to replicate a hardware error without hardware?

Do we really see an alternative? No. There have to be apps available on launch day, but we’re not too excited about running glitchy apps for the first couple of weeks while developers fix the unexpected errors.

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The IRB1 iPhone Remote Control is one of the most polished remote interface addons we’ve seen for the iPhone. It’s doesn’t do anything over WiFi and actually plugs into the dock connecter. There’s no built-in battery, it just uses the iPhone’s power to function. The companion iPhone app looks well designed, well, sort of. Some of the visual design choices seem questionable, but we’re glad the developers put more focus into the capabilities of the device than the aesthetics.

The RedEye was the first, and it’s new Mini is the cheapest universal remote option at $49 but isn’t shipping until Spring. It also plugs directly into the headphone jack… we think it would be all to easy to break that off, so we’re a little hesitant to go that route. There are other options like a case from Power A and a similar dongle from New Potato Technologies but this one appears to give us the most bang for the buck — $69.95.

The IRB1 comes with 40,000 IR codes built into the iPhone app and can learn the functions from your remotes if they’re not available in the database. The company explains that learned commands are incredibly small — 1MB of data represents about 800 codes. It can also function as your Apple Remote for iTunes and Front Row if you’d like. Amusingly enough, it has a “Take Control” function that lets you do just that if you’re out at the bar and want to switch channels. We’re not exactly sure how the feature works, but it’s a great way to make your table happy… and get thrown out of a bar.

Anyways, the company is showing the units are in stock so go grab one and let us know what you think. We’ve contacted the company for a review unit so we can put it to the test. We’ll hopefully be doing a review of each of the listed devices above so that we can help you decide what device would be best for your home theater setup.

Update: the developer is shipping us a review unit. We’ll have a full writeup in the near future.

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In communications with vendors that have been ongoing for “some time now,” according to one company, Apple has said that it will remove both film-only solutions from its stores, as well as any case or other accessory that includes film protection as part of its package, such as cases that include film screen protectors. According to sources, the ban will impact all forms of screen film, including completely clear film, anti-glare film, and mirrored film, regardless of whether the purpose of the film is protective, decorative, or both.

So, what’s getting the axe? It looks like every screen protector for the iPhone, iPod, and potentially the iPad. This appears to include laptop protectors like Marware’s Protection Pack but we’re still left to wonder how far this ban will go?

Several sites have guessed that it’s related to the high return rate of the screen protectors mostly due to user error. When I worked at the Genius bar, all of the Genii refused to install the protectors because of the rare occurrence that we’d mess one up. It’s impossible to take it off and do it again. So, if you suck at it, the store eats that product. I’ll back this explanation: the return rates on the screen protectors were off the chart compared to every other product in the store… maybe Apple doesn’t want to deal with it any more. It could have been costing them more money than they made off of the products.

Others speculate that is has something to do with Apple’s superiority complex. They don’t want customers to think they have to buy a screen protector in order to keep their devices scratch-free. I don’t really buy into this explanation because that means every Apple product doesn’t need any protection and will last forever right out of the box. Yeah… right. I repair several iPhone screens a day because my customers rarely realize how fragile it truly is. Buy a case for your iPhone, your iPod touch, your future iPad, and even your laptop. The extra protection provided by a Speck product will definitely help your laptop stay nicer, longer. However, it won’t make it drop proof — so don’t go overboard.

Over-confidence is our last possible scenario. Cases make people feel secure… people who use cases or screen protectors are far more likely to haphazardly care for their devices. While we realize it’s unlikely, we think Apple may be pulling these products to avoid the “I had a screen protector” argument. Most of us know that this argument is completely moronic, but you’d be surprised at the number of people who blame Apple for faulty products when they “took the necessary precautions.” Yes, it does seem stupid… but you’d be surprised how unintelligent people can be when it comes to caring for their devices.

Our condolences to the manufacturing companies; this will probably be a huge hit on the sales of their products.

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Happy St. Patrick’s Day, hope you like our festive coloring.

Analysts are expecting the iPad to sell one million units 2 weeks after it ships. That looks to be a pretty generous number to us. The first iPhone sold one million units after 74 days. It took the same amount of time for the Motolora Droid to hit that mark. We’d say it’s possible, but we’re not placing any bets.

We’ve also noticed that the iPad power adapter and the iPad keyboard dock have been delayed until May. A quick check to Apple.com — it obviously ships with a power adapter, you just won’t be able to purchase a secondary adapter right away. We’re not too worried about the lack of the keyboard dock: it seems like a pretty stupid idea to us. Give us a regular dock, let us use a bluetooth keyboard. Problem solved. We have an aluminum keyboard just waiting for our iPad. Anyone see a problem with that solution?

Nothing is final yet, but it looks like Microsoft has decided to kill multitasking from the Windows Phone 7 release… they’ve also taken copy and paste. Maybe we’re missing something here, but wasn’t Microsoft very vocal about the lack of these two features? Windows Phone 6 has both multitasking and copy and paste. So what’s up with the disappearing act?

If the new Microsoft mobile OS does ship without those features, it’ll make a pretty big argument for an iPhone. Considering the rumor that iPhone OS 4.0 will have multitasking (the 3GS hardware is more than capable of it), it seems like a very strange move for Microsoft to chop such crucial features from their new OS. The 10% of Microsoft employees hiding their iPhones will surely increase; maybe Steve Ballmer would swallow his pride and go to an Apple Store?

