As reported on the internet, iOS 4.3 returns you to the home screen with a four finger pinch. But plenty of games and apps exist where you use more than three fingers to interact. There are light toys (like uzu), virtual musical instruments, and plenty of games (such as Eliss) where you could feasibly make that gesture and thereby quit the app. Maybe this won’t be the case, or perhaps Apple just doesn’t care. If the new gesture does impact on such apps, though, that’s a major blow to a touchscreen OS, especially on the iPad where multiplayer games are commonplace.

I asked for dev replies on Twitter and will publish them here, unless said devs see their words reprinted, hunt me down and force me under threat of being slapped silly to remove them.

Neil Inglis:

It’s worth noting that nothing’s set in stone. Apple’s developer release notes for the iOS 4.3 beta specifically state that they’re looking for feedback on how this affects people’s applications. If enough people say it’s a problem, they’ll remove it or scale it back.

Personally I love the concept but I think it breaks enough applications that they’ll be forced to remove it. It’s not just that some apps intentionally use these gestures, I think users are far too likely to accidentally make them.

The conclusion there is the thing I’m most concerned about. I can see people making such a gesture by mistake. Good that Apple’s looking for feedback though.

Matt Gemmell:

A pinch is a specific gesture, remember; it’s not just any old four-finger input. Apple hasn’t grabbed them all.

And in response to my query about the specifics of that gesture:

A specific, mathematically-defined gesture which takes into account both position & velocity. It’s not just 4 fingers moving.

Stephen Darlington:

Apple are specifically asking for feedback on the gestures so I don’t think you can file it under ‘don’t care’. My guess is that they’ll add an option for developers to switch the gestures off, much as you can turn off the task switching.

Patrick Scheips:

The apps don’t quit, they just ‘freeze’ if you use these four or five fingers gestures. But yes, these gestures even work in those apps. I’ve tested that in uzu.

Boy Genius Reports claims Apple will remove home buttons from its next revisions of iOS devices. This report has suspect timing, to say the least. It comes the day after new multitouch gestures for iOS were revealed, including a four-finger pinch that returns you to your home screen.

I’m thinking this is someone putting one and one together and getting three. Apple’s guiding principle has always been usability, but removing the home button would be problematic in two important areas:

• If the OS locks up (which happens fairly regularly on iOS, especially when apps freeze), software gestures aren’t going to do anything. The home button is therefore a handy ‘quit’ override; in cases of extreme emergency, it can be used in combination with the sleep switch to force a device to reboot entirely.
• Gestures are not easily discoverable, and the more complex the gesture the less likely someone is to discover it. Users don’t sit down with manuals (or even the small leaflets Apple ships with its products)—they just start using stuff. Single taps and swipes are where most users are at. In the current iOS, relatively few users even know about the multitasking bar, and even fewer know you can swipe that bar to access further controls. Forcing users to use a four-finger gesture to return to the home screen would therefore be a dangerous move by Apple.

Journo chum Gary Marshall notes on Twitter that there is another option, since Apple has a patent for an intelligent bezel corner. However, that wouldn’t necessarily improve things. If left blank, it’s just as hard to discover as complex gestures. If labelled, the aesthetics are the same anyway, but you lack the tactile response that’s important for the functions the hardware button provides access to.

UPDATE: John Gruber makes a good point, responding to the same piece, noting that forcing a complex pinch would be problematic on the small iPhone screen and a potential accessibility disaster on the iPad—what if the user doesn’t have enough fingers, or enough dexterity to perform the gesture?

UPDATE: On Twitter, smittytone says: “Anyone who thinks the iPad 2 won’t have a home button clearly hasn’t read the iOS 4.3 developer docs”. And Matt Gemmell says: “Another point re no-Home-button/accessibility for your post; blind people use Home to know which way up the thing is.”

Oh my. iOS 4.3 just went into beta and… oh my.

I had two wishes for iOS 4.3, based on iOS 4.2 shortcomings that made me want to NOT AT ALL DO ANY VIOLENCE TO A LARGE WHITE BIRD, EVEN IN JEST, BECAUSE SOME PEOPLE DON’T REALISE THAT I’M JUST JOKING. And these things were:

• Get my orientation lock back, because having a mute switch for only some sounds on an iPad is about as useful as a chocolate teapot made with an exciting arsenic/cocoa mix (i.e. not at all).
• Get AirPlay in the hands of devs, so either the Air Video or streamtome guys can figure out how to enable me to fire videos at my Apple TV. (First one to the finish line gets my cash!)

Ars Technica reveals that iOS 4.3:

• Provides a preference within the Settings app for defining the functionality of the hardware lock switch. (YAY!)
• Provides APIs that will “extend AirPlay support to their own apps instead of just the limited few from Apple”. (YAY!)

All that remains now is for Apple to remove these features at the last minute, just to spite me, and for the phone to ring one day:

Hey, Craig, it’s Steve. MWAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

As revealed on Ars Technica’s live blog and a billion other places, Steve Jobs’s friend and servant Tim Cook and Verizon Wireless CEO Dan Vee’s moustache have revealed that the iPhone 4 will soon be available on Verizon for money!

This is good, because it will—like in the UK for bloody ages now—enable American consumers to bitch about how rubbish iPhone carriers are, rather than just how rubbish the exclusive iPhone carrier is. This is an important distinction for reasons.

Well done, America! *sings national anthem*

I’ve long thought it an odd criticism about Apple products that people’s preference for them is in part driven by emotional response. Andy Ihnatko for Chicago Sun-Times makes an astute observation in this area regarding the iPad:

Of course people have an emotional response to this iPad. Why is that considered a negative thing? An emotional response that lasts more than five seconds is a sign that something actually works.