iPad Development Made Easy
Alongside the army of consumers and tech pundits waiting for a peek of the aptly named iPad, the over 25,000 strong development community have been patiently standing on the sidelines too.
Taking several leaps forward in terms of its processing power and onboard hardware, the device includes Apple’s own chip, said Jobs, “It’s called the A4, and it screams.” Most exciting for developers with iPhone apps already on sale is that Apple has made the transition up to iPad as smooth as possible.
Since the device’s Home Screen is essentially a facsimile of the iPhone Home Screen, developers won’t have to worry about creating new icons or other assets in order to port the app across. In fact, as stated by Apple themselves, the iPad can run all iPhone apps unmodified out of the box.
The big announcement for the dev community is that Apple are releasing the new SDK today. Just like the user experience is somewhat like a big iPhone, development will take place within the iPhone SDK and — thanks to the device’s app scaling feature — developers won’t even have to worry about creating content in the larger device’s resolution.
It’s unclear whether Apple will also take steps to update its Developer Connection site, that unusually clunky web-based tool-set and administration area for App Store developers.
Most interesting though will be seeing how developers leverage the additional processing power that the iPad includes. Developers can grab the new SDK from Apple.com today.
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I’d say that Apple has hit a home run with this one. I wasn’t even going to consider getting one. After all, aren’t an iMac, a MacBook, and an iPod touch all I need for writing and staying in touch? But this new gadget is just different enough that I’m tempted, particularly given the real keyboard option and reasonable price.
The critical factor might be just how easy it will be for outside developers to port Mac software to an iPad. With Scrivener running on an iPad, I’d probably find it impossible to say no. And if they make it easy for ordinary writers such as myself to publish to iBook, that “probably” becomes a most definitely. After all, I need some way to see those books.
Apple is coming out with this just in time to protect their market share on campuses. The last few weeks, I’ve been writing a book in a reading room at the University of Washington. Steve Jobs may bad mouth netbooks, but a lot of today’s students, burdened with heavy textbooks, are willing to put up with their handicaps for their lightness and small size. They will find an iPad a tempting alternative, particularly if they can put textbooks onto it, lightening their load still more.
Very pleased by what I’ve seen, it’s a beautiful device. Won’t be an early adopter, though, I went through that with the Mac Mini. Will consider buying the iPad after Apple upgrades it a couple of times. Glad I never bought a Kindle, though, or thought about buying a Nook. Those images of The New York Times are the new standard.
Already downloaded SDK and playing with it. Our developers don’t want to go home b/c everyone is excited and few of our clients already placed app migration requests. That new gold rush was just started
As a developer I can’t decide whether to love or loathe it. We get to write software *for* this cool device, but not *on* this cool device. I’m ready to leave my laptop at home and do light coding on my iPad on the plane, but it looks like Apple won’t let me. I worry that this is the future, that Apple won’t make any machines that developers can actually USE. Eventually we developers may be told to go buy Sony hardware to install our iPad SDK on, since Apple only makes closed consumer-oriented devices for Grandma and Aunt Jean.
Can I use a Mac Book Pro with Snow Leopard and develop software for iPad ?
Yes, you can develop iPod/iPhone/iPad code on a MacBookPro with Snow Leopard. Sometimes it’s nicer to have more screen space to develop (full desktop iMac) but the laptop does the job quite nicely.
Can i use Leopard 10.5.8 for develop application for iPad? or iPad application development should need snow Leopard?
if it is possible with leopard 10.5.8 , let me know how to do this?
Hi !
From what I have heard from a video-lecture at Stanford University CA, yes that is possible (use leopard).
The iPhone SDK has a built in simulator for iPhone (you do not need an physical iPhone for development).
The iPhone SDK are free and found at:
http://developer.apple.com/iphone/index.action
So – download it, install it the usual way, and give it a try !
If you register at Apple for US $99,- you may download the – hottest SDK with a simulator of iPad.
(I plan to do so, when I have become more familiar with the whole … ….).
The free lectures at Stanford are found at:
http://www.stanford.edu/class/cs193p/cgi-bin/drupal/
After download – you will find the videos in iTunes U.
The lectures are very professional with lecturers from Apple too ! They have experience with iPhone development.
I recommend that you download the lectures as soon as possible (take whatever time to do so), because the lectures will be removed in March / April.
As a student who is looking to learn to write Apps for the iPad, I am happy to learn that I won’t have to learn another developers environment or set of tools for the iPad.
As a student who hates carrying around huge books for class, this is a Godsend. I have figured that I can cut several thousand dollars and several hundred pounds off the price and weight of textbooks that I would have had to carry across campus. As an older students who has returned to school again, I really appreciate this.
Hello there,
As the subject says, I would like to invest in iPad apps by tying up with a programmer who needs an investor to start a business. I prefer those who have developed iphone applications before and do have some apps I could see. But if you are “brand new”, I could look into it as well. This could be one individual or a group of persons. The idea is to create a company and go from there. I am not an American and I live in the Middle East. However, with today’s technology, location is the last thing we should worry about. I could put up to $100k for now, and more if the project is very interesting and could be a hit.
If you are interested, contact me at ipadinvestor@gmail.com
can i use ipad on the plane