What is a Mobile Device?

It seems like a simple question, but the answer isn't quite clear. As it has done in a number of ways, iPad has changed things. Running iPhone OS, iPad is in many ways a bigger iPhone or iPod touch, but despite the common software, it's a very different device. And Apple has provide explicit guidance on that matter in its iPad Readiness Checklist. The first sentence sums it up:

Safari on iPad is capable of delivering a "desktop" web experience.

It goes on to provide guidance on decoding the Safari user agent string to know if you're presenting your website to iPhone or iPad users. Interestingly, only iPad identifies itself. Presumably when iPhone was launched, iPad wasn't yet part of the overall scheme so that it was sufficient to designate iPhone as mobile and be done with it. iPad self-identifies as both mobile and iPad. And Apple strongly recommends serving up a desktop experience. (Presumably, you can have three experiences for desktop, iPhone, and iPad.)

As we move into the iPad era, we're starting to see a new repertoire of UI tools for this interface. One of the more interesting ones is in Bento for iPad. Related records are displayed in a small box such as the To Do Items in the modified Projects template I've used. There's only room for about four items. And a scroll bar is noticeably absent.

But the scrollbar functionality is noticeably present. Tapping one of the related records opens it in a popover, and that popover has forward and back arrows to let you go through the related records.