For some reason I could not get any of the views to rotate to landscape, the API docs suggested that this was trivial and only required implementing the method

(BOOL)shouldAutorotateToInterfaceOrientation:(UIInterfaceOrientation)interfaceOrientation

and always returning YES

The problem is that this doesn’t work if you are using a TabBarController created in Interface Builder. You can verify this by create a new project, specifying the type as “Tab Bar Application” and rotating the simulator…

I found a quick and easy solution to this problem in the following blog post

Change iPhone/iPod app orientation within a UITabBarController

I added maybe a dozen lines of code to my app and the problem is solved….

Thanks Arash…