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Buyer Beware: 11-inch iPad Pro has a new aspect ratio, and most apps have HUGE black bars
- Thread starter Xeyad
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As I explained before, with iPhones it's very different. Developers will invest in updating their iPhone apps because it has a much bigger base than iPads. On the other hand, you have devs like Facebooks who have never updated their app to scale for the 12.9" iPad. You'll see many game developers ignoring their games as well. Changing the aspect ratio will effect many apps and games for years to come. Yes, years.
I'm not saying it's a bad product, I'm just saying changing the aspect ratio seems like a dumb decision on Apple's part. They used to focus on things like this. One of the beauties when they introduced the iPad Mini was that all apps worked as as they would on the bigger iPads of that time.
Just a tad annoying that Apple doesn't focus a lot on those sort of details anymore. First world problems, I know.
Yep, but the Autolayout apps don’t fill the entire screen. Similar to what they did when the iPhone X first came out, they create a thin margin at top and bottom that cuts off the curved corners, which is why the iOS status bar at the top is solid black and why you’re forced to see the home indicator at the bottom.
What I still don’t follow is why some fully optimized apps have the home indicator, but others don’t. I think its is done on a per app basis, and likely plays into accessibility features. I do agree with some of the posters here - it would be nice to have a system wide toggle to turn off the home indicator bar.
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Apps that make their money from the App Store, the independent ones (aka NOT Facebook) care tremendously about the user experience and update their apps. I concur that there are a number of apps that won’t see an immediate update. But that said, blaming Apple for this seems like an easy road. They’re providing the tools to make sure the user experience is there. Blaming them for developer laziness (like Facebook, who makes no revenue from the App Store), isn’t a representation of Apple’s product design decisions. If Apple waited on devs to be “compliant” the industry would never move forward.
Yeah, the “safe area” behaviors are new to the iPhone X, and this is the first iPad to use them. I’m not very shocked that apps that do support autolayout missed the boat on safe areas. At least it gracefully degrades if autolayout is supported, rather than bailing completely to the old aspect ratio.
So far out of my core apps (I’m still installing as I go), Google Maps and Facebook seem to be the biggest offenders supporting neither autolayout or safe areas. Reeder is currently a hot mess despite supporting autolayout (good job there... *rolleyes*). A surprising set of apps just worked fine that I use: Paper, Things, Deliveries, Reddit, 1Password all work out of the box already and support the full screen. Most of the others at least support autolayout so I can take advantage of the extra width/height.
I’m having similar experience. Any apps that I have that are “universal” apps between iPhone/iPad where safe areas were implemented alongside autolayout look fantastic. It’s the apps that are still hard coded to fixed aspect ratios that are frustrating to run. I would suspect many of these come from the multi-platform dev tools like Xamarin, Codename One and others where the dev is shortcutting the system, not using XCode at all and building for all platforms with a single tool. Those tools don’t get Apple’s XCode updates as frequently, therefore your left with a subpar user experience.
I would think that being stuck on a single aspect ratio into perpetuity is a worse thing to happen. The Mini is a product of its time, before any sort of automatic layout functionality in iOS. It was an elegant solution, but one that made the text headache inducing to a subset of the population (including me) due to the smaller text size, so it wasn’t perfect either.
If Apple can’t change the aspect ratio now, when all the APIs have been in place since iOS 11 (rounded corners / home bar) or iOS 9 (split view), then when? I don’t think Apple can or should wait for Facebook or Google to bless Apple with the developer time to do the work, nor do I think it’s good for Apple to bend to the whims of developers either unwilling to maintain the software, or who have already abandoned one project in favor of a new one. Stagnation is not a great place to be.
I’ve seen several apps update today. They’re smaller devs, and I get the impression this is not a difficult thing to update for. If FB doesn’t want to update, that’s fine. I’ve already deleted the app. One less distraction on the iPad.
Ok, I have my 11. MANY apps already are 100% compatible with the 11 including apps like Procreate, 1Password, Things 3 and more. MANY, MANY more apps are *almost* compatible with the 11 and fill the entire screen except for a tiny thin black bar the width of the top line of time, date, etc. and the bottom line that has the white bar for the upswipe. It's subtle and you will likely not even notice it isn't totally filling the screen. Finally some apps ARE letter boxed on all sides and look weird, but many of those are being fixed quickly. For example Affinity Photo does not look great but Serif who makes it said an update is coming very, very soon. Apple will *require* all apps that are new or updated starting in March to fully support the 11.
It's about 1/3, 1/3, 1/3 for me so fully 2/3rds are actually perfect or near perfect
It's about 1/3, 1/3, 1/3 for me so fully 2/3rds are actually perfect or near perfect
Looks like I'll be sticking with my 10.5 for the time being. I was really looking forward to picking up the new one.
