This weekend, May 14-16, you can pick up Clean My Screen with a 50% discount!
Tell your friends & family or gift Clean My Screen in the iTunes AppStore.

I just reserved an iPad.

As a developer I need one so I can test future versions of my apps on an actual device. And as an early adopter I crave one because I want to play with it before everyone around me has one.

Unfortunately Apple doesn’t sell the iPad in Canada yet and I do want to get mine as soon as possible. As a Canadian I can’t just order one at Apple’s US website since you need a US credit card linked to a US address to shop in the US online Apple Store.

But as a Canadian (and any other nationality) you can reserve an iPad and that’s what I did. I’ll pick it up (or have a family member pick it up) on April 3rd in a brick and mortar Apple Store that is located near the Canadian border. (Coincidentally April 3rd is very close to my birthday on April Fools Day, so I have yet another good excuse to get an iPad now.)

One only needs a US iTunes account to reserve an iPad, and that is easy to obtain, even without a credit card.

Here’s how you can reserve an iPad, in 23 easy steps:

1. Start iTunes
2. Go to the iTunes Store
3. Log out of your regular account if you see your email address on the top right by clicking it and clicking the “Sign Out”- button
4. Click on the flag icon on the bottom right
5. Change to the US store by selecting the US flag in the next screen
6. Now search for a free app
7. Buy the free app
8. iTunes will ask you to sign in: Press the “Create New Account”-button
9. Navigate to the next few screens by filling in the necessary details.
10. Make sure you enter a valid email address, and your real birthday in case you forget the password. In case you have no email address that’s not already linked to the Apple store you could use an email alias at MailExpire.com
11. When you reach the screen where you have to enter your address (with the credit card pictograms) make sure you select “None” as the payment method.
12. Enter an address in the US; this can be a real address but if you don’t have one that’s not really necessary. If you need a zip code use 94111, San Francisco and the state of California, a phone number could be 650 555-8211.
13. Now click the button and check your email! You should have received an email with subject “iTunes Store Account Verification”
14. Confirm your account by clicking the link in the email
15. Now, back in iTunes, enter your email address and password you entered in step 10
16. Okay, now it’s time to reserve you iPad: start by going to the iPad reservation site
17. Click the big blue button and on the next page select (or locate) an Apple Store that is either near a friend or family member that can pick up (and pay) your iPad at April 3rd or that is at a convenient location for you to pick it up yourself.
18. On the next page select which model of iPad you want to reserve
19. Press Next and enter the email address and password of the account you just created
20. Continue the reservation process by confirming your reservation
21. Now when you check your email again and everything went right you have received an email with the subject “Your iPad has been reserved.”
22. Print the email and take it to the Apple Store on April 3rd, or forward it to your friend or family member so she can use it to pick up your iPad. Update: it might be a good idea to also print the account details you entered in iTunes for the unlikely event they ask that. You can get this info in iTunes under the account link at the top right under ‘Quick Links’. You can’t print it directly, but you can take a screenshot and print that.
23. That’s all! Enjoy your iPad!

Your US iTunes account can also be used to buy free apps (Apple’s own iBook reader?) and free music from the iTunes Store that are not available in your country. It’s a bit speculative but when Apple’s iBook Store opens you might be able to get free ebooks for your iPad when they become available. For instance Amazon doesn’t sell free books on its international Kindle stores, they’re only available on the US Kindle store. Apple might do the same, and for now, there won’t even be international iBook stores.

It can be very useful to have a US iTunes account, even when you don’t reserve an iPad now.

Update 4 April:

It turned out there were no issues at all to buy an iPad as a Canadian, they asked for my Zip Code but when I said I was Canadian the Apple sales clerk -Oh sorry, the Specialist- just entered 00000 in their iPhone Credit Card POS app. The iPad is pretty cool and Clean My Screen on it, even as an iPhone app in double-pixel mode, is pretty amazing. It instantly made me decide to make an iPad version.

But you do need your US iTunes account to buy iPad apps, so you better put some money on it when you’re at it. I bought a couple of iTunes gift cards when I bought my iPad and that works fine. Don’t worry, iPhone apps that you bought in your own country sync just fine with iTunes.

The iPad can only connect to the US iTunes Store. But Apple doesn’t check your physical location (unlike sites like Hulu and Comedy Central) so you can log in fine, even when you are not on US soil.

It’s been a busy time here in the Clean My Screen headquarters. Unfortunately we weren’t busy with Clean My Screen, but with other projects.

But now we have a little more time to devote to our licking friends. So expect some updates soon.

In the mean time, I’d gently ask you to write a review of the Clean My Screen applications in the iTunes App Store. More reviews means higher ranks, means more sales, means we can devote more time to development.

Reviews don’t have to be long so it won’t take you very long to write one. Just click here and iTunes will open automagically on the right page. Under the screenshots you will find the blue “Write a Review >” link. Click it, write a short review and you’re done!

Thanks a lot!

Sorry to everybody who still wants a free copy of Clean My Screen.

During the introductory promotion more than 40,000 people downloaded Clean My Screen! Of course they are all eligible to free updates in the near future.

Something that also will arrive in the near future is Clean My Screen Lite. Clean My Screen Lite will have fewer features than the full version but in return it will be absolutely free.

More about that soon.

Sometime last night, someone at Apple flipped a switch and now Clean My Screen is for sale on the AppStore!

We’re so excited about this and hope you like Clean My Screen as much as we do. Yes, even after many months of developing this application we’re still excited when we see it clean our screen. 

Anyway, if you haven’t already, download Clean My Screen now, while it is free.

Yes, the first week Clean My Screen will be absolutely free. So tell all your friends to download it as soon as possible. In these dire economic times there’s not much that can beat “free”.

Oh, and if you like Clean My Screen, please don’t hesitate to write a review in iTunes.

Thanks!

It has been a long time since I’ve made websites. But while waiting for Apple’s Judgement Day I took the time to build a nice website for ’Clean My Screen’.

And I’m happy to announce that since today ‘Clean My Screen’ has an official website! Nobody knows about it, and it isn’t even officially available, but I still wanted to share this with the world. And now I’m going to call it a day.

(I will try to make future posts a bit more substantial; right now all the CSS and HTML code still visible on my retina is seriously impairing my judgement.)