The Apple blogosphere was set on fire as soon as evidence surfaced three days ago that iOS 13 would bring mouse support to iPad as an accessibility option. But how precisely might that work, you ask… Here’s one artist’s rendition of iOS 13 with iPad mouse support.
Brazilian mobile designer Guilherme Martins Schasiepen took it upon himself to envision what the next major version of Apple’s mobile operating system might work and look like. Aside from iPad mouse support, his conceptual renderings call for macOS-like hot corners that would invoke an Expose-like birds-eye view of all the open windows.
As you can see for yourself, the beautifully designed mockups include stuff we were told would come to iOS 13, like a system-wide Dark Mode, app windows with detachable panels, new navigation features, enhanced drag and drop, new multitasking gestures and what not.
Some people think mouse functionally makes absolutely no sense for a touch-first tablet like iPad because Apple’s own Human Interface Guidelines recommend a minimum touch target size of 44 pixels wide 44 pixels, but I very much beg to differ.
44×44 touch targets are fine for finger-based interactions with the buttons, tabs, icons and what not, if I’m working in an image-editing app like Pixelmator or an illustrator app like Affinity Designer or a sketching app or some other creative app that requires precision I want to be able to hit the individual pixel.
That’s exactly what the mouse is excellent for.
My only hope is that developers will not start cramming their touch-first mobile apps with tiny Photoshop-like sliders and other smallish user interface elements that require precision of the mouse instead of the finger. Let us edit and manipulate content with the mouse if we feel like it, but please design your apps as if there was no mouse present.
Is mouse support on iPad something that you see happening?
If so, do you think it’ll be a half-baked feature aimed at people with disabilities or a properly implemented one, like on the desktop, that could fully replace multi-touch?
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