http://developer.apple.com/iphone/prerelease/library/documentation/General/Conceptual/iPadProgrammingGuide/AboutThePlatform/AboutThePlatform.html#//apple_ref/doc/uid/TP40009370-CH4-SW1 Is it true for games, that apple is requiring developers to publish a game for the iPad in both landscape and portrait mode? Or does this rule only apply for applications, and not games? Anyone have any info on this, that would really help!
Currently the iPad Human Interface Guide states that every app has to support all 4 orientations. But there is a lengthy discussion about the drawbacks of this on the dev forums that certainly did get Apple's attention. They might or might not drop that rule, who knows.
I'm hoping this doesn't limit devs. Apple is making a big push with this whole "there is no wrong way to hold the iPad" but in reality it means there is no RIGHT way to hold it. The accelerometer being constantly active is also wasting battery life. An orientation lock will have to be present for me to even think about using most apps.
To echo DrummerB, the current official word is "all orientations, no exceptions". Apple is reviewing it, but I suspect we'll be stuck with the requirement at least for launch. The accelerator is always active, period. Your iPhone always knows it orientation, even if the software ignores the rotate triggers. Being a MEMS device, the accelerometers are not exactly huge power wasters. Which is why the power savings functionality focuses mostly on features like screen, sound, wifi, 3G, cpu, etc. i.e. Stuff that takes actual power.
Most of the time I can't stand auto-orientation. Making it so you can't easily disable it as a user is annoying. Making it very difficult (before you figure out some klugy way to bypass it) for a dev to lock an iPhone/Touch's orientation is frustrating. Restricting devs from locking iPad orientations is plain dumb.
This is a HARD requirement -- don't fully support all directions and your app will be rejected. There's a long thread about this: https://devforums.apple.com/thread/37294?start=0&tstart=0 Apple themselves say so (they reply on the first page).
Really, really odd considering the fact that Apple touts the fact that the iPad runs almost all existing iPhone apps and Apple DON'T recommend the use of all 4 orientations on this device. (Portrait upside-down being the one orientation I'm referring to).
I get that, but as the iPad will already run 100K+ of apps that don't work in all four directions, it seems silly to say the least.
Yup, but I understand why Apple let the old apps run that way. And I also understand why they want all apps to support any rotation, even though it doesn't always make much sense.
I have no problems with Apple strongly recommending the support of all screen orientations but I can certainly think of scenarios where it could present a problem. For instance: A multi-player board-game that is supposed to be played in landscape with the device laying on a flat surface. This will force the user to first find the right orientation holding the device in landscape mode, before putting it down. Not particularly user-friendly. All in all I find it to be something of an "un-Apple-ish" thing to do. Certainly they recognize the fact that limiting options are sometimes the correct thing to do? I appreciate that they want developers to help make the platform unique and that most apps probably should support all orientations, but demanding it even for apps where this doesn't make sense from a usability point of view makes very little sense to me...
I would rather see it as a recommendation too. Not even Apple follow their own guidelines as the keynote application only supported landscape, for instance. We all know that recommendations aren't always followed and they shouldn't either. I guess that Apple would like more apps to support more than one orientation, more than on the iPhone. The SDK is still in beta, and so are the guidelines so things might change before it is released. Apple listen to us in their forums, so it may very well change. But right now everyone who are prepping for the iPad release will have to go by the guidelines, i.e. make games that support all orientations. I would however like applications to support all orientations, it would make more sense, and for games it should only be a guideline.
My reading of Apple's guidelines is that an orientationless presentation like a game board is an acceptable way of handling the issue. If you have any controls that have an orientation (e.g. onscreen buttons) then you might need to shift those as the screen is turned. But otherwise the table-top design should work fine. Basically, what they want is for your app to support all orientations in an intelligent manner. They're obviously looking primarily at GUI apps where the presentation between portrait and landscape would be different, but there will be an interesting burden on games as long as the rule is in place.
I just thought of a racing game on the iPad where you turn too hard and suddenly everything goes to portrait mode... that would suck... I hope that Apple will change this.
Asphalt 4 showed that racing games with orientation changes is feasible on the iPhone. The iPad should actually do this feature *better* than the iPhone since the larger screen gives you more play on the rotation than the iPhone does. If you watch the EA presentation of Need for Speed, the demonstrator is turning the pad relatively little to steer. Combined with the larger screen making high-rotational angles seem less natural than on the iPhone, I suspect that screen rotation will be mostly a non-issue. Of course, I could be wrong. But I honestly think we should give it a chance before decrying the iPad design as being unworkable. If it was, I imagine EA would have already pushed Apple to change it.
It makes no sense to me to require apps to autorotate. If the device were square and didn't have a home button, fine. But as it is, the device has defined sides and isn't square. I'll just roll with it, but I think it's a pretty lame requirement.
I hate it for the fact that you can't optimize the experience for one orientation over another. I can think of many cases where I want my games to be in landscape or portrait only mode. UI optimization typically takes up 50% of my design time and they have effectively doubled my workload with this requirement.
