Apple introduced a whole new category of mobile device today with the iPad and in so doing has opened new vistas for software development that could eclipse the iPhone App Store’s 140 thousand titles in short order.
Not suprisingly, Apple VP Scott Forstall waxed giddily about the fact that iPhone apps will run on the iPad straight away, saying, “We built the iPad to run virtually every one of these apps unmodified right out of the box. We can do that in two ways — do it with pixel for pixel accuracy in a black box, or we can pixel-double and run them in full-screen. This is really cool.”
But the presentation also showed how developers have a new palette with the iPad’s display that broadens the development horizons quite a bit.
“If the developer takes the time, they can also take full advantage of the large touchscreen display in the iPad. We did that with our own internal apps, and we expect developers will want to do that too,” Forstall noted.
The new SDK is available today and includes all the tools developers need to create custom apps for the iPad.
