Multitasking gestures on the iPad

Multitasking Gestures under Settings > General

I've been using the iPad mini for a couple of weeks already and I'm discovering really cool stuffs in it. Gestures have been in the Mac's trackpad and porting it over to the iPad is a nice move because of its big touch screen. Gestures on the iPad first appeared in developer betas of iOS and it was officially released to consumers in iOS 5.0. So what's cool with gestures on the iPad?

When I got my iPhone 4S, I posted articles (here and here) about how useful assistive touch is because it does not torture your home button. This is also the same reason for gestures on the iPad. With multitasking gestures enabled, you can use your four or five fingers to (1) pinch to the Home screen, (2) reveal the multitasking bar and (3) swipe between opened applications. I did also realise that with this, I do not have to enable assistive touch anymore on my iPad mini.

Some limitations arise though when assistive touch is disabled. These include the inability to lock the rotation of the screen and take a snapshot of the iPad's screen. All of these now involve the use of the physical buttons on the device. I don't think I'll be changing a lot on these though compared to closing applications on the multi-task bar so I guess I'm fine disabling assistive touch for now.

Gestures on the iPad have a lot of potential and I'm looking forward to how Apple will enhance this in the future releases of iOS.