As iOS developers, we have some hard choices to make when we consider which devices to focus on as we develop our apps. Though many of you will shrug this off and point to universal builds as the key to the big time, that’s a far too obvious approach, and you’re probably shaving off huge chunks of the user experience by creating a one-size-fits-all app. One size may fit all, but it’s rarely a good fit.

One of the most striking differences between iPad and iPhone is the screen estate, and the implications for interface-conscious developers – which we all should strive to be – are tremendous. While the screen area for iPhone/iPod touch measures 10.4 inches (4.54” x 2.3”), the iPad screen enjoys a full 71 inches of area (9.56” x 7.47”) – almost 8 times bigger! Think of it like building a home: with just a small plot of land you’ll focus on the essentials: bedrooms, kitchen, living room, bath… certainly no spare room. But given a bigger plot you‘ll want to add a garden, a couple of parking spaces, and for sure build in that spare room. The same principle applies to iPad vs iPhone in terms of the user experience on offer with these very different screen sizes.

On iPhone, the smaller screen area dictates a pretty minimal interface for your app, whereas on iPad there are amazing opportunities with the more generous area. That being said, for certain apps the same interface on either display may be comfortable for users, especially apps built primarily for media or information consumption. For example, an app like Night Stand shares almost the same user interface on iPhone and iPad, and has been a spectacular hit on both. Why? Well, for starters it’s gorgeous. And ingenious programming doesn’t hurt, either.  But also, once a user configures Night Stand it’s essentially an information consumption application (though the latest version brings in some more user-intensive features). Also, there’s one big exception with Night Stand for iPad, and that’s a new, iPad-only theme – one significantly awesome theme that really, REALLY shines on the big screen. But awesome themes notwithstanding, Night Stand still very much follows an app-to-user orientation; the user is still passive.

Nixie - beaming new gfx with subtle animations - only for iPad

The LCD color selection interface on iPad: a popover for live previews, on iPhone: small screen -> no popovers -> trip to the settings panel

On the other hand, consider some dual platform user-ACTIVE applications with upscaled interfaces for iPad. In the images here, iPhone is overlaid on top of iPad.  (Click to enlarge.)

Sketchbook Pro

Bento

Flight Control, with richer maps and gameplay

Dropbox, with file browser and media previews

So while Apple will most likely put iPhone and iPad on the same track of iOS in the very near future, developers ought not assume that these devices are the same in terms of UX, or that users have the same expectations toward iPad and iPhone apps. Nope, expectations are growing increasingly different as each day passes, and the gap is only widening.

Just a few days ago we were watching Toy Story on the iPad, and it was a cinematic experience in miniature with the lights dimmed and munching on some snacks. Two people huddled around an iPhone watching a film for 90 minutes!? Not unthinkable, but certainly none too appealing. No doubt, iPhone is much better suited to snagging a glimpse at Facebook, tapping out the odd Tweet, light email, checking your schedule, that kind of stuff. I tend to use my iPhone in bursts, to get or give info as quickly as possible without going into details, whereas iPad can offer an immersive media consumption experience, like watching a full length film in style. When I browse the App Store for iPad games and applications, I look for things I can be time-intensive with. (And I’m not alone.) When I shop for an iPhone app it’s usually for a cool little game, or the latest social networking app to stay connected with my people. And yeah, isn’t that what a phone is made for in the first place: to keep in touch with friends and family? Now if I can do that, plus spend 30 – 40 mins playing puzzles or doodling or something, well, all the better!

Note the Productivity category, with iPad sales far outweighing iPhone. Business, finance, education, and anything reading-related are also natural fits for iPad.

So developers, before you start building your next app take some time to decide whether it best suits iPhone or iPad – or both. And if both, then how to differentiate. iPhone/iPod touch has a user base of almost 100 million compared to just over 3 million for iPad, but there are over 200 thousand apps for iPhone and just a few thousand for iPad. Getting noticed in the sea of iPhone apps is not so easy, but if you optimize your universal app for iPad (or develop exclusively for iPad) along the lines of what we’ve been discussing it’s far easier to make a splash.

