Big Ass iPod Touch
Google lists over 200,000 hits for “big ipod touch” {48,000 for ‘big ass ipod touch’}. And anyone running an iPhone-optimized app on iPad will get exactly that, and it’ll pretty much suck running letterboxed at 1/3 screen size or stretched and pixilated at double the native size. But developers taking advantage of cool, new iPad-only UI conventions are poised to create an entirely NEW class of breathtakingly powerful applications unthinkable on even the smartest mobile phone. And it’s happening now, with over 1,000 iPad-optimized apps already available less than one week into launch.

That Screen

Text Formatting Popover

Good iPhone app development aims for a stripped down UI due to the quick-to-clutter, pocket-
sized screen canvas. Rather than creating screenfuls of switches and check boxes, iPhone developers have typically built layers of menus, creating a vertical hierarchy of sometimes branching, confusing commands. While this has been the norm on iPhone, this is anathema to good iPad development.

The big deal on iPad is the big screen. This, combined with iPad’s new UI features, allows developers to offer on-screen controls much like a traditional Mac or Windows application.

Navigation Bars, Popovers, and the Edit Menu

iPhone developers coming to iPad will soon realize they can utilize the top navigation bar as a fixed toolbar, much like traditional, non-mobile applications. Thanks to iPad’s generous screen space, the top navigation bar / toolbar offers enough button space for the main controls that

Color Picker Popover

users have come to rely on in traditional applications, especially in landscape mode. Whether word processing or editing images, users should be able to work on a single screen for an entire session, just like on a regular computer.

On iPhone, users often jump back and forth to reach essential off-screen options and functions, but on iPad contextual controls are introduced not by forcing the user away from content, but instead with nav bars, edit boxes and popovers that allow users to linger on the main screen as they edit.

New Challenges
Application development for iPhone has been an utterly novel experience, with thousands of worldwide developers slowly coming to terms with multi-touch UI principles for a pocketable device. Now with iPad, Apple is challenging us once more to create the first generation of powerful, full-spec’d applications for full-sized multi-touch. If we do this right, the notion of iPad as somehow being derivative will quickly vanish as the platform comes into its own.