So no doubt you noticed that this new toy from Apple padded (heh) out on stage today and all. Kinda looks like someone held up a magnifying glass to an iPod touch and said “A NEW PRODUCT!!!” doesn’t it?
We kid, we kid. Well, sorta. With no multitasking or camera, that actually is a pretty concise description of it. And is there really a market for a $500-$1000 (which it will be once you get a case and keyboard for the top end model) big-ass iPod? Well, we shall see as we watch with interest … not as much as the Kindle folks are though, I’ll betcha!
Speaking of which, looks so far like we were probably wrong about a new HTML5-based content developmnt environment; it was stated that the book store is simply using the EPUB (“EPub”, “ePub”, …) format. Which is kinda-sorta HTML. However, it was also stated that you could have pictures and video in your iBooks … which certainly seems to imply that there’ll be HTML5 extensions to support that at least. Sooooo, we may not have been completely wrong. But we shall see.
And it was a just barely noticeable surprise that iPad Safari won’t support the Flash plugin either, since the “it’s not the real Internet if I can’t play my Flash games” argument is slightly more serious on a page-sized browsing device than it is for a pocket-sized device. But it seems that John Gruber’s analysis is pretty much spot on there.
However, we were completely right in taking it as a too-obvious-to-bother-posting given that the OS would be a somewhat extended iPhone OS, not a stripped down OS X, or something new; although it was a mild surprise to find that apparently there’s still no multitasking available. The SDK is currently in beta and under The Felicitous NDA that should come as no surprise; however, here’s a fellow who doesn’t take his agreement very seriously…
[UPDATE: No, Apple Legal, calm down, it was all a big oversight. So we've removed our quotation too, snip snip snip]
…. But the executive summary is, it’s a fairly subtle set of extensions to the regular iPhone development process, so branching out into iPad development will be no big deal for any iPhone developer. And hey, we always love a completely defensible excuse to buy a new toy!
h/t: iPhoneFlow!
Argv, I did not realize the iPad SDK was under an NDA! Thanks for the heads up, have taken down the post. Geez now I feel horrible :[
But too bad it’s under NDA, is pretty exciting and would have loved to talk to some developers about it!
Heh. Fixed that up for you.
Thanks Alex :]