OK, I’ve had time to digest all the coverage from the Apple announcement and here are my reactions, would love to get your reactions to the announcement and how it may impact your development.
- Retina display – yes, knew this was coming, how could it not. Time to go in and update my graphics… or is it really just time to add yet another set of graphics to my app. I currently developed an universal app for iPhone and iPad called Wasted-Time. It was an exercise to get me up to speed on iOS before I created something more significant. I used a graphic as a background and had to put two versions in the file for iPhone and iPad. I never did update it for the Retina display on the phone since the app was already 8mb in size. And for what it does that is huge. I had wanted to actually remove that graphic, and if I do, I will end up with only a few icons which need to be doubled in size. Perhaps now is the time.
- A5x Chip – Now this is more interesting. They kept the same two cores for the CPU but doubled the number for the GPU. Evidently apple sees that multi-tasking is not as import as graphics performance. Given the success of games on the platform, I can understand this. It also means that we will see more and better graphics. The various demo apps around iPhoto and Sketchbook show this to be true. I hope that the CPU processor is actually faster, and since the infinity dungeon demo stuttered a bit, I am guessing that it is not faster.
- LTE Networking – Faster speeds mean more networking in apps, with bigger data requirements. Given that most of the carriers in the US no longer provide a meaningful unlimited data plan, I guess we will use more data at the expense of our users.
- Apple TV 3 – was really hoping for apps here.. but no.
The biggest surprise was the performance of the graphics. The Nvidia chip they talked about has 12 graphics cores, and the A5x claims to outpeform it with only 4, guess will have to see one of thes new iPads in action soon.
p.s. anyone want to buy my iPad 2