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> iOS/iPadOS does allow you to have one code base that dynamically responds to screen sizes. But almost always the experience for iPad users is terrible. are y

> iOS/iPadOS does allow you to have one code base that dynamically responds to screen sizes. But almost always the experience for iPad users is terrible. are you saying the tools aren't there for developers to create equally pleasing (mutatis mutandis) apps, or simply that the developers aren't able to create equally pleasing (mutatis mutandis) apps? Or that designers can't grok the mapping between their equally pleasing ideas and the tools available?

heisenzombie 4y ago
A phone and a tablet are just wildly different devices. Screen size —sure— but also usage patterns, input methods, workflow conventions, etc. The “mutationes” that must be made reach deep into the functionality of an app, not just UI-level stuff. The whole purpose of the app should probably change. It’s therefore a big and challenging job to make an app scale seamlessly from one device to another. That’s irreducible complexity. The tools available will always be at best “necessary but not sufficient”.
zamnos 4y ago
I'd say it's on the other end. users can't find the apps which are properly designed for tablets, and get tired of wading through crap to find them. the tips are totally there, but if you search for, eg, python, you can be sure the iPadOS app is decent and designed for ipad, vs you have no idea if the Android app is actually pleasing on tablet. That developers have the tools and can or cannot use the tools is secondary to that, imo.
threeseed 4y ago
There is no tool that can scale a mobile app to tablet size whilst maintaining a great UX. You need to optimise for the particulars of each device.
- secretsatan 4y ago
  If you're brave, you can configure views for all sizes (portrait/landscape/iphone/ipad) using XCode's UI Tool with trait based constraints. When you get it to work, it works quite well, animating changes when switching from portrait to landscape, but if things go wrong, it can be a massive pain to debug.
- selykg 4y ago
  Having worked on an app that, at least in my opinion, was pretty well done for each platform (phone and iPad), this is the case. Our UI for the iPad was a completely separate one. The core code was shared via various internal libraries, but the UI was entirely different. Adding a feature to iPhone required one entirely separate set of code compared to the iPad app. The app was a universal binary though and one app ran on both device types. This was, at the time, an absolute requirement. There was no way to scale the app from iPad to iPhone in such a way that it would give a great experience on both iPhone and iPad. It just wasn't possible to give an excellent app. I've long since left and the app does seem to be written in SwiftUI now and seems to be one shared codebase. But I wouldn't say it's as good as it was previously.

heisenzombie 4y ago

A phone and a tablet are just wildly different devices. Screen size —sure— but also usage patterns, input methods, workflow conventions, etc. The “mutationes” that must be made reach deep into the functionality of an app, not just UI-level stuff. The whole purpose of the app should probably change. It’s therefore a big and challenging job to make an app scale seamlessly from one device to another. That’s irreducible complexity. The tools available will always be at best “necessary but not sufficient”.

zamnos 4y ago

I'd say it's on the other end. users can't find the apps which are properly designed for tablets, and get tired of wading through crap to find them. the tips are totally there, but if you search for, eg, python, you can be sure the iPadOS app is decent and designed for ipad, vs you have no idea if the Android app is actually pleasing on tablet. That developers have the tools and can or cannot use the tools is secondary to that, imo.

threeseed 4y ago

There is no tool that can scale a mobile app to tablet size whilst maintaining a great UX. You need to optimise for the particulars of each device.

secretsatan 4y ago
If you're brave, you can configure views for all sizes (portrait/landscape/iphone/ipad) using XCode's UI Tool with trait based constraints. When you get it to work, it works quite well, animating changes when switching from portrait to landscape, but if things go wrong, it can be a massive pain to debug.
selykg 4y ago
Having worked on an app that, at least in my opinion, was pretty well done for each platform (phone and iPad), this is the case. Our UI for the iPad was a completely separate one. The core code was shared via various internal libraries, but the UI was entirely different. Adding a feature to iPhone required one entirely separate set of code compared to the iPad app. The app was a universal binary though and one app ran on both device types. This was, at the time, an absolute requirement. There was no way to scale the app from iPad to iPhone in such a way that it would give a great experience on both iPhone and iPad. It just wasn't possible to give an excellent app. I've long since left and the app does seem to be written in SwiftUI now and seems to be one shared codebase. But I wouldn't say it's as good as it was previously.