"HD Support" What does that mean?

[Bingoldsby]

In the app description of some particular weather app, is this part.... "supports HD & landscape mode for iPad"

It's the landscape mode that I'm interested in, and it's great that they mention it. I just bought a rather expensive app and came to discover that it WILL NOT rotate to display in landscape view, although the portrait view is fully iPad in resolution.

Anyway, I see the letters "HD" expressed here and there... and in the titles of many of the apps, but don't really understand its reference. Sure... HD in video is "High Definition," but I don't get why it would be tossed out in any other context but Video.

Thanks,

Brian

 

[f4780y]

Appallingly (in my opinion anyway), the term HD has been very badly used in the iPad environment. For some ridiculous reason developers starting out naming the iPad versions of their apps with "HD" at the end to differentiate them from the iPhone versions and denote iPad compatibility despite the fact this has absolutely nothing to do with being "High Definition". So unfortunately, in the context of the iPad it seems to just be an arbitrary moniker which means whatever the developer wants it to mean.

As regards support for different orientations it is again entirely up to the developer of the app to decide which orientations they will support. It is not something that is automatic, so if the developer decided not to support portrait then the best thing you can do is bug the developer to create the orientation you want...