0:00:00Hello and welcome to Developing Perspective, developing perspective as a podcast discussing
0:00:04news of note in iOS development, Apple and the like.
0:00:07I'm your host, David Smith.
0:00:08I'm an independent iOS developer based in Herne, Virginia.
0:00:11This is show number 62 and today is Monday, July 9th.
0:00:15Developing perspective is never longer than 15 minutes, so let's get going.
0:00:18All right, so the topic I'm going to talk about today is certainly the thing that's
0:00:22making the rounds the most in the sort of Apple tech news and things.
0:00:27I guess you can call it the iPad Mini, iPad Nano, Dan Benjamin wants to call it the iPad
0:00:32Junior, whatever it's called, it's the concept of Apple this fall releasing a sort of finding
0:00:40another niche in the middle of the iOS landscape to squeeze another device in.
0:00:46And in some ways it kind of reminds me of when Steve Jobs first introduced the iPad
0:00:51a couple of years ago, he kind of put that slide up where it's iPhone on one side, MacBook
0:00:57Pro or Macbook or whatever it was, and he said, "Is there a space for something in the
0:01:01middle?"
0:01:02And he said, "Okay, yes, we think there is.
0:01:03Let's squeeze the iPad in there."
0:01:06And it's almost like he's doing that same thing again, but he's making the question
0:01:09mark between the iPhone and the iPad.
0:01:11It's like, "Is there something that we can squeeze in there?"
0:01:13And in many ways, I think it makes a lot of sense that Apple would go after that market,
0:01:19especially because its competitors seem to be heading in that direction as the only way
0:01:23they can legitimately compete with Apple is to shrink the device down, which helps them
0:01:29to make it cheaper. And if they can make it cheaper, then they can potentially compete
0:01:33on price rather than necessarily on functionality, quality of apps, sort of aesthetics, all those
0:01:39kind of things that Apple just sort of tends to be winning at this point. Well, that makes
0:01:44sense. And it seems reasonable that Apple would be going after it. I mean, Bloomberg
0:01:49and Wall Street Journal are reporting about it, so it seems at this point pretty likely
0:01:54that Apple's going to go after it. And I think it's interesting that the leaks have been
0:01:58coming from main news sources like Bloomberg, because in my experience, typically that means
0:02:04that it is an intentional leak from Apple, rather than some guy got drunk at a bar and
0:02:11just started talking. It's not an accidental leak, it's an intentional thing. And my suspicion
0:02:17is Apple is trying to take the wind out of the sales of the Nexus 7 and the Microsoft
0:02:24Surface, for example.
0:02:27They all get announced, they get their few minutes of fame, and then if Apple starts
0:02:30leaking out the information about, "Hey, you like 7-inch tablets?
0:02:36Wait until this fall.
0:02:37Wait until you see what we got."
0:02:39And it definitely has...
0:02:41If that is what's happening, it's genius.
0:02:44Apple is doing a great job of having someone who looks at the K- you know, say the Nexus
0:02:487.
0:02:49It's like, "Oh, this looks kind of cool.
0:02:50I always kind of wanted something a little smaller.
0:02:52I hear the Kindle Fire is a little limited in some ways.
0:02:55You know, hey, let's give this a try."
0:02:57But of course, if all of a sudden you're like, "Huh, but maybe there's going to be another
0:03:03$200 tablet made by Apple, the iPad Junior.
0:03:07That's interesting.
0:03:08Maybe I'll wait."
0:03:10And that's all Apple has to do to really kind of smush those platforms before they even
0:03:15really get to any traction.
0:03:18It's pretty impressive.
0:03:19They're all over the news press, both mainstream and otherwise, that they're like, "Oh, maybe
0:03:23there's going to be a new iPad."
0:03:25So I think it's something probably coming, and that makes me excited as a developer,
0:03:29especially as a developer who makes a lot of money on the iPad, to potentially see Apple
0:03:35expanding that market of larger than pocketable devices. People joke, "Oh, the Nexus 7, you
0:03:42can put it in your pocket." Sort of. You need some very large pockets. But primarily, it's
0:03:49making it smaller and, more importantly, making it cheaper. I mean, the number of iPod Touches
0:03:53they sell, especially at Christmas, is kind of incredible. It's a very common Christmas
0:03:59present to give to someone. And I think if they can take that and turn it around rather
0:04:04than being just a small three and a half inch screen, if they can make that into whatever,
0:04:08a seven inch screen, an eight inch screen, whatever, you know, developers can do a whole
0:04:12lot more with that and that makes me excited. I'm really excited about that prospect and
0:04:17what that would do and what that would be like for my sales, at least. I'd probably
0:04:22use it a little bit but I mean, I'm a--in general, I don't even use my iPad. I use my
0:04:26iPhone because it's always with me and I have little kids and it's so much easier to just
0:04:32have this tiny little thing that I carry around and I can reference whenever I need to,
0:04:36you know, I don't have the time to kind of have that
0:04:39reclined, lean back experience where I think the iPad really works.
