Black bars on both sizes, but far worse on 11"

[ryuok]

I have been playing with both sized iPads, and black bars can be found on both sizes for almost all non-Apple apps.

There are two kinds of black bars:

1) Rounded corner black bars: This is similar to the iPhone X situation, before apps are updated to accommodate the extra spaces extended by the rounded corners. This affects both the 11" model and 12.9" model.

2) Aspect ratio black bars: This only happens on 11", and it is far worse and far more notifiable than the "Rounded corner black bars". If an app is not coded to dynamically adapt to aspect ratio, you'll see horrifyingly large black bars especially in landscape mode. It's almost like seeing an iPad mini sized app, inside an 11" screen. Populars apps such as Facebook and Netflix are affected by this.

 

[jun180]

Yes, here’s an example on he 12.9 I just picked up of the first type of black bars.

 

[JonoNZ]

Yeah I’ve noticed them on lots of apps on my 11”
- Apps that were previously not updated for the 10.5” now show black bars down the left and right hand sides (landscape)
- Apps that have not been updated for the 11” show black bars top and bottom

Even Apple apps like iWork have the latter problem, go figure!

The good news? Apps look soooo bad that I expect developers to fix them quickly. It’s not like on the 10.5” where the scaling was very subtle so devs could get away without updating.

 

[chfilm]

Holy god, this is AWFUL, I couldn’t find a single app other than the notoriously up to date THINGS by cultured code, that‘s currently optimized. The worst examples that I found were Netflix and Adobe Lightroom. TERRIBLE! Hope there‘s gonna be a ton of updates soon.

 

[Mr.Blacky]

The 12,9" iPad has the exact same resolution as the previous ones. It doesn't make any sense, that there are black bars, until I missed something?

 

[LazyWhippet]

The 12,9" iPad has the exact same resolution as the previous ones. It doesn't make any sense, that there are black bars, until I missed something?

The new gestures bar will cause issues if not correctly implemented

 

[MadeByApple]

The new gestures bar will cause issues if not correctly implemented

Also the rounded corners for the screen requires apps to be updated.

Nothing but a minor trade off-- the price we pay for being early adopters.

 

[macdaddy1991]

This was a deciding reason that I went with the 12.9 over the 11. This is the first iPad with an aspect ratio other than 4:3. I knew the app situation would be a bit of a **** show

 

[ryuok]

The good news? Apps look soooo bad that I expect developers to fix them quickly. It’s not like on the 10.5” where the scaling was very subtle so devs could get away without updating.

You are right! It might be a good thing that these apps look so radiculous and unbearable.

 

[DNichter]

No worries, apps will get updated or get deleted.

 

[canyonblue737]

Apple has already set March as the hard date where you can’t even submit a new or updated app that doesn’t comply with the new iPad sizes. That’s 4 months from now, I suspect most current major apps will be updated far, far sooner. There may be some no longer updated apps like some games that are never fixed but that will be the exception not the rule.

 

[flur]

“Horrifying large”? Come on. It’s a screen. And it’s temporary.

 

[cmaier]

I expect a flurry of app updates today

 

[sonicrobby]

Thankfully it does sound like a temporary issue, but it still sucks to get a brand new beautiful device and see this flaw with apps. It should just be a slight resolution change for Devs though, hopefully they will be updated quickly.

 

[cmaier]

Thankfully it does sound like a temporary issue, but it still sucks to get a brand new beautiful device and see this flaw with apps. It should just be a slight resolution change for Devs though, hopefully they will be updated quickly.

Generally speaking, all they have to do is recompile using 12.1 as a target. Most apps won’t require any addditional work.

And devs cants submit updates after March unless they are in compliance.

 

[Snapperjw]

It’s just so inconsistent with apps. The BBC iPlayer and News app look really bad, but the BBC Sport app fills the whole screen. Weird!

 

[canyonblue737]

It’s just so inconsistent with apps. The BBC iPlayer and News app look really bad, but the BBC Sport app fills the whole screen. Weird!

It’s actually not. Apple has asked developers to build their apps with an API framework that is designed to be flexible to screen size for several years now. The apps that were made that way adapt automatically or with little developer effort. The ones hardcoded to size will have trouble.

 

[DNichter]

It’s actually not. Apple has asked developers to build their apps with an API framework that is designed to be flexible to screen size for several years now. The apps that were made that way adapt automatically or with little developer effort. The ones hardcoded to size will have trouble.

Apple should have made it mandatory.

 

[unobtainium]

I expect a flurry of app updates today

Maybe but I’d say updates will trickle in over November and December. Anything not updated by the end of December is getting deleted from my device.

 

[macduke]

The price of being an early adopter. This has happened a lot over the years

• iPad (lots of iPhone apps blown up)
  
• iPhone 4 (pixelation hell)
• iPad 3 (pixelation hell)
  
• iPhone 5 (not tall enough apps)
• iPhone 6/6 Plus (scaled huge)
• iPad Pro 10.5" (blown up)
  
• iPhone X (not tall enough apps)
• Apple Watch Series 4 (apps not filling display)
  
• iPhone XS Max (blown up)

And now this with the 2018 11" and 12.9" iPad Pro.

From what I can tell the 12.9" seems easier to fix but it seems like historically developers have cared less about updating their apps for the 12.9" so I'm a bit worried now that I have moved to the larger size. But this time around it seems like the 12.9" is more popular than before so we'll see.

 

[flur]

I’ve done a brief check of my apps and almost all of them go full width on the 11”. None of the video apps—Netflix, Hulu, HBOGo, YouTube, Prime Video, DirectvNow—go full width. So that blows the idea that they use an Apple internal full screen rendering and will automatically be full screen out of the water. That said, they’re no smaller than on my 9.7” Air 2, and will look amazing once they’re updated. So, I’m going with it. Hopefully they’ll update soon.

I’m pretty busy getting ready for a trip, but I’ll be reaching out to all of them to ask that they update their apps for the new sizes. If you want a dev to update an app, ask. The more requests they get, the faster they’ll get on it.
[doublepost=1541623841][/doublepost]So far, Procreate is the only app I’ve seen that’s updated for the rounded corners.

I really wish they’d let us hide the home bar. Even if the space is there, I don’t want to see the d@&$ bar.