iPad: What Developers Need To Know
By 
Apple just finished their iPad event. Here’s what you’ll want to know as a developer:
Jobs says the device is for, “Browsing the web. Doing email. Enjoying and sharing pics. Watching videos. Enjoying music. Playing games. Reading ebooks.”
It’ll run unmodified iPhone apps out of the box in two modes: actual size, which takes up half the screen, and scaled up 2x for full screen. This implies the 9.7″ screen has a resolution of 960-by-640. Update: henning informs us that it’s 1024×768.
The device runs Apple’s own A4 chip at 1GHz. Other than a bare Wikipedia page there’s not much data on the chip. It’s an ARM chip, which is why it can run the unmodified iPhone binaries.
The device has 802.11N WiFi and Blue Tooth 2.1 + EDD. Unlocked 3G GSM is an option. There is no camera. Not clear on compass/location hardware — maps app suggests location capabilities, but can’t find anything. Update: Ken Pespisa points out that Apple’s published the specs since I wrote this: compass and location in the 3G model.
Apple will release the SDK later today. It’s not clear whether this’ll be pre-release and, therefore, covered under NDA or not. If it’s not, we’ll have how-to pieces starting shortly. Update: it’s available, and it’s pre-release. We’ll queue up our pieces for after the NDA drops.
What’s notable about the SDK? From the press event we can say:
There’s still no multi-tasking.
With the larger screen comes many new UI elements and layout options. These options aren’t lifted directly from OS-X, but are a blend of OS-X and iPhone OS: Apps can have panels/panes. Tables can have multiple columns. Tab interfaces have been expanded to include OS-X like top-of-screen tab-window/panel picker style (vs. bottom of window iPhone tab menus). Most notable:
Pop-over/drop-dow style menus are in frequent use; e.g., the bookmark and font-chooser floating menus.
The iPhone HIG and other Apple documentation make it clear that iPhone is considered a one column, one window platform. Does that imply the pop-over style menus won’t come to the iPhone?
Lots of implications here for building your app specifically for one device or the other; if the new goodies on the iPad become expected/familiar then bare iPhone apps will rub iPad users the wrong way; conversely, spending the time to make a true iPad app has to be weighed against the 70MM devices with iPhone display specs.
As an incentive for developers Apple will be pimping iPad optimized apps in the store.
Finally, Apple is selling the iWork apps in the App store at $9.99 each. Good move, setting a higher price expectation.
Screen resolution is 1024 x 768
Since it’s running 3.2 iPhone OS (slightly different version I guess, similar to the difference between the iPod touch and iPhone) I think we will get multitasking later this year when 4.0 comes out.
I was surprised also that there was no multi-tasking. I’m reading over the docs now, there are a bunch of neat features like custom input views that have me excited. But best of all as a developer is the increased screen real estate, this opens up a world of new app ideas.
I don’t know about that. $10 for an essential work application. Who can charge more than that? Seems to me less essential apps will charge much less.
Hi Dan,
Specs show there’s a digital compass and some location capabilities on the WiFi + 3G model: Assisted GPS and Cellular.
Oh Apple, what have you done? I want one now, but can I wait the extra month to get the 3G model? Decisions, decisions.
I agree with Alex about the price. Apple didn’t leave much room for other apps to charge decent prices. Apple could have charged $19.99 for each iWorks app and not have lost very many sales, if any. That move would have been very welcome by devs as it allowed for raising the avg sales price.
On another note: “multitasking” is the new “cut and paste”.
Minor Correction: The specs page says that the WiFi model has a “digital compass” (not just the 3G model), but no GPS. So even the WiFi version could run some kinds of augmented reality apps (unlike the iPod Touch).
I’m thrilled at the possibility of writing more full featured Cappuccino or jQTouch applications for the web browser. The increased screen size, CPU (and probably RAM) will enable many kinds of applications that would be difficult on the iPhone. Not fully native apps, but still capable.
And Steve Jobs said they couldn’t make a netbook!
@Geoffrey Grosenbach: yeah, Cappuccino is looking golden right about now!
I think it’s a great move for Apple and great for most people.
I can’t decide whether to love it or loathe it, however. I want one, but as soon as I have visions of traveling light, with only an iPad in my man-bag, I realize that while Apple is happy for me to write software *for* the iPad, they won’t let me write any software *on* the iPad. So I have to lug my laptop with me anyway, because there is no such thing as a day without writing some code.
Right now, I think I’m coming down on loathing it, because I don’t just want to write software for a device that even Jocks can use, I want to use it for what I do too, dammit!
Dan, thanks for the article, good stuff!
@Alex writes:
> Seems to me less essential apps will charge much less.
I suppose it depends on the app, still. We’re charging $9.99 for Strip (data vault, not poker), and we’ve never once gotten the complaint that we charge too much. Then again, Apple’s never really charged much for iWork in the first place, right?
@Dan in the article wrote:
> Update: it’s available, and it’s pre-release. We’ll queue up our pieces for after the NDA drops.
Yeah, continually using the NDA on beta version of the SDK is garbage, even if it’s not surprising. They’re not really protecting a trade secret when a crap ton of people have access to it, no matter what they tell themselves, they’re just preventing people from working together and getting a better start on things. I don’t see how that benefits them, especially here.
@Justin wrote:
> I think we will get multitasking later this year when 4.0 comes out.
I don’t see that happening with the iPhone anytime soon, unless they end up shipping an iPhone with a beefy new A4 processor and a lot of Ram. Even then, they really seem quite happy to keep things on lock-down for now. (I’d rather be wrong!)
@Andrei
> I realize that while Apple is happy for me to write software *for* the iPad,
> they won’t let me write any software *on* the iPad
Well you could always use something like Bespin to ‘code in the cloud’ or you could create your own native iPad app which you develop on … but since compilers aren’t allowed you’d have to push the code up to a server for compilation (and signing and then figure out how to get the test app installed).
@Andrei
> they won’t let me write any software *on* the iPad
Yeah, it’s an impressive device, but my person Dream Device of the Future is for hackers, not slackers 😉
Thanks for the good write-up Dan.
I think a really important aspect for developers to realize is that the iPad is very different from an iPhone in how you will use it. For example: You will not pull an iPad out of your pocket to entertain yourself for a few minutes while you’re waiting in line. The applications we design for the iPad need to reflect this.
While it’s important for Apple to be able to boast that 140,000 apps are available for the iPad on day one, I think the really successful iPad apps will not be ported from the iPhone or iPod Touch.
More thoughts from a developer’s perspective: iPad – First Impressions
I think the iPad is a really exciting opportunity for developers whether they’re making paid or free apps. On the free side, we expect that advertising will reach a whole new level of engagement and, of course, a whole new level of eCPMs as well.
Mobclix will be offering monetization through advertising for the iPad (we already offer it for the iPhone) and I encourage you guys to check it out. https://blog.mobclix.com/?p=1438
-Megan
Mobclix
http://www.mobclix.com
Will you be able to logically split out your app in the store. Say for example you wanted to make an iPad tip calculator and a iPhone tip calculator. Since the iPad can run both versions can you restrict iPad from getting access to the iPhone one since you might want to charge a premium for the larger version? Can you stop people who have bought the iPhone version from putting it on their iPad or the reverse can you allow them if you’d like?
I’m real interested how they are going to handle the large fork in the application space that is coming and going to be a much bigger difference than we see with the iPod/iPhone.
Scott, You have two options: You can create a new iPad app from scratch that will run only on iPad, you can create a Universal app that will run on both iPhone and iPad. It depends whether the iPad version would be drastically different from the iPhone version or not.