With less than two weeks before Apple’s iPad is commercially released in the US, only a few content companies have access to the much-hyped device.
The New York Timesreports that those developers without access to iPad are running software on Macs that mirror its performance.
Only a handful of content owners, such as Major League Baseball, NYT itself and the Wall Street Journal, have iPads to test their iPad apps on., the Times said.
The loaned iPads must be kept in a windowless room and on a chain.
Apple began accepting submissions last week from iPad developers that want their apps on the App Store before the iPad’s release in the US on April 3, said NYT.
But Amazon and Barnes & Noble – which are developing e-reader apps for the iPad - told NYT that they would wait and test their software on an iPad before sending it for review.
Other developers are also urging caution.
“As much as we’d love to be there [on iPad] on Day 1, a misstep could kill the train before it even gets out of the station,” Wade Slitkin, chief executive of Panelfly, which supplies several digital comic-book readers to iPhone.
The Wall Street Journalreported last week that Apple is scrambling to secure content deals for its iPad tablet
It said that traditional newspaper, magazines and textbook publishers were unsure how to represent their content on the iPad.
But the WSJ said iPad presales had numbers “hundreds of thousands” and that iPad sales in the first three months could outstrip those of the iPhone in the same period.