On assessing my options, these were my thoughts:
- Too much of a hassle to install xcode 3 and downgrade project
- Don't want to mess with .xib file format - afraid it might break something that will show itself much later
- Copying the same nib is imperfect (see the explanations in this thread)
So finally, what I ended up doing that works fine is:
- Create a new file, choose "UIViewController derived" class
- Check the "intended for iPad" checkbox
- Name the file -iPad
- Delete the .h and .m corresponding to the uiviewcontroller
- Now populate the new nib with the same objects, structure and connections as the original nib
- Check if on iPad, if so then load the new nib else load the old nib