iPad — Inside The Mind Of Timothy Allard

Archive for the ‘iPad’ Category

iPad vs the iPhone, The Justification Gap Is Becoming Larger And Larger

Posted on the March 3rd, 2011 under Gadgets,Industry News,iPad,iPhone,Web Development by Timothy Allard

I have recently been in quite a few discussions between the iPhone vs. the iPad – mostly why would someone need an iPad if someone already owns iPhone. The big reason since launch for not needing an iPad is usually: “you have an iPhone, why would you need an iPad?”. They are run off the same core operating system, they have many of the same apps etc. I could agree to this and still almost do, but we are coming to a point where there is more justification as to getting an iPad – and it’s not just because of the new iPad2 and its hardware upgrades. Yes that is important, but there is more to the driver now a days.

Applications are where it is at. When the first iPad came out, many developers would just port their apps over to an iPad version, increase the price and use that as justification to get their app on the iPad. Now, iPad apps are greatly becoming unique and really pushing myself to see that as the driver to get one. iPad apps are really starting to take unique advantage of layout, hardware features and services.

I see iPad specific applications becoming more of the separator between the very common question: “why get another device if an iPhone does the same thing.”

I can say now, “I want an iPad”. My main reasons for not getting one thus far are:

IPad apps were the same, just had a higher cost
No front facing camera
It was kind of bulky and was heavier than I thought it would have been
Cost

Since the new iPad2, two of these features have been taken care of, and over time, my first issue is really starting to create a greater gap for differentiating the two. Lastly it comes to cost. It is a bit of money for my budget right now, and the longer I wait, the better it could become and improve.

Apple still has yet to incorporate the beautiful retina display and come down on cost a bit, but I am giving in each day more and more.

I really would like to get into developing iPad specific applications and expand my skillset into a new area of development.

All in all, I am at a comfortable place to say, “ill get one”. I just need to continue saving those pennies.

View iPad Formatted Websites In Firefox – TRICK

Posted on the April 3rd, 2010 under Gadgets,HTML5,Industry News,iPad by Timothy Allard

So the iPad has launched, and you do not have one. This quick little trick will let you view iPad formatted websites in your browser just as though you had one. You only need 3 things. The first is Firefox. The second is the “User Agent Switcher” plugin for firefox. This will allow you to switch your browsers user agent, so you can view alternative views of web pages specifically for a device with that user agent profile. Lastly, you will need the user agent line of text located below.

Mozilla/5.0(iPad; U; CPU iPhone OS 3_2 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/531.21.10 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0.4 Mobile/7B314 Safari/531.21.10

Install the User Agent plugin and create a new user agent profile. Paste in this code and switch to that profile. Next try and go to a website and see which one loks diferent. The website that made me want to try this was for GMAIL. Google just released a very slick looking new iPad formatted website specificly for that device. by going to gmail, it auto detects and thinks I am now using an iPad and displays the page as so. I would honestly love a view format like this for the web version of Gmail. It would be nice if they offered a view like this for web. In the meantime, I may just use an iPad user agent.