iPad OS has been taking a beating recently (see here, and listen here, and here). There’s a joy to learning some of the gestures and developing some fluency with them (draw your inspiration from Matt Cassinelli), although, as critics have pointed out, the gestures are not discoverable.

Whatever concern this causes to power users and Apple watchers must, in my estimation, be tempered by the possibility that gestures are not inherently discoverable, but must be taught explicitly. A fact lost on such users is the degree to which keyboard shortcuts–visually discoverable by any user navigating an OS with a mouse–are often overlooked. I have had coworkers marvel at my speed in both Windows and Mac environments because of my fluency with basic key commands when such affordances where not new (think cut, copy, and paste).

Like users who prefer to drive with a mouse, you can use the iPad without understanding more esoteric gestures. I don’t want to do that, but there are “regular” users who find this approach perfectly serviceable.