(Prasanna Kumar S)

pre-iPad

When Apple announced the iPad in January this year, we were as excited as the rest of the development community: new Apple products mean new opportunities to build our brand and make cool stuff that earns big monies for our partners and ourselves. Speaking in broad terms about our reaction to any new Apple product, we don’t microfocus on tech specs. We home in on the user experience, the operating environment and the implications for end users of our applications. The guiding principle is this: iPad and iPhone are not just the latest iterations of a cellphone or tablet PC, but entirely new experiences of technology, media creation and consumption and every piece of software we make for them should reflect or expand on these qualities. That’s the chief responsibility of our iPhone and iPad developers. So come January 27, first things first, we began drilling into the new SDK, day and night, all the while following every last bit of news and opinion coming out about iPad.

Screen

When it was announced that existing iPhone apps would be able to run without any glitches on the iPad, straight from the App Store, we were all pretty relieved. But then we saw the fine print: displaying an iPhone app centered at the much smaller native iPhone resolution or in pixel-doubled form looked and felt – well, crappy. The large screen was a pleasure on the one hand, especially for intensive apps and games with more space for controls and real-time status updates without interrupting workflow/gameplay. But on the other hand, we must be wary of presenting users with needless distractions, potentially confusing distractions, all the while achieving a certain level of tautness so the interface doesn’t look slack or empty.

UI Changes

The first iPad SDK (actually iPhone SDK 3.2) offered some great UI enhancements over iPhone, such as pull down menus and the newly added Master-Detail view. Added to this, iPad’s contextual menus are great at keeping the UI out of the way, displaying only the content and controls that are relevant to the user at the relevant moment. Bezier Path, originally part of the Mac development environment, has found a place in iPad SDK, helping us to create drawings much more easily. PopOverController, too, with its built-in animations, lessens the creative burden on our iPad dev team to a great extent.

A Pressing Invitation

While we were busy exploring the new SDK, we were happily surprised by an email from Apple notifying us that the App Store was already accepting and approving apps for iPad launch day. Initially we were skeptical about how to proceed as (unlike some developers) we didn’t have a hardware sample to run trials with and the time frame for release was less than a week. But there’s no way we were going to miss out on the grand opening of the iPad App Store, so we began brainstorming a port of one of our most successful iPhone applications to the iPad. With the senior members of our iPhone development team now on board, we immediately began redesigning and engineering the updated app for iPad.

Details, Details, Details

One thing for iPad developers to keep in mind is that every UI element supports two orientations: landscape and portrait. It was blissfully new to us at the time, and the design team responded with some awesome, first-ever iPad wireframes and gorgeous new graphics in no time flat. And as complex and tough as it was getting the functionality right, we spent even more time tweaking the UI to make it pixel perfect.

When developing for the Mac, resolution independence is a constant theme throughout the development process, but for those of us employing Rapid Application Development on iPhone, resolution independence was not a factor we were used to considering. Now, porting those iPhone apps to iPad, we find we’re spending a lot of time scaling the UI to iPad’s screen. While this has gone down internally as an enormous pain in the ass, it’s also given us a chance to revisit the graphics in our ‘greatest hits’ apps and improve them, something any good designer – and end users – can surely appreciate. And the fact that our first application for iPad is still in the Top Paid Apps section, has been staff picked by Apple, and featured as a Top 10 Must-Have iPad App by Engadget – yeah, that’s more than made up for the effort. ;) And now that we have the hardware in the flesh to tool around on, we’re doing even more polishing of our initial releases, and soon we’ll start releasing our first 100% start-to-finish iPad-optimized apps and we promise a much BIGGER experience than before.

Liftoff

Despite starting work on our port just a few sleepless days earlier, on April 1^st Apple started listing the first iPad apps on the App Store, and the very next day our app was spotlighted in the Showcase. Today, I hold the iPad close to my heart; I see our apps running smoothly and the display makes them look even better, all thanks to our talented developers and the tireless work of the user interface design team. When you look at the most successful apps in the App Store it’s the simple ones that succeed and have legs. ‘Keep it simple,’ the saying goes. And it’s true. The iPad App Store is still in its infancy, and this is the time to make your mark. If you’ve been mulling over even the simplest idea, who knows how it may turn out!? Drop a little hello our way and let’s see where it takes us!