internally, the icade is essentially a bluetooth keyboard—the joystick and buttons are simply mapped to 24 different standard keys. since the ipad natively supports bluetooth keyboards, it is able to receive inputs from the icade without any requirement for special software beyond games designed to respond to the inputs that the icade sends. this system also allows other bluetooth input devices, such as the icontrolpad, to use the same protocol in order to control applications designed for icade.