iPad Likely to Launch with Missing Apps

There have been suspicions floating around since the Apple keynote address introducing the iPad about whether or not the iPad will be "missing" key iPhone applications such as stocks, weather, and more. These suspicions were a direct result of the images of the iPad shown during the keynote (and subsequently on Apple's iPad gallery pages) depicting a limited set of applications on the iPad. Users around the web, including here in our iPad forums wondered whether the missing apps would fail to make it onto the iPad for launch. However unlikely it seemed at the time, it is seeming ever more likely now.

Wired.com's Brian X. took note recently that Apple's iPad press release specifically states that "12 new innovative apps designed especially for the iPad". A simple look at the image Apple has provided of the iPad's home screen (shown above) reveals, you guessed it, 12 applications (when not counting Settings as an application). Notably missing are the aforementioned Stocks and Weather applications, along with Calculator, Clock and Voice Memos.

Is this conclusive evidence that these apps won't appear on the iPad in any form or fashion when it ships? Probably not. That said, it is suggestive of the fact that Apple felt the need to redesign the other applications specially to fit the iPad's much larger screen and may be holding back the missing applications until their design team gets iPad-specific versions of these applications completed.

At the same time, some argue that the task of redesigning simple applications such as those missing from currently available shots of the iPad home screen is a modest task at best for Apple's massive team of designers, and one that Apple should easily be able to tackle before the iPad hits US shelves on April 3rd.

As with all things Apple isn't providing the blow-by-blow details of directly, only time will tell.