"you can't just scale down the interface"
oops
oops
so if you designed a button to be as small as a finger for the ipad, it's now too small.
The tap targets on an iPad mini are exactly the same size as they are on an iPhone or iPod touch (which also confirms that Apple is using the same equipment to produce the iPad mini screen panels as they used for the iPhone 3GS — they're just cutting the panels in a different size).
“I think there’s a method to Apple’s madness in recommending 44-point-or-larger tap targets for all iOS apps, both on the iPhone and iPad, despite the fact that on the iPad-as-we-know-it, each point is physically larger than a point on the iPhone or iPod Touch. (1 point maps directly to 1 pixel on iPad 1/2 and older iPhones; 1 point maps to a 4-pixel square on the iPad 3 and iPhone 4/4S.) A 44-point tap target on the rumored iPad Mini would be exactly the same physical size as a 44-point tap target on the iPhone.”
It's not like Apple even does either. The recent iOS 6 apps store on iPhone is a good example of something where they made the tap targets too small to expand app updates and it was very frustrating. They finally fixed that just recently so that the target was much larger.
I'm also wondering if they've made any iPad mini specific changes to OS elements to enhance the usability - namely if there's been any changes to touch targets
This could end up a huge mess.