iPhone and iPad App 24-Hour Trainer

Chapter 33

Building Universal Applications

Following up on the huge success of the iPhone and iPod Touch, Apple introduced the iPad—a device with a much larger screen size, running iOS. Developing for the iPad in most cases is similar to developing for the iPhone, except for the obvious difference in screen sizes. Certain features, like the ability to make a phone call or send an SMS, are not available on the iPad.

The latest version of the iPad when this book was written is the iPad2. It does not have a retina display and comes with two cameras. iPads may not necessarily have 3G capabilities.

If you were to run an iPhone application on an iPad, the application would appear in a small 320 × 480 window in the center of the screen, as shown in Figure 33-1. To take advantage of the extra screen space on the iPad, you need to create an application specifically for the iPad.

As an iOS developer you can create applications that are iPhone-only, iPad-only, or universal. A universal application is one that includes binaries for both iPhone and iPad in a single archive.

In most cases, if you want to create both an iPhone and iPad version of your application, you create a universal application project in Xcode. However, some developers like to keep two separate projects for the iPhone and the iPad. This is sometimes done if the iPhone and iPad versions of the application are significantly different in functionality, or simply because the developer wants to make more money by selling two ...