Question

I need to determine what iPad version my app is running on before setting up an openGl surface.

If it’s running on the old iPad 1, it is way too slow to enable antialiasing, while on iPad 2+3 there should be no performance issues, so I need to detect this first.

Any ideas on how to detect the iPad generation using Monotouch?

Answer 1

Thanks Joachim, your hint led me to the following solution, which I have tested on physical 1 – 3 generation iPads, and it should also be able to detect other Apple devices:

public enum HardwareVersion
{
        iPhone2G,
        iPhone3G,
        iPhone3Gs,
        iPhone4,
        iPod1G,
        iPod2G,
        iPod3G,
        Simulator,
        iPad1G,
        iPad2G,
        iPad3G,
        Unknown
}


[DllImport(MonoTouch.Constants.SystemLibrary)]
static internal extern int sysctlbyname ([MarshalAs(UnmanagedType.LPStr)] string property, IntPtr output, IntPtr oldLen, IntPtr newp, uint newlen);

public static HardwareVersion getHardwareVersion()
    {
        string HardwareProperty = "hw.machine";

        // get the length of the string that will be returned
        var pLen = Marshal.AllocHGlobal (sizeof(int));
        sysctlbyname (HardwareProperty, IntPtr.Zero, pLen, IntPtr.Zero, 0);

        var length = Marshal.ReadInt32 (pLen);

        // check to see if we got a length
        if (length == 0) {
                Marshal.FreeHGlobal (pLen);
                return HardwareVersion.Unknown;
        }

        // get the hardware string
        var pStr = Marshal.AllocHGlobal (length);
        sysctlbyname (HardwareProperty, pStr, pLen, IntPtr.Zero, 0);

        // convert the native string into a C# string
        var hardwareStr = Marshal.PtrToStringAnsi (pStr);
        var ret = HardwareVersion.Unknown;

        // determine which hardware we are running
        if (hardwareStr == "iPhone1,1")
                ret = HardwareVersion.iPhone2G; 
        else if (hardwareStr == "iPhone1,2")
                ret = HardwareVersion.iPhone3G; 
        else if (hardwareStr == "iPhone2,1")
                ret = HardwareVersion.iPhone3Gs; 
        else if (hardwareStr == "iPhone3,1")
                ret = HardwareVersion.iPhone4; 
        else if (hardwareStr == "iPod1,1")
                ret = HardwareVersion.iPod1G; 
        else if (hardwareStr == "iPod2,1")
                ret = HardwareVersion.iPod2G; 
        else if (hardwareStr == "iPod3,1")
                ret = HardwareVersion.iPod3G; 
        else if (hardwareStr == "iPad1,1")
                ret = HardwareVersion.iPad1G; 
        else if (hardwareStr == "iPad2,1")
                ret = HardwareVersion.iPad2G; 
        else if (hardwareStr == "iPad3,1")
                ret = HardwareVersion.iPad3G; 
        else if (hardwareStr == "i386" || hardwareStr == "x86_64"  || hardwareStr == "x86_32" )
                ret = HardwareVersion.Simulator;

        // cleanup
        Marshal.FreeHGlobal (pLen);
        Marshal.FreeHGlobal (pStr);

        return ret;
}