lucy24 - 12:07 pm on Feb 28, 2013 (gmt 0)

since this would override just about any image request below the root, correct?

I think you've misunderstood what "root" means. It doesn't mean "located in the top directory" or "associated with the front page". It means only, specifically, narrowly: The front page of the site. Nothing else. The one that shows up in your logs as

GET / HTTP et cetera.

Your rule has far, far too many conditions. Your server will spend its life assessing them and will never have time to serve up any content.

Within any group of conditions, list them in order of most-likely-to-fail. RewriteConds work on a sudden-death principle. (Apache has a fancier name, but that's what it means.) If one of your conditions involves the page name, put that in the rule itself. In fact almost all RewriteRules-- except the ones specifically concerned with hotlinking and similar-- can be constrained up front to requests for pages.

It's probably futile to list every telephone under the sun. They come up with a new one every other week. Just list the likeliest half-dozen or so, and let the others ask for your mobile site if they want it.

Unless your site is horrendously huge and complicated-- or it has a lot of finicky little things to click on-- the iPad may not even need special handling. In my experience its browser can take anything you throw at it.

I am not entirely sure - I didn't write the original code

Never mind what the code says. The question is: what do you want it to say?