Thoughts on the iPad
Today Apple announced their much anticipated tablet computer – the iPad. With a 9.7 inch screen, the iPad is a supersized iPhone; and it’s already inspiring both love and hate from Apple fans worldwide. Comments so far have ranged from “I want it now” to “I was expecting a lot more than an XL version of the iPhone with no phone capabilities.”
So what does the iPad mean for developers, testers, and Apple users? Here are a few thoughts:
Layout now matters for iPhone developers.
Up until now, an iPhone app was one size fits all. Every iPhone has the same resolution, meaning apps didn’t have to worry about scaling up or down. Not anymore! The iPad is a larger device, but it runs the same iPhone apps. While it can automatically scale up an app designed for the iPhone, the results are kind of ugly. The bigger screen real estate opens a lot of interesting possibilities, but for iPhone developers now is the time you need to start worrying about how your app will look on a larger screen that isn’t 480×320.
New interface means new challenges.
If it’s not enough that the iPad comes in a different size, now developers will also have a slew of new interface widgets to work with. Whether or not those widgets will be available on the iPhone remains to be seen, but whatever the case developers will have their hands full making sure their apps look correct on each platform.
Testers needed!
Read more…

I think I read somewhere that Apple may be announcing something on Wednesday. </sarcasm>
Nick Jones over at Gartner wrote a great piece about the
Stereotypes have been given to just about every profession. There’s the sleazy used car salesman, ambulance-chasing lawyers, doughnut-eating sheriffs, corrupt politicians, drunken pilots – I could go on.
Around 1:00 PM EST today, Microsoft will release an emergency patch for
In the third and final part of the Michael Bolton trilogy, we cover advice for new testers, his hypothetical banishment from Software Land, the blogs he reads and more. Did you miss our earlier interviews? Here’s
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