Social News Reader Taptu Updated With Retina iPad Graphics ... Not!

The iOS social news reading space is apparently being dominated by Flipboard, Zite, and Pulse, not necessarily in that order. Be that as it may, a number of other apps of similar bent thrive along with the big three. One such app is Taptu, which was recently updated with more features. The most notable among these new features is doubtless the app's use of Retina iPad graphics. The update's release notes even puts it at the top of the list of changes, stating that "Taptu now fully supports the new iPad’s Retina display." But here's the thing: it actually doesn't. Upon installing the update on your new iPad, you'll notice that the app's UI elements are far from being Retina-optimized. You might be drawn to wonder if the app's developer didn't ship the incorrect set of assets to Apple. It's one thing to claim that an app supports the new iPad's Retina display sans any qualifier; to say that it does so "fully" is another. On a more positive note, at least the other features supposedly introduced by the update are functioning properly. You can now sync your streams and bookmarked articles across your devices just by logging in to Taptu using any of your accounts on Google, Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn. You can now also turn a specific search term into a standalone stream, view articles with related sources as stacks of cards, and use the app with French, Spanish, and German localizations, if available in your region. Finally, Taptu has partnered with Readability to make articles more, well, readable, although it strikes me as odd that there seems to be no way to save them for reading later via Readability. Designed for both iPhone and iPad, Taptu is available in the App Store for free. Perhaps the next update would render the supposedly Retina iPad graphics sharper, until such a point that users can say without reservations that it really is designed for both iPhone and, more especially, iPad.