How to port existing iPhone application to iPad

Question

Hi all,

I have an iPhone application, now i want to convert that application to a universal application which runs on all the devices iPhone/iPod/iPad. So, where to start, what things i need to do?

Any help, link, sample app, anything, will be highly appreciated.

Thanks in advance :)

Answer 1

I know that a lot of iPhone applications already work with the iPad, I'm not certain but shouldn't there be a way to emulate the iPad on OS X to test if it works?

Running a Google search gave me this site. http://iphoneinaction.manning.com/iphone_in_action/2010/04/converting-an-iphone-app-for-the-ipad.html

Fiddle around a bit and figure out if you even have to do anything to it first.

Answer 2

I've done that recently, it's actually much simpler than it would seem. I recommend you read the iPad programming guide from Apple, it's about 100 pages in PDF (and you don't need to read all of it). Basically, you need to:

• run a command in Xcode that automatically converts your project to Universal
• add support for orientation changes, if you haven't done that earlier (it's required on iPad)
• go through the app, see what's broken and fix it (e.g. it's likely that you'll see some places where you need to fix autoresize settings for controls)

That's of course if you don't want to redesign the UI for iPad, which you'll probably want to do in the end (e.g. use split views, popup dialogs and various modals, and do less full screen view transitions). The UI that you'll get by going through this steps won't feel 100% iPad-y, but it will work, and will look much better than an iPhone-only app zoomed in, so it's a good start.