It’s still some 6 weeks till the end of March, when Apple would start selling the iPad. Developers are hard at work, making sure their applications would be more stunning on the iPad, or envisioning and creating brand new applications. One issue though, they don’t have an iPad, but today, they can get very close to having one.

Today we are releasing iPad support for iSimulate.

While Apple did provide developers with an iPad Simulator, since it’s running on their Macs, developers have no means of using the accelerometer, multi-touch, GPS or compass within it. This means that it would be extremely difficult, practically impossible, for them to create applications that use more than a single touch, which they can do with their mouse pointer.

With iSimulate installed on their iPhones however, their multi-touches on the iPhone (which gets interpolated for the larger iPad screen), the movement recorded by the accelerometer, the location and orientation captured by the GPS and Compass, all get wirelessly sent to the iPad Simulator, so they can develop virtually any application they want, before the iPad is itself released!

Mark Terry, developer of popular iPhone applications like Pianist and Guitarist, said of the new iPad support after using it in developing iPad applications that “without iSimulate, there would really be no other way to test multi-touch input since the hardware is not yet available, so iSimulate has been a life-saver.”

All this as a free update to existing owners of iSimulate, so they can use their iPhones or iPods to control both the iPhone Simulator, and now, the iPad Simulator.

You can get iSimulate from the App Store at a limited-time discount of 40%. A Lite version is also available to try.

We couldn’t pack in a trailer due to the 3.2 SDK being under confidentiality, but the original iSimulate for iPhone trailer should give you an idea.

We have released a Lite version of iSimulate, so developers who are interested in buying iSimulate can have a taste of how easy it is to integrate iSimulate in their development workflow before making the purchase.

The Lite version of iSimulate can send only the first touch to the iPhone Simulator, so none of the other four touches are sent, and no accelerometer, GPS or compass are sent, and the video of the application is not streamed from the Simulator to the device.

iSimulate Lite is available on the App Store.

ArabCrunch posted today (Arabic version) a write-up on vimov and our products.

ArabCrunch is the leading destination for coverage of technology and startups in the Arab world, and has recently launched ArabCrunch.net, a much needed wiki-style database of companies, investors, products and people in the technology field in the Arab world.

Much has been said and written about the App Store, up to being described by its fiercest critics as a totalitarian service with draconian policies, all due to how Apple handles the review process of developers’ submitted applications.

True, the weirdest apps are let through, and others are given the finger for little to no apparent reasons. We have witnessed this first-hand, and barely survived a review process that lasted for three months; that of iSimulate, a tool for iPhone developers that makes developing iPhone applications easier. It is no easy to wait for three months not knowing when, or if, your work will see the light, and to top it off, not being able to start a discussion with the gatekeepers.

One good has just happened though. Apple, perhaps in the spirit of the upcoming holidays, approved our 1.5 update of iSimulate although it used a private API. Alongside the approval of the update, came the usual and dreaded rejection e-mail, but its wording wasn’t as bad as before:

They caught it, but they let it through. This was an old piece of code that missed the cutting floor. So instead of us having to go through the review process all over again, we will just have this solved in the next update. Perfect.

We commend Apple for this action, and hopefully this will only be the beginning of more, more and more leniency. It surely isn’t the transparency many seek, and the floodgates have not yet been opened, but oh boy, surviving a rejection is no mere an ordeal.

We live to fight for another app. Yaaay! But for now, party all day.

iSimulate 1.5 has been released, and with this supercharged update, iSimulate can now send compass events to the iPhone Simulator, and now supports the full-range of UIKit objects. Your wishes have came true; your touches are now passed to all types of UIKit objects.

The 1.5 Update is available on the App Store, and is a free download for existing customers. New in 1.5:

Compass Support

Using an iPhone 3GS, iSimulate will now send the events recorded by the magnetenometer (compass) and send them to the iPhone Simulator, thus allowing you to develop compass-aware application on the iPhone Simulator.

Full UIKit Support

With iSimulate 1.5, now all UIKit objects receive touch events, including scrolling and the keyboard. With this supercharged update, you can now use iSimulate to develop an even wider array of applications.

iSimulate 1.1 has been released. It brings a number of exciting new features to offer an even more amazing solution for iPhone Developers to help them create iPhone applications even easier.

The 1.1 Update is available on the App Store as a free download for existing customers, and at the normal price for new customers.

New features in 1.1:

 

Video Streaming

Now it becomes even easier than ever to develop and record videos of your applications. While your application is running on the iPhone Simulator, whether it is a UIKit-based application or an OpenGL game, iSimulate will stream it as a video to your iPhone or iPod Touch in realtime, so that you can more easily move your fingers across the screen, and accurately touch the buttons and controls.

Orientation Notifications

Whenever you change the orientation of your device, iSimulate will take note and will send an orientation change notification to your application running in the iPhone Simulator, and even rotate the iPhone Simulator window according to the direction of change.

Customizable Touch Indicators

With iSimulate 1.1, you can easily customize the look of the touch indicator appearing on the iPhone Simulator You can even customize the look of each of the touches based on the region the touch occured at.

The iSimulate Trailer Contest has come to an end, and our winner is “Above & Beyond Air Combat”.

Thanks for all developers who submitted their trailers.

Here is a chance for you to add an iPhone 3GS to the devices you use for developing iPhone applications. Create a trailer of your iPhone application or game using iSimulate, and submit it before 6:00 PM EST of September 25 for a chance to win $199 towards an iPhone 3GS. The winner will be selected on September 30.

It boils down to just sending us a link to your trailer uploaded on Youtube at support@vimov.com. More details are in the contest’s page.

So long as the video uses iSimulate and promotes an iPhone application or game, it will be accepted.

Update: Submission extended till September 25.

Update (09-25-2009): Submission now closed.

After a long 3-month review process, iSimulate brings multi-touch, the accelerometer and GPS to the iPhone Simulator. Finally, iPhone developers will be able to create stunning trailers of their iPhone apps and games.

With iSimulate installed on an iPhone or iPod Touch, a developer then adds an SDK library file to his project, run iSimulate, and all of the multi-touch, accelerometer and GPS events are wirelessly sent to the iPhone Simulator. With any video screen capturing tool running, the developer can create stunning high quality trailers of their applications and games. Here is a list of all of iSimulate’s features.

But it does not stop here. Installing applications on a provisioned device during development is a painstakingly slow process, that is longer the larger the application size is. With iSimulate, developers can develop their applications on the iPhone Simulator, which is at least 5 times faster to install a compiled binary to, saving much precious time.

As Eric Hartzog, developer of the #1 App Store game Stick Wars said, “iSimulate shines when it comes to making high quality videos of gameplay that requires multi-touch and accelerometer actions! No more Youtube videos in a dark room!”

We have a geeky launch sale. iSimulate will start at $4 and, its price will rise exponentially till it reaches the full price of $32. On August 4 it becomes $8. On August 8 it becomes $16, and on August 16 it becomes $32.

App Store Link: http://www.itunes.com/app/isimulate/

More Details on iSimulate: http://www.vimov.com/isimulate/