Non retina iPad app working fine on retina display iPad - iphone

I have a iPad app which is NOT modified for the new iPad with retina display. But, to my surprise(pleasant) the app is working great without any issues in the retina display iPad. The graphics are just the same. I dont even see any pixelation issues. Can some one explain me the reason behind this? Did apple do something from their end in order to get the non retina apps to work the same way in retina display iPad?

Text and framework images are in high resolution, without the explicit need of the application to do anything.
What does look different are the images you provide with your app, so if your app has a custom UI that is not retina ready, it will look bad.

The same applies to the retina iPhone. Text is displayed in a double density font, and any embedded images are also displayed x2. In most cases the only change that you make for retina displays is to add double density images, but that is optional.
Edit: This also works with iPhone apps running on the iPad, with one massive gotcha. If an iPhone only app runs on the iPad, it is displayed double density, in portrait mode. But the only way that a developer can actually get his app onto an iPad is to mark it as universal, which means that it loses this support.

Related

Do I still need low-resolution images for using Interface Builder when developing iPhone app for iOS 7?

I started to develop an iPhone app for iOS 7.
Since iOS 7 does not support devices with non-retina display for the iPhone/iPod touch, and it uses high-resolution images on non-retina iPads (iPad 2 and iPad mini) in the iPhone emulation mode, now I think we don't need to provide low-resolution images when developing an iPhone-only app which deployment target is iOS 7.
I thought it's great, but soon I faced a problem when I used a Storyboard; apparently Interface Builder can not display high-resolution images which file names end with #2x.
I feel it's really pity that we have to provide the low-resolution images ONLY for the Interface Builder...
Is there any good workaround for this? Or do we still have to provide low-resolution images if we want to use the Interface Builder?
You are correct that an iOS 7 iPhone-only app is not going to run on any single-resolution devices, so you only need to provide double-resolution images. Do what you have always done in the past: refer to your image as myImage but name the actual image file myImage#2x.png. Even better, use the asset catalog! Place the double-resolution image in the 2x slot and refer to it by the name of that image set. Either way, this will work perfectly both in the storyboard editor and in the running app; in the storyboard editor, the Media Library and things like buttons that have images will display your image's name as myImage.

How to make an iphone and iphone4-retina compatible app (done in cocoa) easily adapted to ipad?

My question is simple: when an iPhone app also supports retina display, it does not need an additional xib file. (Fonts and images are auto-scaled, you just need to prepare double-resolution images.) I want that retina view also applies to iPad and hence there's no additional xib files. (Scale a bit and leave a bit margin, maybe.) Yes, I just want it look bigger, but not in the low-resolution version scaled up from 320x480.
The iPhone, even with a retina display, is not an iPad. You can update your targets and xcode will convert automatically your views to use the entire screen of the iPad, but it won't make the application conforms to
1. Apple guidelines
2. Users expectations of an universal app.
But, as I said, if you do update your targets, your app might look relatively good (just programatically use UI_USER_INTERFACE_IDIOM to use the #2x.png version of your images).
Edit: I misunderstood your question, and now the corrected answer:
There's nothing you can do. The iPad will launch the app as an iPhone app (the small non retina display, pixelated if double sized) if it is defined as such in your plist, and iTunes Connect will sell your app as universal if it isn't defined as an iPhone in the info.plist.
You basically have little choice here but to port the app or to more or less forget about iPad users. And Apple certainly wanted things to be that way...

Flash iPhone app pixelated once displayed on iPhone4

I have made the app in the larger resolution for iPhone4, and when I test it in 3GS it works/looks fine, the app scales DOWN accordingly. But when I test app on iPhone 4 it appears for reason to scale it down and then back up again creating a pixelated look. This applies to vector assets and text within the flash project as well which is even weirder in my opinion. My SWF is 640x920px.
According to this post support for retina-display graphics is not yet supported. The two output sizes are either low-resolution iPhone or iPad. To wit:
The current version of PFI produces apps that run at 320x480 on iphones and ipods or 1024x768 on ipads. Support for 964x480 is something we're looking into adding for a future release.

iPhone 4 apps automatically scale up on iPad?

I thought I read/saw/heard something saying that apps built for iPhone 4's Retina Display would automatically run at 640x960 when installed on an iPad. However, can't find any documentation on that specific feature, and my app still runs at 320x480 when installed on an iPad.
Is there a step I've missed to make this happen? Or did I just imagine this being a feature?
Apps do not auto-upscale, BUT if you have an image larger than the UIImageView you are placing it in, you will get as large a version as the iPad can draw.
I don't think it knows to pull in #2x images, just ones that are actually larger than the space you are placing them into.
This is not the case; currently, apps won't auto-upscale on an iPad. Perhaps Apple will add this in iOS 4.x for iPad, but certainly there's been no indication from them that they will.

Is there any difference between iPad 2x mode and iPhone4 Retina display (for developer)?

Graphics development for iPhone4 and old iPhones was changed in several ways:
The concept of point was introduced
to replace pixel.
Methods of UIImage will load high
resolution resource files with #2x
in the file name.
Scale factor was added to UIScreen,
UIView, UIImage, and CALayer
classes.
So if we handle CGImage carefully, it's not hard to support the high resolution Retina display of iPhone4.
I have several questions about non-native iPad app in iPad 2x mode:
Could all the changes from old
iPhone to iPhone4 (#2x resources
auto loading, point concept, scale
factor) be applied to iPad 2x mode.
The scale of app on iPad can be
changed. How can I handle it?
With The new iPad sporting Retina Display you will need another set of images for some items such launcher icon, launch images (splash screen).
For example:
The launcher icon for Retina Display on iPhone/iPod Touch is 114 x 114 but on The new iPad the same icon for Retina Display is 144 x 144.
Other example:
On an Universal App, for the launch images (splash screen) you'll need an image set for phones/music players:
Default.png (For old devices)
Default#2x.png (For phones/music player with retina display)
Another image set for Tablets:
Default-Portrait~ipad.png (For original iPad and iPad 2)
Default-Portrait#2x~ipad.png (For the new iPad with retina display)
Default-Landscape~ipad.png
Default-Landscape#2x~ipad.png
The "#2x~ipad" will work on the new iPad in the same way "#2x" worked for the phones and ipods, but will be relative to the old iPad image set.
Unfortunately, all of those content scale functions were added in 4.0, so I don't think there's any way to use the iOS4 stuff that you're asking for.
The iPad 2x mode is just a way to run iPhone-only apps on the iPad's larger screen. If you want to take advantage of iPad's larger screen, all you have to do is create a universal binary (i.e. one that contains views for both iPhone and iPad).
There is no way to get the iPad 2x mode to display your iPhone retina level content automatically—Apple do not support this... presumably as they want people to put effort into developing iPad-specific interfaces for their apps.