Hour 23. Building Universal Applications

What You’ll Learn in This Hour:

• What makes a universal application “universal”

• How to use the universal application template

• Ways of designing universal applications

• How to detect the device an application is running on

• Tools for migrating to a universal architecture

The iPhone and iPod Touch represent Apple’s first entry into touch-based computing, but they aren’t the only game in town. The venerable iPad has been an undeniable success and extends the iOS platform to a much larger screen. Throughout this book, we’ve been targeting one platform or another. But you know what’s even better? Targeting both.

In this hour’s lesson, you learn how to create an application that runs on both the iPhone and the iPad—termed a universal application by Apple. You also learn, firsthand, some of the problems that come with supporting an application that works on both platforms and some tips for overcoming them. You’re an iOS developer now, and there’s no reason you can’t extend your efforts to the entire iDevice lineup.