Apple has finally gotten around to making the iPad camera connection kit available for pre-order and you can expect it to ship in late April. The kit supports all of the standard photo formats including JPEG and RAW and it sells for $29. Conveniently two connections are included:

• The Camera Connector features a USB interface. Just plug it into the dock connector port on your iPad, then attach your digital camera or iPhone using a USB cable (not included).

• Use the SD Card Reader to import photos directly from your camera’s SD card. Connect it to your iPad, then insert your digital camera’s SD card into the slot.

Why it’s taken Apple this long to get this particular accessory up for pre-order is beyond us but never the less, it is now available for pre-order.

[Via Mac Rumors]

iPad Camera Connection Kit Gets Shipping Date – Late April is a story by TiPb. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

TiPb - The #1 iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch Blog

If you hesitated until today to pre-order your iPad you’re going to have to wait a few extra days before your device is in your hands as Apple has changed the shipped by date to April 12th. If you pre-ordered prior to today then you can relax, you have nothing to worry about and your iPad should be in your hands on April 3rd.

Still debating where you should make your purchase? Think again about going into your local Best Buy as TUAW is reporting that they will have will have extremely limited stock – 15 per store to be exact and that’s 15 total of all 3 variants. Best Buy will then receive an additional 15 devices on April 11th.

Apple’s latest creation is looking to be quite a hot commodity. Who would have thought!?

[Thanks to everyone who sent this in!]

New iPad Pre-Orders Will Ship By April 12th is a story by TiPb. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

TiPb - The #1 iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch Blog

More sneak peaks at upcoming iPad apps, this time Bento, Twitterrific, Yahoo!, the Pinball (Tap or click the images above to see the full versions).

MacRumors showed off Bento for iPad, big brother to the iPhone version and little brother to the Mac’s. Made by Apple’s FileMaker subsidiary it will be available at launch and feature the great look and feel and ready made templates we’ve come to expect. $4.99.

App Advice got their hands on Twitterrific for iPad and it’s gorgeous. I’d go out on a limb and say it looks better than both the iPhone and Mac versions. One of the original Jailbreak and App Store apps (in general, never mind simply Twitter apps), we kind of hoped they’d be on the iPad day one and as usual the Icon Factory doesn’t disappoint. There looks to be both Free (with ads) and $4.99 in-app upgrade (no ads, multiple accounts) options, just like the iPhone.

9to5Mac has several screens up for Yahoo!’s iPad app. Why would a website need an iPad app? Other than to tie-into the launch-day hype, a dedicated native app is likely giving them more power and control to present their data than the platform-agnostic web. They’re also using style elements like wood and shelves, along with the iPad-like combination of top-screen graphics and bottom-screen lists. We’re guessing it will be free.

TUAW shows off some screens from The Pinball for iPad from Gameprom, which they say is a “vast improvement” over similar iPhone games. It combines Jungle Style, Deep, and Wild West into one game with camera modes, realistic physics, camera tilt, 3D sound, and shaking! No word on price yet.

Looking forward to them?

More iPad Apps Sneak Peaks: Bento, Twitterrific, Yahoo, The Pinball! is a story by TiPb. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

TiPb - The #1 iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch Blog

Yes, the iPad won’t even ship until exactly a week from today but that doesn’t mean there aren’t folks out there already busy starting “iPad family” rumors replete with iPad nano and iPad HD no less. No surprise, right? “iPhone family” rumors have been dredged up almost yearly by all manner of Apple analysts. Yet there’s still no “iPhone nano” (or iPhone HD for that matter). So, forgive us if no breath is being held…

For future link-back’s sake, however, here’s what Dan “Fake Steve” Lyons quoted in Newsweek (via 9to5Mac):

Paul Saffo, a tech forecaster and professor at Stanford University, expects Apple to roll out a family of other iPad models—a small one the size of a paperback, a big one the size of two magazine pages—perhaps as soon as this fall. (Apple won’t confirm, natch.)

And this before we even start 4th generation iPhone silly season. Rumor fatigue much?

(Lyons’ summation of the existing iPad, however, is interesting and worth a read).

Let the “iPad Family” (iPad nano, iPad HD) Rumors Commence! is a story by TiPb. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

TiPb - The #1 iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch Blog

If you’ve bought [App X] for the iPhone and the developer makes [App X] for the iPad, should you get the iPad version for free?

We’ve seen developers like Instapaper’s Marco Arment specifically making “universal binaries” so users who bought the $4.99 Pro version can download an iPhone update, install it on their iPad, and get an iPad-specific user interface (UI) as well. (Think of it as two similar apps in one handy download).

We’ve also seen leaked screenshots have shown “HD” or “for iPad” versions of many popular iPhone apps and games that are being released as separate, all new downloads. In many cases these HD apps offer substantial differences brought about by the bigger screen real-estate and beefier processing power of the iPad and will carry their own price tag and perhaps be more expensive than the iPhone versions due to the greater effort put into them (more pixels, more functionality).

Some users no doubt feel entitled to free iPad versions if they already bought the iPhone version while some developers likewise feel entitled to get paid for the work they put into making different versions for a different device.

Can we find some existing parallels? If you bought a Super Mario game for the Nintendo DS, you don’t get Super Mario for the Wii for free. Likewise PSP and PS3 games. Of course, the differences between dedicated mobile gaming devices and their console cousins are far greater than between an iPhone and an iPad.