We’ll never say that the iPhone is the perfect mobile device, but it’s pretty close. We can’t wait for iPhone OS 4.0 to come out… and we really hope that it lives up to our expectations. However, here we are close to the end of March, and there’s still no talk of a 4.0 beta. Is Apple closing the door on developers for the time being? Could we still see an official release this summer? With the amount of people in the developer program, information leaks out very easily; we’ve even obtained access to betas just to see what’s new. Would Apple limit the beta to a select few developers? We hope not, but still wouldn’t put it past them. Let’s forget about OS 3.2 and just move straight to 4… sound good, Apple?

Josh — CTA Editor

No, it’s not anything above PG… it’s the fact that Valve is officially bringing their Steam platform to the Mac in April (in beta). They’ve also acknowledged that every new Valve game will release simultaneously on the Mac and PC. We’ve already voiced our opinions about this transition in previous posts but here’s a quick recap.
• Steam will be the first major game distribution platform to come to the Mac.
• It currently dominates the PC gaming world.
• Games like Half Life, Team Fortress, Left 4 Dead, and Portal will all be making their way to the Mac.
• This opens up tremendous development opportunity for all of the companies who have been hesitant. Valve’s commitment to release cross platform will help convince other developers to do the same.
• This will finally bring mainstream quality games to the Mac… yes, there’s been some, but Mac gamers have had very limited choices in games for quite some time.

Thank you, Valve. Now we can use our 27 inch iMac screens for something besides creativity.

This. Is. Huge.

We talked about the possibility of a Mac version of Steam (Valve’s distribution platform) last week. We didn’t have much go on, just a few Mac user interface pictures within the latest beta version of Steam. Today, Valve threw caution to the wind and gave us all images to drool over. It appears as though the feud between Apple and Steam is over. Sweet.

Valve is coming to the Mac. There is not doubt about it. That means Steam is coming to the Mac. That’s the only way Valve distributes its software. No more World of Warcraft for us, we might actually see real gaming titles come to our platform of choice. We’re not say that WoW isn’t a real game, but we can only spend a certain amount of time playing the same game over and over again.

There is no estimated release date, but considering the effort poured into these images, we’d expect it to be soon. Very soon.

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Ars explains in the article something that we’ve been saying since our initial analysis of the iPad: it’s not the hardware that will make it popular, it’s the software. We obviously agree: the software expandability of the App Store on a device as large as the iPad will make it tremendously popular. We still wish that Apple would loosen up their approval process a bit, but there’s a lot of great software in the App Store nonetheless.

So what’s not awesome about the SoC? Well, it may not be the chip we thought it was. Ars says it’s definitely not cutting-edge: far from it, actually. The only impressive feature is the lack of features this chip has built-in. If Ars’ sources are correct, it actually runs on the ARM Cortex A8 instead of the A9 as originally assumed. The author also claims it to be single core — no extra oomph for the iPad. It’s also running the PowerVR SGX GPU instead of the newer Mali GPU some analysts predicted. While that’s still a pretty decent SoC, it’s nothing amazing… and that’s probably why Apple’s been fairly secretive with the specifications.

The iPad is limited in hardware: that actually helps the SoC perform better and consume less energy. At this point, there’s no camera that we know of (that could still change between now and the launch). The multitouch display uses one Input/Output channel, the device connects to your computer and charges via one I/O channel, and the video out is sent along an analog channel. That’s not much for I/O and requires very little from the SoC itself. Modern SoC’s ship with many more capabilities than the iPad needs at this point… that could be the driving reason for Apple to develop custom silicon. They wanted to offer us the best battery life possible by building a chip that had just enough hardware to make the device run. That’s a pretty good strategy, but we’re not sure it’s worth the billion dollar price tag that some analysts claim.

Limiting hardware limits future potential. We think the handicapped A4 is possible but we don’t think it’s in Apple’s best interest. If they really did strip out everything non-essential to the functionality of the device, we’re looking at another re-design if they decide to add more features in the future. Again, that’s a huge issue if a SoC really costs a billion bucks to produce. Everyone wants a camera in the iPad… everyone. Why would Apple invest so much money into a first generation device and do it again for the next model. Take a look at the iPod and the iPhone: each gained considerable amounts of traction and features with time. Actually, the more we think about it, the more intelligence Ars’ theory loses over time.

It’s great to have sources that want to share this kind of information with you, but we need to seriously re-examine how we share that information as truth, rumor or possibility. Not once did Ars mention the reliability of their sources. Not once did they mention the fact that they’re still guessing because no one will truly know until we can take it apart. In fact, they really started two more rumors: it’s running an ARM Cortex A8 and a PowerVR SGX GPU. We already knew the potential makeup of the iPad SoC, we won’t know what it really is until we see it, so why not add more speculation to the news-hungry internet? Why not?

The ultimate truth: yes, it’s possible that Ars’ sources and speculation is correct, but don’t hold it as fact just yet. Until the iPad comes out, we can only hope for the great hardware we initially thought was in the device. Once we have ours torn apart, we’ll let you know what we find. Until then, drink a beer, relax… and maybe stop turning nothing into nothing that makes money.

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