The new iPad is doing weird things with apps that haven’t been updated to handle the new display. There are two separate issues: 1) black bars either all the way around the app or just at the top and bottom, and 2) the status bar displayed in full screen mode.
Here’s a game on the 2017 12.9” iPad Pro:
And here’s how it looks on the 2018 12.9” iPad Pro:
Ostensibly, the black bars are there to prevent assets from getting cut off by the new rounded corners of the display. However, the inside of the black border is also rounded, so this makes no sense. Nearly every game I’ve tried suffers from this.
A bigger problem is that some apps that haven’t been updated yet are no longer capable of displaying full screen video without the status bar. This is Air Video HD on the 2018 12.9” iPP:
It used to be full screen, but now there’s no way to get that view without the status/clock bar.
A brief rundown of common video apps I use:
- Netflix has been completely updated for the full screen.
- Hulu has not been updated (full black border on all sides), but it plays fullscreen video with no status bar.
- Amazon Prime Video has not been updated (full black border on all sides), but it plays fullscreen video with no status bar.
- YouTube has not been updated (black bars at top and bottom), and it shows the status bar in fullscreen.
- Stream to Me has not been updated (full black border on all sides), and it shows the status bar in fullscreen.
- Air Video HD has not been updated (full black border on all sides), and it shows the status bar in fullscreen.
- Transmit has not been updated (and will never be updated), and it shows the status bar in fullscreen.
I can understand why this would happen on the smaller iPad Pro with a different aspect ratio, but it seems like Apple is making the UX of these apps worse for no real reason on the larger iPad Pro. I’d like to see an option to have apps that haven’t been updated rendered full screen anyway. The way it is now is a substantially worse experience for apps that haven’t been updated yet (and some may not be for months, if ever).
