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Retina-equipped iPad proving problematic for devs, claims 10tons

CEO Alatalo dishes the developer dirt

Retina-equipped iPad proving problematic for devs, claims 10tons
Adding to the reaction of iOS developers already on record, 10tons president and CEO Tero Alatalo has detailed the difficulties his studios will face adapting to development on Apple's forthcoming third generation iPad.

Speaking via a post on the studio's blog, Alatalo claimed the device's Retina Display is something of a double-edged sword.

"The 2048×1536 resolution is huge. Insanely huge. 4x more pixels," he said in the entry.

"Making high quality universal apps which support all four iOS resolutions will make the app bundles massively large compared to last week.

"While the extra pixels come with extra download cost, they also require extra work for developers carefully crafting them. Simply scaling up the images in Photoshop doesn't add in more detail."

A lotta pixels

As well as hefty downloads and extra work for developers, there are practical problems to overcome when developing an app for such a high resolution display.

Alatalo explains, "the problem with simulating the new iPad is that we haven’t got an external display with large enough resolution to fit the 2048×1536 pixels on screen. Even the best Apple Cinema Display doesn’t have enough resolution to fit it in!"

What's more, 10tons has found that iOS simulator on iMac struggles to run 2048x1536 games, with frame rates slowing to a near standstill.

Alatalo also questioned whether the new iPad's A5X system-on-a-chip will be powerful enough to handle the massive jump in resolution.

Under the hood

10tons isn't the first developer to raise such concerns.

Ste Pickford, co-founder of Zee-3, expressed similar doubts, stating, "I suspect the machine won't quite match the performance of the iPad 2 for games, with the improved hardware probably not quite up to the job or pushing around four times as many pixels."

Similarly, Byron Atkinson-Jones, the founder of Xiotex Studios confided to us: "Yes, I'm excited about the increase in resolution, but at the same time I wonder if the graphics chip is going to end up realistically being the same speed as the iPad 2 is currently."

10tons' Alatalo take isn't entirely negative, however.

He also expressed excitement at the new hardware's possibilities, and appears optimistic that developers will overcome the challenges of working with the new iPad.

"All those problems are mostly minor nuisances that will go away with time," he concluded.

"The next iPad after this will most likely have even more horse power much like iPhone 4S had over iPhone 4. The display makers will start selling wallet-friendlyhigh resolution displays. We will all have unlimited amount of lightning-fast bandwidth. And flying cars."

[source: 10tons]
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