[OSM-talk] iPod Touch/iPhone

[Dermot McNally]

Folks,

I'm the happy owner of an iPod Touch and I wanted to make a few
remarks about its relevance to OSM. The most immediately obvious is
that it's very hard to use the OSM site using one - it looks great,
and the display is very practical for displaying map detail. As a
mobile device, it's very much the kind of platform you'd wish to view
maps on. Unfortunately, the device's own UI needs to "swallow"
double-click and drag gestures (it uses them to control zoom levels
and to pan around web pages larger than the viewport). This means that
the user of the device has no other way to navigate the map other than
the pan arrows and zoom buttons. Unfortunately, these are tiny, and
hard to use on the device.

How do people feel about rethinking the pan and zoom widgets? My
simple proposal would be bigger zoom buttons outside the map area and
up-down-left-right "hot zone" rectangular margins around the map.

My second thought relates to the possible usefulness of the device for
mapping tunnels. There is a diagnostic program for displaying the
sensor output and figures are output for all three axes. There were
earlier discussions relating to the accelerometers in laptops - does
anyone have a theory on whether the iPod has enough sensors to be
useful?

Dermot