Hear me out
I have a simple theory that the first version of the iPad is going to be partially awful. Well, not the iPad, but some of the applications. Apps developed by highly experienced developers will be wonderful, but I predict that a large number of apps you’re looking forward to using on an iPhone will suck.
Why? Because developers don’t have access to an actual iPad, but they do have access to an iPad software simulator that shows what an app will look like and how it will work on the iPad. This sounds great, but a lot of developers are lazy.
This isn’t a slight on the dev community, I have a lot of friends that are app developers, but there is one aspect of development that is sometimes lazy and that is in recycling apps. For example, let’s say your favorite iPhone app is Urbanspoon and the developer of that app decides they’ll plop it into the iPad app directory without altering it. By doing so, the experience will be pixelated and wonky.
Now, that won’t happen with Urbanspoon and is unlikely to occur with the most popular apps, but some of the more niche apps with less experienced developers will end up looking awful because they’ll take the iPhone app, plop it from the iPhone app catalog into the iPad app catalog and simply double its visual size to be an iPad app, and this possible move could make for some unhappy first generation users.
Here’s my fake simulation:
There might be a fix before the iPad release and this might be such a minor issue that it doesn’t matter, but I suspect that if people who have invested money into an iPad and then an app end up experiencing this, the blogs will get chattery right away. I’m interested to see how this plays out.