If you bought a Mac app like iMovie you could install it on both your MacBook laptop and your iMac. Likewise for Windows. Of course, the differences between Mac OS X or Windows running on a laptop or desktop are negligible compared to the iPhone and iPad (there’s no separate version of iMovie for MacBook vs. iMac, or Microsoft Word for netbook vs. tower).

Again, the iPad falls in between.

Apple announced at launch that most iPhone apps will “just work” on the iPad, either 1:1 or pixel-doubled to fill the screen. So, developers who want an easy out can just point to that as the “free” iPad version of their existing iPhone apps. We haven’t heard great things about pixel-doubling’s looks, however, but free is free, right?

What about developers who invest time and money into offering something better? For the most part, however, we agree with TUAW’s Erica Sadun who suggested that apps with a similar user experience between the iPhone and the iPad could be good candidates for the universal binary approach (i.e. free but tweaked for the end user). Apps that are significantly re-designed and re-engineered from the iPhone to the iPad, however, could be good candidates for the separate HD app strategy.

As to whether or not developers should offer discounts to existing iPhone users for iPad apps, that one’s easy for now — despite hints and rumors, Apple still has no “upgrade” or “discount” option available to developers. Even if a developer wanted to, they can’t offer anything but a single, consistent, full price for everyone. (See the Tweetie 2.0 controversy).

We’re one week away from iPad launch day, so things can still change, but until and unless they do, tell you what you think — should iPad apps be free for existing users? And if people won’t pay more for better, what incentive do developers have to make more and better apps?

Should iPad apps be free if you already own the iPhone version? is a story by TiPb. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

TiPb - The #1 iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch Blog

MediaPost reports that Apple is getting ready to announce a mobile advertising service (potentially called iAd) to Madison Avenue on April 7.

[It's been] described as “revolutionary” and “our next big thing” by Apple chief Steve Jobs, according to executives familiar with the plan.

Madison Avenue as a venue sounds more like an industry insider pre-briefing than a public coming out party, similar to how we heard big media companies were approached about the iPad before Apple did their keynote song and dance. If it is as expected, based on Apple’s Quatro Wireless purchase and designed to give developers an easy, elegant way to monetize their iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad apps then we’d expect a more public presentation to follow — iPhone 4.0 SDK Sneak Preview Event perhaps?

And, of course, this would bring Apple fully into competition with Google and their recent AdMob acquisition. Much as Google’s Android and Chrome OS-combo was a gut punch to Apple’s core business, this uppercuts Google right in the mobile ad revenue choppers.

Hey, maybe that’s what Steve Jobs wanted to tell Eric Schmidt yesterday over coffee…

[Thanks to everyone who sent this in!]

Apple to Unveil Google-Competing iAd Mobile Advertising Platform on April 7? is a story by TiPb. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

TiPb - The #1 iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch Blog

Apple has secured the trademark for “iPad” from Fujitsu. Though details are non-existant, the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) shows the name changed hands on March 17. Much like when Apple secured the iPhone name from Cisco, it should put to rest any lingering doubts about a last minute name change to iMagical or iRevolutionary iNew iDevice.

What, if anything, will happen to Fujitsu’s iPAD point-of-sale Windows CE device is also unknown (but we suspect when the much sexier iPhone and iPod touch-based solutions from Square, mophie, Apple Store EasyPay and others begin wide roll-outs, it might kill more than just the name…)

[Patent Authority via Nick Denton via Engadget]

Apple Secures iPad Trademark is a story by TiPb. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

TiPb - The #1 iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch Blog

MacRumors, likely using elite-ninjary, managed to gain access to the upcoming App Store for iPad’s best seller list and it highlights a lot of new and interesting details on what apps and games we’ll see and what their prices points will be (something we’d just been wondering about):

1. Flight Control HD – $4.99
2. Real Racing HD – $9.99
3. Labyrinth 2 HD – $7.99
4. Piano Lesson PianoMan for iPad – $2.99
5. Cro-Mag Rally for iPad – $9.99
6. Enigmo Deluxe – $9.99
7. Manic Marble 2 for iPad – $3.99
8. Otto Matic for iPad – $9.99

OmniGraphSketcher is also listed at $14.99

App Annie (via TUAW and 9to5Mac) have even more screenshots up, showing everything from OmniGraffle for $49.99 (first reported by App Advice yesterday) to Galaxy Control 2 Lite for free.

Who’s been buying iPad apps to generate a best seller list before the device even ships? Either it’s just a test seed, or people inside Apple and those few Mossberg-level reviewers have been dropping early review dollars. Of course, developers can change pricing at any time so who knows what prices we’ll actually see on launch day and thereafter.

Also unknown is whether another App Store leak, this time from MacStories.net, shows Apple is once again moving forward with that Explicit Apps category, or if they’re still just mulling things over. Both Top Explicit Paid Software and Top Explicit iPad Software were spotted, however, and while currently empty, no doubt some developer somewhere is already hard at work on {Random Sexy App} HD.

Again, the earliest we’ll know anything for sure is April 3 when the iPad goes on sale, and that’s only the beginning…

App Store Leaks: iPad Apps and Game Prices, Explicit Category Redux is a story by TiPb. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

TiPb - The #1 iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch Blog