Alph, the iPad and fat thumbs

[Craig Morris]

With Alph 1.1 out, I decided to have a look at what was needed to get
Alph to run natively on the iPad. From what I have heard, the
existing app should run fine on the iPad in either a small window or
with pixel doubling, but a few changes and a new build will be
necessary to properly use the full resolution of the iPad.

Of course I don't yet have an iPad and as a Canadian, probably won't
be able to get my mitts on one until May, but I do have the simulator
that comes with the development kit and when displayed on my Macbook
Pro screen, this is almost exactly the reported dimensions of the real
thing. One thing that struck me is that when the iPad is in landscape
mode, the virtual keyboard has larger keys with bigger spacing than
the actual laptop keys. It has fewer keys since it still has the
toggles for numbers and punctuation, but it looks quite roomy for even
ham fisted typists. It is quite a bit more cramped in portrait mode,
although probably still fine for fat fingered pecking.

By the way, Alph looks great on this and indeed my lust for an iPad
has greatly increased from its already lofty heights. I will probably
look into a few custom interface tweaks for it during the long wait
for the hardware. :-)