This is the first of what may very well be quite a few notes, as re-blogs, about iPad application design. I think humanist and content creators of all stripes need to be paying close attention to this.
In this case, Matt Gemmell has some initial thoughts that are worth a quick read.
The iPhone, and now the iPad, are establishing that there is a place, even with the consumer utility device market, for general computing devices. In particular, Game Developer Research has just its report on the current state of game development. The 100-page document is available on their site and is covered in the the current issue of Game Developer magazine. Some of the trends revealed in the report include that the economic downturn has more developers working in smaller companies (less than 50 employees) and an increased focus on the mobile device market:
Of these mobile developers, nearly three quarters of that group are targeting iPhone and iPod touch development, a number more than twice the reported support for traditional handhelds like Nintendo DS and Sony PSP.
This only confirms our own household’s decision to retire our daughter’s Leapster that we had paired with my old iPod Video for road trips and mobile entertainment. Both were handily replaced by an iPad Touch that not only has the games and the videos of the previous two devices but also flash card activities, wikipedia, and other applications. General computing, baby, general computing.
For those interested in iPhone/iPad development and looking for other development environments than that provided by Apple, here is an interesting item: Ansca Mobile has released Corona:
Corona is built from the ground up to enable designers, web developers and engineers to quickly develop and distribute highly optimized native iPhone applications.
You can download a trial version of the SDK or you can get a full version with a one year subscription to their Corona Developer Program.
First, the LED screen will not be there for long. Color e-ink with decent (enough) frame rates for watching video is on its way — or at least so I am told. Apple knows that this thing isn’t perfect, but I suspect they also saw that the technology in this category was lagging behind market interest and demand. iPad 1.0 is a placeholder in some ways.
Second, if I was 20 years younger, I would stop what I am doing now and immediately immerse myself in everything it took to develop native apps for this and the other devices that are going to copy it. This is the computing device that most people have wanted for a very long time. For better or worse, most folks are consumers, not producers. The IT revolution — Tim Berners-Lee core concept — was a blurring of that distinction. We have seen a lot of movement in that direction, and there are certainly a lot more people producing content than there was twenty years ago, but I think we are also seeing a flattening of the growth curve and a kind of stabilizing of who is going to do what for the time being. The iPad addresses that flattened curve very, very well.