[doublepost=1541654319][/doublepost]I can live (for a while) with compromised aesthetics. Black bars are annoying given how great the display can be - but not the end of the world. But, when a critical app is unusable, that’s a different story.
One of my everyday, mission critical apps is iAnnotate for Blackberry. Because it is a walled garden app approved by my employer, it is the only app I can use for reviewing and marking up documents. It is unusable on the 11”. All of the critical tools (pen selections, undo, select, delete) are invisible - they’re off screen underneath a black bar. No way to pinch and zoom around it either.
Sent a note to the developer, Branchfire, but have a feeling it will be a very long time till this is addressed. If ever. So, I may have to go (back) to a 12.9.
More updates overnight - OmniOutliner, notability, concepts. Devs are moving fast and I don’t think it’ll be long before all my commonly used apps have been updated.
I don’t and haven’t used facebook for a long time; but I do recall that it was famously slow at updating its apps for new screen sizes. It struck me as wilfully obtuse for a company that has such resource and capability; just another way they show that UX is way down their list of priorities. I don’t think things between Apple and Facebook have got better since the last time this happened either, so they won’t be in a hurry. If facebook with/without black sidebars is the thing that’s driving your decision over a £1k+ device, well...
I don’t and haven’t used facebook for a long time; but I do recall that it was famously slow at updating its apps for new screen sizes. It struck me as wilfully obtuse for a company that has such resource and capability; just another way they show that UX is way down their list of priorities. I don’t think things between Apple and Facebook have got better since the last time this happened either, so they won’t be in a hurry. If facebook with/without black sidebars is the thing that’s driving your decision over a £1k+ device, well...
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Apple won’t allow devs to update their apps without supporting the new layouts after March. If developers won’t issue a single further update from March onward, their app is pretty much dead anyway. There are always bugs to squash.
Why would I download an external calculator app when I can just use Appl... oh wait, never mind.
This entire thread from the title through to some of the posts stinks of a competitor trying to slam a rival. I mean who the f** writes "buyer beware" in their thread title?
Honestly, if you are on these forums, then you are more than aware that as screen sizes change, it often takes up to a week for the app developers to catch up. Most should catch up automatically as they are following the preset rules in X code.
How this thread has reached 7 pages is beyond me!!!
Honestly, if you are on these forums, then you are more than aware that as screen sizes change, it often takes up to a week for the app developers to catch up. Most should catch up automatically as they are following the preset rules in X code.
How this thread has reached 7 pages is beyond me!!!
I like the new aspect ratio. We get more screen, but with a device that is still the same size. And the Onscreen Keyboard now has more functions.
Or are you saying you would rather not have the additional space, just because a few apps are not updated to use it? Seems silly to me.
Another bonus from the new aspect ratio: You will have smaller black bars when watching movies.
On the 12.9 it is smaller! So for older games that won't be updated, you trade real bezels for software ones and a 12.9" screen for ~12.4".
Unfortunately, this isn’t the case. The layouts have to be updated for the new rounded corner areas and the “home bar” or whatever the horizontal line at the bottom of the display is called. This requires updated layouts and a recompile.
It is Apple's fault when it doesn't notify developers well in advance though. It's easy for the smaller players that only develop for iOS to update overnight, but for some of the big apps it's not that easy, especially when they rely on user experience too much. It's not just a change in the aspect ratio but the inclusion the white bar as well, which shouldn't interfere with other UI elements.
I disagree. Rounded corners, and the APIs in the SDK for them have been around since the iPhone X was announced over a year ago. The autolayout functions have been around even longer. Based on this overall thread, it seems that the bulk of the complaining is coming from apps that are from the “big” companies, where they’re developing for multiple platforms and likely not using Xcode. That’s laziness on the developer part.
Again, if we really expect Apple to always consider aspect ratios and how their changes affect developers who don’t use the tools they provide, then the product lines and the industry as a whole is going to be stunted by developers who hold back the ecosystem.
I’m probably in the minority. But I’d rather Apple do what they want, and me get a better device. In this case, i’d argue that I got a bettter device, and lazy devs now need to play catch up. The ones that actually care about the user experience are either already up to date, or are going to have app updates pushed out shortly. And I also applaud Apple for enforcing their UI standards for new apps come March. If you can’t keep up, you shouldn’t be playing the game. That’s life.
Infamous?? I dont know no one besides movie watchers who doesnt love the 4:3
As a media pro producer, there is nothing I hate more than working with a pro screen made for warching movies (16:9)
Hell!!! The taller screen is still shorter for timelines and drawing!