0:04:43I'm either chasing art after my kids or I'm sneaking a moment here or there
0:04:48and so it's typically not that relaxed. You look at the Apple
0:04:52commercial for the iPad and you see the guy
0:04:53lying back on his sofa, feet up on the coffee table, flipping through
0:04:58the New York Times or whatever. It's like, "Mm, I don't know about..." That's not an
0:05:03experience that I tend to have. So, you know, that's interesting. But one thing that I...
0:05:08And this is probably going to be the crux of what I talk about. I've been kind of frustrated
0:05:12by a lot of people talking about, "Oh." It's like they have this great realization that
0:05:17if Apple took the screen resolution of the current iPad, so 1024 by 768 in terms of points,
0:05:24You know, the iPad 3 has retina doubled it and all that, but you know, 1024 by 768 is
0:05:29the logical size.
0:05:31And they take that and they change the DPI so that if the DPI of an iPhone, then magically
0:05:37they can have like a 7.85 inch iPad that all of these apps will just work wonderfully on.
0:05:44If they've been following the HIG and other pixels and other buttons are smaller than
0:05:4744 by 44, somehow magically it'll just work.
0:05:52And Apple's probably been thinking about this all along.
0:05:54They can launch and they can do all these great things.
0:05:57And that's sort of true.
0:05:58And I mean, it's great that the math kind of works out that way that you can make an
0:06:01eight inch tablet that's a little bit smaller.
0:06:03I think it's 23% smaller.
0:06:06That probably is great from economies of scale perspective.
0:06:09They've been making iPhone screens forever now and they've probably got them super cheap.
0:06:14You know, they have this huge collection of iPad optimized applications.
0:06:18That's great.
0:06:19you know, they're launching with way more tablet applications than like the Nexus 7
0:06:23is or anything like that. That all makes sense. But I hate this service undercurrent that,
0:06:30"Oh, if Apple does that, developers won't have to do anything. It'll just magically
0:06:35work and we'll have these huge greater applications that look great on this new device." And it's
0:06:41sort of like the thing that--there's a sentence that I've been kind of--been going over and
0:06:44over my head, it's like this any user interface or design that does not take the physical
0:06:51size of the display into consideration in its design, in its layout, can never be optimal.
0:06:58It may work, it may be functional, it may be interesting, but it's never going to be
0:07:06optimal. If I take an app that I've laid out to look good on a 10.5 inch red current iPad,
0:07:14you can only squeeze that down by 23%.
0:07:17It may work in a functional sense,
0:07:19kind of by making the pixels smaller,
0:07:21you can squeeze more in, you squeeze it down,
0:07:24but that interface is not gonna be optimal for the user.
0:07:27I mean, the simplest version of this,
0:07:29and I'm not even really talking about touch targets
0:07:30and things, which are fair enough,
0:07:32you know, if you're taking the touch targets
0:07:33that are at a minimum 44 by 44 points,
0:07:36and moving them to a resolution like an iPhone,
0:07:39it works on the iPhone, that's great.
0:07:41All that is true, lovely.
0:07:43The thing that I'm worried about,
0:07:44Let's say for example font size, which is, if you currently are displaying on the iPad
0:07:50a font, you've likely optimized it so that that font is nice and readable at the physical
0:07:55size that it gets displayed at.
0:07:58And say, whatever it is, you take your 18 point font and you put it on there.
0:08:03Now if you suddenly squeeze that down 23%, suddenly it's like you're displaying whatever
0:08:09that is, a 14 and a half point font or something.
0:08:13that may not be optimal.
0:08:15That may not be what you want.
0:08:17For example, I have a recipe management app
0:08:19that has a view that makes everything really big.
0:08:22Because it's designed when you're actually making a recipe,
0:08:25it makes it really big so you can easily look at it
0:08:28across the kitchen when your hands are full of whatever.
0:08:32And that's a design consideration
0:08:35that I would need to adapt in order for it
0:08:38to work on a smaller screen.
0:08:40And so it's kind of there's this underground, oh, it's like Apple has this great trick up
0:08:45their sleeve.
0:08:46They can just leave everything the same size and it'll be no big deal.
0:08:50It will be a big deal.
0:08:51And I think developers will need to be able to adjust their displays for a smaller size
0:08:57in order for it to really be an optimal user experience.
0:09:00That of course brings up an interesting question because if Apple is taking the, giving it
0:09:08exactly the same physical size 1024x768, unless they added a new API, which they certainly
0:09:14can, it would be kind of complicated to actually adjust your display accordingly because the
0:09:22physical size would be the same as, for example, an iPad 2.
