App News

Let’s go for a walk among the Stars

One of my favorite iPhone (and now iPad) apps, Star Walk, is marking its 2 year birthday today. In celebration of this event Vito Technology is having a 24 hour sale of their two other “walk” apps, Geo Walk and Solar Walk (detailed review forthcoming).

Vito Technology was also kind enough to give iPad Corral some promo codes for Star Walk to give away as well.  We have 2 codes for the iPad Version and 2 for the iPhone.

To get your chance at one of the codes just send an email to info at ipadcorral dot com (or send a message via our about page), let us know which device you will be using to star gaze, and we select winners at random and notify them via email within 48 hours.

AutoCAD + iPad = iCADPAD

Once upon a time I worked at an architectural and engineering firm where we were always knee deep in Autodesk software. AutoCAD was, and is, the standard software package used and today’s official release of AutoCAD WS for iPad and the other iOS platforms made the retired cad monkey in me smile.

One of the holy grails of CAD is the ability to access, modify, and redline electronic drawings on the go. There were solutions that tried, *cough* DWF *cough*, but ultimately a plotted roll of drawings and a KOH-I-NOOR Rapidomatic* with red lead still did the majority of the work.

AutoCAD WS on the iPad may finally make the dreams of many architects and engineers come true.

*Still the only mechanical pencil I will use

The Continuing Adventures of an iPhone/iPad Developer

 After 43 days, I have my first app in the App Store.  It is called NextRx and it allows for quickly calculating when prescriptions can be refilled.  My wife is a nurse and suggested this idea, so I ran with it as my first app.  Right now it is mainly targeted for the iPhone, but I am looking for ideas how to improve and optimize NextRx for the iPad. 

This has me thinking about how not every iPhone app, especially utility style apps like this, have an obvious gain in functionality by moving to the iPad.  NextRx was designed for quickly and easy data entry, additional screen real estate doesn’t make the app any easier to use.  As of right now, I think I will try adding a monthly calendar view that will display the start and end dates. 

Beyond that, I don’t really know what else the iPad could offer NextRx.  Still trying to get a handle exactly what the iPad offers developers.

Give the Gift of Apps

TiPb reported yesterday that Apple has now added the option to “Gift This App” to someone from within the iTunes App Store. And no, you can’t annoy your friends by spamming them with free ‘gifts’ of farts apps. The “Gift This App” option only appears on cost apps.

Seems Apple slipped this feature in while everyone is busy waiting for the iPad.

iPad App Classes: Pop Quiz to Follow

While listening to the iPadShow podcast, a guest developer explained that with the introduction of the iPad, there soon will be 3 classes of apps that can be downloaded depending on the device:  the iPhone only apps, iPhone and iPod Touch apps, and iPad apps. Due to the iPad’s compatibility feature, most iPhone and iPod Touch apps will run on an iPad, but not all iPad apps will be usable on an iPhone or iPod Touch.  For an iPad app to run on the smaller devices, it will need to be flagged as being “Universal”.  This essentially means that the app will determine the device being used, and will scale accordingly.  I confirmed this when looking at the info for the iPhone SDK 3.2 Beta:

Preparing Universal Applications
Developers can now start planning for universal applications, allowing them to take full advantage of the technologies on iPad, iPhone, and iPod touch with a single binary.

Sounds interesting, but we will have to wait and see how many developers make use of this universal feature and what kind of premium it will cost us.

iPad App Prices

Well Apple has opened the doors to developers so they can submit their iPad apps in hopes of being accepted into the iPad App Store in time for launch day.  But with the iWork apps costing $9.99 per app, has Apple set what they expect to be the price point for an iPad optimized app?  .99 or $1.99 for an iPhone app is one thing, but what amounts to a 10 spot for an app… the app would have to show that it is more than just a scaled up iPhone port to get that kind of money from me.