What's new for the iPhone 6?
Apple revealed the new iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus. The big change to these devices are the screen sizes. The iPhone 6's screen is now 1334x750 at a 326 PPI. The iPhone 6 Plus' screen is now 1920x1080 401 PPI.
Photo credit Apple
How does it affect App Press?
The good news is the new iPhone 6 devices will automatically use your App Press layouts for the iPhone 5 and scale them for the screen. No changes will need to be made in your apps or assets.
However, the aspect ratios for the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus are slightly different. iPhone 5 apps are scaled to fill the screen and iOS hides the difference in aspect ratio by adding a 1 or 2 pixel black line to the top and bottom of the screen.
Running in the non-scaled full-resolution mode appears to be opt-in and our engineers are working thru the needed changes to enable this option for you. Unlike the transition from 1x to 2x screen resolution the entire iPhone 6 / 6 Plus screen is rendered at the 5/5s resolution and scaled up. This means everything including native text, vector shapes and web views created in App Press aren’t in full resolution on the iPhone 6 devices. App Press apps tested in the Xcode simulator demonstrated a slight resolution difference for some assets (more so in the iPhone 6 Plus) but we will need more time with your apps on the new hardware to make a final determination.
With the 6 Plus all of the native apps use the normal iPhone layout in portrait and the iPad layout in landscape. We believe that this will become the standard for widescreen phones. All of the templates in Xcode are set up this way and the UISplitViewController does this automatically.
In summary, your apps don’t need to be updated right away. However, we do need your input about how you want to design for these new screen resolutions. As our customers get new iPhones and we move forward into the fall, the App Press team is improving how you will build apps for both the new iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus.
The Apple Watch!
There’s been a lot of buzz about wearables, and Apple joined Samsung and Google fashionably late. We expected Apple to come out with a watch, but couldn’t have possibly imagined all it has to offer.
With its powerful technologies and placement on the wrist, Apple Watch opens up exciting opportunities for App Press customers. Notifications, payments, personal alerts, location are all more interesting now that there are multiple choices for consumers in both Android and iOS ecosystems. One thing that immediately came to mind as our team watched the Keynote was Actionable Notifications.
With Apple Watch you could have App Press' app notifications show up on your wrist. There is potential to build Notifications that can go even further by allowing you to take action or respond right from your wrist. With our new push API, we are scratching the surface of what App Press can do with notifications. Our team had already been working on supporting features for beacons and Android Wear.
With Apple joining the wearable category we believe our customers can expect to create exciting experience with App Press for these new watches.
