Instapaper Developed Before Ipad Launched

This article is about the thoughts of an iPad application developer Marco Arment before the launch of iPad. The article focuses on the worries of a developer, who has developed an app for a gadget , which was not out in the market then.

According to Instapaper Pro developer Marco Arment, the risk of imperfection gets outweigh by the lure of being the first person with a new iPad app.

Arment's iPad app Instapaper presents newspaper and magazine articles in simple black-on-white text and lets you flag interesting stories for later reading. But he was doing it without seeing how his creation works on an actual iPad.

Developers can use an emulator to see how their apps work, but Arment wrote on his blog (that developers don't yet know some important details about the iPad, such as how much RAM it has or how quickly it can execute animations.

Still, Arment would rather develop than leave iPad owners to use Instapaper's iPhone version, which can either run in iPhone size at the centre of the screen or in pixel-doubled mode, occupying the full screen in the iPhone's 480-by-320 resolution.

"Even if the first version ships with a few edge-case bugs, I'd rather have that on my iPad for a couple of weeks than no Instapaper at all," Arment wrote, "and many customers have told me that they feel the same way."

Some developers do get to test their work on the iPad, but according to BusinessWeek (they must lock the iPad to a fixed object and use it only in a room with blacked-out windows. Some developers were turned away regardless. Arment is obviously among the group that doesn't have an actual iPad to try.

Bugs aside, creating iPad apps in the dark makes it tough for developers to know how the device will feel in the hands and look to the eyes. Arment notes that he may move Instapaper's reading toolbar to the top of the screen, and could introduce more radical changes after the iPad launches.

From the release of the iPad, these iPad developers will see multiple benefits. iPad gives them a good opportunity to explore the benefits from any old iPhone applications they may have created or any apps exclusively for iPad.

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