differences in developing for iphone and ipad

Question

What are the major differences between developing an application for iPhone and iPad?

iPhone apps need to be aware of incoming cellular calls, and that will have an impact to developers who need to program an app related to making a call.

I also know that the resolutions are different.

What other real differences does a developer need to take into account when developing for these two platforms?

Answer 1

• the OS is different. the iPad is still running on iOS 3.2, which does not support multitasking.
• there's different hardware - iPad does not have a camera, not all iPads have GPS (3G does, WiFi only does not), nor gyroscope.
• the user experience might differ not only because of different resolutions, but also because of the different physical dimensions - size and weight. specific examples below.
• typing with two thumbs on the iPhone is fast and easy, typing on the iPad on-screen keyboard is not as easy.
• the touch targets have different sizes on both devices due to the different ppi. what is easy to touch on iPad, might be harder on iPhone 3GS and even harder on iPhone 4.
• there's different in the UI layout - iPad works better for split views, where two separate pieces of info can be shown simultaneously, and supports pop-overs (context menus, if you like); whereas iPhone UI maps better to list/table views and toolbars.

Answer 2

The iPad also has more UI controls, including Popover and Split View (see Apple's documentation)

Answer 3

The UI design is very different - read the development guidelines. For one thing, tab bars are generally out, replaced by a tab bar at the top. Also, you are MUCH more strongly encouraged to develop for all orientations.

Basically though, the flow of things is very different because instead of a large drill-down tree as on the iPhone, you have a lot more space to lay out items in front of you. Pretty much the whole UI should be thought out although it may make sense to re-use some table view code in presenting side lists for something like a split view.

Also consider that people on the iPad may be much less casual users of your application, on the phone people tend to be in and out of applications pretty quickly but on the ipad a user is usually more settled in to do something long term. So you may want to think how to optimize the iPad for users who are doing something more complex or in the app a longer time.