With the introduction of the iPad Mini today, I noticed that Apple's guidelines for the minimum size for touchable elements, 44x44 points, is probably no longer valid.
Because the screen size is 1024x768 in spite of the smaller form factor, that means that 44 pixels is going to be significantly smaller than 44 points.
I did some quick calculations based on the published specs for the iPad Mini, and it looks like the screen size is 81.44% of the size of the full-size iPad.
This means that apps should probably consider that their minimum touchable size is 54 x 54 pixels.
Or, developers can just assume that people with the iPad Mini have skinny fingers.
There are a lot of apps on the app store that are going to be difficult to use on the iPad Mini, I think.
Or did I miss something here?
Update: Thanks to Kris in the comments, who linked to this article. I guess iPad developers have already been designing iPad elements bigger than they needed to be (to maintain iPhone compatibility, with its denser pixels) so now the new iPad Mini just brings the density down to the same as the iPhone. Whew!