Short question: Does Apple frown, or completely disallow apps to code specifically for a device (not a feature, like Retina or Compass, but an actual device). Here's the context:
I'm launching a 3D game for the iPhone/iPad that is planned to be a Universal app. I've coded its UI in such a way that one set of screen coordinates perfectly positions 2D sprites on-screen, maintaining the aspect ratio differences.
I'm now running into TREMENDOUS performance problems for the first-gen iPad. iPad 2, iPhone 3GS, iPhone 4 (and iPod twins) work great (I'm not supporting retina yet either, performance is too low with it enabled).
I'm on the brink of branching into "if iPad 1" do this type coding. I know that is a terrible practice, but the game I've built pushes the older hardware too much. I'm looking into even more optimization techniques to help improve, but I need to get an additional 20 FPS out of it, which is needless to say, a lot.
My concern is this: if I can't improve the performance across the board enough for the game to play the same way on an iPad 1 as an iPad 2, I am strongly considering reducing texture sizes just for the iPad 1, and possibly even removing or trimming down certain objects with more poly's. I do not want this to come at the cost of iPad 2 users, however, who have a device with a GPU capable of keeping up. How bad of a situation am I in?
