"I agree configurability can be a cop out (and iOS is almost a monument to that view) but there are some things where there are really good reasons why you might make it something the user can work with..."
Totally agree! For example, allowing a user to make a site's font larger is great for accessibility - and just plain nicer for folks with less than perfect eyesight.
"...and this feels like one."
Totally disagree! ;) The issue at hand isn't accessibility, it's fundamental user experience. Since the first iPhone came out, the core of Apple's UI guidelines has been (paraphrasing, of course) "don't make anything smaller than 44px, because that's the smallest area an average-sized finger can reliably tap." Now, they've thrown that out the window. 44px on iPad isn't the same physical size as on iPad Mini, and that's where designers run in to trouble.
Every element on a page - form fields and buttons, line height, images, spacing around and between content, etc etc - all need to be adjusted for the physical difference in size between the iPad and iPad Mini. A gap between two buttons that is "just right" on iPad may very well be too small on iPad Mini, and we, as designers, have no way to make it better. That's the problem.
The and this feels like one was actually intended to suggest that tweaking font size feels like something that should be user controllable.
In terms of the 44px - the original iPhone and iPad had different PPIs, and the current iPhones and iPads also have different PPIs, so the 44px has never mapped to a constant physical size across all devices.
In actual fact the iPad mini has exactly the same PPI as the original iPhone (163) which was presumably what the UI guidelines had in mind which means that 44px should be perfect for it. 44px on the iPad will actually allow more area than the smallest possible area.
This is probably why pretty much every iPad app has been is completely usable on the iPad mini.
Certainly the fact that existing apps are fine undermines any suggestion that everything needs to be adjusted - if anything the evidence is that nothing does. While I'm sure there are some exceptions to that it'll be relatively few and the best approach is probably to scale everything and have a little more space than the minimum on other displays rather than to try and code individually for each one.
Totally agree! For example, allowing a user to make a site's font larger is great for accessibility - and just plain nicer for folks with less than perfect eyesight.
"...and this feels like one."
Totally disagree! ;) The issue at hand isn't accessibility, it's fundamental user experience. Since the first iPhone came out, the core of Apple's UI guidelines has been (paraphrasing, of course) "don't make anything smaller than 44px, because that's the smallest area an average-sized finger can reliably tap." Now, they've thrown that out the window. 44px on iPad isn't the same physical size as on iPad Mini, and that's where designers run in to trouble.
Every element on a page - form fields and buttons, line height, images, spacing around and between content, etc etc - all need to be adjusted for the physical difference in size between the iPad and iPad Mini. A gap between two buttons that is "just right" on iPad may very well be too small on iPad Mini, and we, as designers, have no way to make it better. That's the problem.