Just like on BB, mobipocket reader on iLiad will automatically ignoe cover image, too. In order to make the reader dispaly cover image, I don't add a cover image in mobi-creator. Instead, I create a cover html file to include a cover image file and add the html file as the first file in the project. Here is some example:
Code:
<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN">
<HTML xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"><HEAD><TITLE>The Count of Monte Cristo</TITLE>
<META http-equiv=Content-Type content="text/html; charset="iso-8859-1">
<META content="Dan Brown" name=author encoding="iso-8859-1"><!-- iText 2.1.3 (by lowagie.com) --><!-- CreationDate: Thu May 07 17:40:41 CST 2009 -->
</HEAD>
<BODY topmargin="2em" leftmargin="2em" bottommargin="2em" rightmargin="2em">
<IMG height="935" width="768" src="cover.png" align="center">
</BODY></HTML>
You can also edit the first html file in your ebook project and insert a <img> tag right after <body> tag.