App Cubby Blog – The Sparrow Problem: “The gold rush is well and truly over.” (Via. app cubby) Yep. I’ve been feeling that this was the case for a while now, but it’s good to see other indie devs acknowledging it. We did this to ourselves; by racing to drop our prices down to basically nothing, we’ve trained an entire generation of users to value our products at next to nothing. And then we act surprised when they complain about having to pay for anything. It happened with…

ignore the code: iPad mini: “While this is true, there’s something else to consider: not everybody has the same hands. The iPad works well for the average adult man, but children and women often have smaller hands and fingers. Decreasing the screen size from a diagonal of 9.7 inch to 7.85 would only decrease the width and height of each touch target by about 20% — this difference is way smaller than the size difference between the hands of an adult man and a child.” (via. ignorethecode.net)…

“That’s the theory, but does it work for practical applications? Below are a few screengrabs from my iPad that have been shrunk down and then padded back out. If you load this page on a 10′ iPad, you’ll find each of the below images should come out exactly 7.85′ across the diagonal — emulating how they would look on an ‘iPad mini’. This will let you get a feel for how small those buttons get. (Note that the resizing process has made things look a bit fuzzy. This…

Is a 7-inch iPad right for Apple? – Chicago Sun-Times: “Nonetheless, Apple has $100 billion under its mattress. They don’t need to rush into anything. Also, as quaint as this may sound, a desire to only make truly great products is part of Apple’s cultural makeup. The challenge Apple faces with such a device is that a 7-inch iPad or iPod Touch would need to compete against the value and the utility and the presence and the legacy of the 10-inch iPad. That’s way more intimidating than trying…

Why iPad Apps Should Be OK Usability-Wise on a 7.8-Inch iPad: A 44 point target on a 7.85″ iPad would be the same size as a 44 point target on the iPhone (0.27″). Millions of people use the iPhone every day, and have little trouble tapping a 0.27″ target. As Apple has pointed out, their fingers do not change size when they move to their iPad. (Via Daring Fireball) This is all well and good from a theoretical standpoint, but what someone needs to do is…