0:09:25As far as the app's concerned, I believe, at least I've never found any concept in all
0:09:32the existing SDKs for a concept of DPI, that you're being responsive to DPI changes. You
0:09:39can be responsive to scaling changes to retina, non-retina, to physical resolution size or
0:09:45logical resolution size and points, but there's nothing in the concept of DPI. If you didn't
0:09:50have that, it seems like it would be really hard to sort of design an interface that's
0:09:55optimal for a user. Like I said, it can work, but it would kind of work like a compatibility
0:09:59mode. Like you have, for example, on the iPad now, you know, if you open an iPhone app on
0:10:04the iPad, you can hit a button and you can 2X it and it works. It's compatible. It's
0:10:09not really optimal. It's not going to be laid out the way you want it. And so, part of me
0:10:14is, Sue's got me thinking about whether Apple would actually change the dimensions but keep
0:10:19them similar. And by that I mean, there's all this speculation and rumors about a 16
0:10:25by nine iPhone. So taking the existing iPhone screen and squeezing it, making it a little
0:10:30longer, making it 16 by 9 so video displays well, you can show more lists and things.
0:10:35And I think there's some value to that. And I think I'd be delighted if they did that.
0:10:39It's a relatively straightforward change to make. You have to adapt your apps a little
0:10:43bit to be flexible in that way, but not too bad. And I was wondering if they instead of
0:10:51making it 1024x768. They did the same thing
0:10:55in terms of making it so that it's a 16x9 iPad display, for example.
0:11:01So rather than being 1024x768,
0:11:05let me see, actually I should have done this before the show, but I can
0:11:09do that now. Let's see, so let's divide by 9 times 16.
0:11:13So it'd be like 1365x768, or something around there, in terms of
0:11:19and being able to adjust the display's resolution so that it's similar logically to an iPad,
0:11:26but different, and different in a way that an application could detect and potentially
0:11:32create a new nib for or play with the application and be responsive to that.
0:11:37That's just something I've been thinking about.
0:11:39There seems an interesting continuity.
0:11:42If this fall, Apple's big event at the end of September,
0:11:45that they always do when they launch their Christmas line,
0:11:47line, they'd come out, "Hey, we got this new iPhone. It's awesome. It's 16 by 9. We got
0:11:52this new iPod Touch. Hey, check this out. 16 by 9." And, you know, pull off the, you
0:11:59know, sort of pull the cover off, "Oh, and we got this great new thing too. You know,
0:12:03for $250 or $200, we got this great new iPad Mini." And it's 16 by 9 as well. It's, you
0:12:10know, $1365 by $768. And, you know, all your existing iPad apps, don't worry, they'll work
0:12:17great on this. And if developers want to take a little extra time, it can make apps look
0:12:21even better on it. And the same way they said with Retina display, same as they said with
0:12:25a lot of things. The iPad launch, they showed a lot of iPhone apps, they talked about iPhone
0:12:29apps were great. They're launching a tablet with the largest number of compatible applications.
0:12:34And that would still be true. But it's kind of a compatibility mode rather than something
0:12:39that is necessarily just sort of that denative experience. That it's, "Oh, it's 1024 by 768."
0:12:47And similarly, I could also see them just changing the resolution entirely and making
0:12:51it totally new, having it be sort of a third class of application that there's, you know,
0:12:55iPad, iPad mini and iPhone.
0:12:59That'd be interesting too.
0:13:00And either way, it's like as a developer, it's like I'd just adjust my application accordingly.
0:13:04I would just make it, you know, bigger, smaller, adjust the things.
0:13:07I'd be trying to be in there on day one because I think it would sell like hotcakes.
0:13:11I mean, I think if Apple could especially squeeze the iPod Touch price down, which I
0:13:17I think they probably could.
0:13:19In terms of taking, right now I think it's $200-ish, $210, $220,
0:13:23something like that.
0:13:24So they say they can squeeze that down to like $149 or $99
0:13:28or something like that.
0:13:31And then squeeze in, say, iPad Junior, iPad Mini at $200, $250,
0:13:37$300, $400.
0:13:39And then iPads start at $500, $500, $600, $700.
0:13:46that is an amazing spectrum that you can present your user.
0:13:49That you have basically any price point.
0:13:51You know, if you're the granddad looking to give your grandson
0:13:55a present for Christmas, you can kind of go in and be like,
0:13:58well, just how much money do I have?
0:14:00What's my budget for this present?
0:14:01If you're kind of going into that,
0:14:03you can basically get something all on that spectrum.
0:14:05Whereas right now, there's this big discontinuity between 200-ish
0:14:09and 500-ish.
0:14:10So I think those are just some thoughts.
0:14:12I really think it's interesting.
0:14:13I really think it will happen.
0:14:16I really hope Apple is being thoughtful about this and allowing developers the ability to
0:14:20easily adjust to the physical size to make it more usable in that way.
0:14:24But otherwise, I'm just excited about it.
0:14:26Alright, that's it for today's show.
0:14:28As always, if you have questions, comments, concerns, complaints, the best place for that
0:14:32is on Twitter.
0:14:33I'm @_DavidSmith on Twitter.
0:14:34The Twitter feed for the show is @devperspective.
0:14:38That's where you can go if you want to be updated anytime a new show is released.
0:14:41And as always, if you have questions, please let me know.
0:14:44on Twitter you can email me, david@david-smith.org, and I'll be happy to get back to you. Alright,
0:14:50thanks, have a good week, and happy coding. Bye!
0:14:53Bye.
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