Posted in: iOS, Tablets

The iPad mini software is designed to ignore your thumb resting on the display

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When Apple announced the iPad mini, one of the things I noticed was how thin the bezel is on the side. The iPad has a sizable bezel all around its display and Apple’s reason for that was to be able to hold the device without touching the screen. So why did they make the bezel so thin on the iPad mini?

At first glance it seems like a major design gaffe but turns out, it’s not. Because the bezel on the iPad mini is so thin on the sides, the software has been designed to ignore your thumb even if you rest it directly on the display.

This works similar to the way the MacBook multi-touch trackpad or the Magic Mouse works. On either of these devices, you can have one finger on the touch surface and continue to scroll or tap using the other finger and the software is smart enough to ignore the resting finger and just accept the input from the moving finger.

The iPad mini uses similar sorcery to cancel out the inputs from your thumb resting on the side and only accept the inputs from your other fingers. This has allowed Apple to significantly reduce the size of the bezel, which makes the device easier to hold in one hand and the display also looks bigger than it actually is (bezels tend to make the screen look tiny).

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