Why the iPhone and iPad will not lose their home buttons
GigaOM’s Kevin Tofel’s got the wrong end of the stick. In his article Newest iOS 5 beta adds gestures, may replace buttons, he’s located iOS 5’s Assistive Touch option (to aid those users physically unable to use hardware buttons) and said it could signal that future iOS devices will lose the home button (and perhaps other buttons, too).
To me, what this signals is merely that Apple cares about users with disabilities, but nothing more. For people who cannot use the physical buttons on their devices, this extra slice of accessibility is fantastic. For everyone else, it’s sub-optimal. Tofel’s idea brings to mind Jon Bell’s recent, brilliant The Capacitive Button Cult Must Be Stopped. Within, he argues that anyone designing a device where they replace an important hardware button with a capacitive button needs a solid kick in the head (I might have paraphrased there). And here’s the reason why:
A button with no physical hardware […] makes no distinction between “I pressed that button because I meant to” and “my finger brushed against the face of the phone, sending me to another screen against my will, sometimes even losing data in the process.”
Imagine Apple decides on a capacitive home button for the iPod touch. You’re playing the super new Sega kart-racing game, and you’re about to win. But, STUPID YOU, you brush against the invisible button! And you’re back at your home screen. Great. And not to mention the simple fact that physical buttons are an accessibility aid in themselves, both to disabled users and everyone else, since you can feel the device and instinctively know which way up it is.
About the only problem I have with the iOS home button is its multi-functional behaviour, which flummoxes new users: click to return to the most recent home screen, except when you’re on said home screen, in which case it returns to your first home screen, unless you’re on that screen, in which case it invokes Spotlight; oh, and double-click to access the multi-tasking tray that most users have no idea exists. But that’s a software problem, not a hardware issue; on the hardware front, I believe Apple’s got things spot-on, and the day the home button becomes virtual is the day something’s gone horribly wrong at Cupertino.
Update: Andrew Durdin offers a frankly frightening How to use the Home Button visual guide.
It’s also much easier for a new iPhone customer to understand that all you have to do to exit an app and go to the home screen is to simply press the only button on the face of the device. Gestures, not so much.
I am also bothered by the huge variety of functions that the iOS home button has. Some time ago, I attempted to draw up a diagram with all the different actions it triggers when you single-click, double-click, triple-click, or click-and-hold the home button.
You can see the resulting (necessarily confusing) diagram at http://www.flickr.com/photos/adurdin/4944720731/lightbox/
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I for one would welcome a capacitive home button. I had an iPhone 4 in which the home button would miss clicks sometimes (I was lead to believe it was the Home Button Flex Cable). It was the biggest annoyance ever. Then I read up on how to fix it, and in order to fix a home button issue, the entire phone needs to be taken apart. If you are going to have a physical button that is one of the most used things on the phone, it should be easily fixable, because it’s likely going to be what wears out first.
While I understand your point about accidentally hitting the home button when you don’t want to, if it’s a recessed home button, I think it would be fine, and a welcome feature.