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.”

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.

Sharon Machlis on a Pioneer announcement about its new dashboard system that aims to keep drivers connected to their social networks… while driving:

I have a simple rule when it comes to what’s OK to do while driving: If you wouldn’t want your surgeon doing it while operating on your brain, don’t do it behind the wheel.

Pioneer’s take:

By providing a larger touchscreen unit installed in the dash that features a user interface specifically designed for the automotive environment and complemented by voice control features, we reduce the risk of distraction while driving.

People are already distracted enough when driving, with in-car radios, sat-navs, and hands-free kits for mobile phones (when they bother to use them), let alone other activities, such as eating and putting on make-up. But, hey, I’m sure Pioneer must have done plenty of work on this, rather than irresponsibly shoving a piece of unnecessary and dangerous technology on to the market. Because, clearly, people won’t be further distracted from not hitting things on or near the road when they’re being piped the latest Facebook and Twitter updates that couldn’t possibly wait until they’ve finished guiding several tons of metal at high speed. WHAT COULD POSSIBLY GO WRONG?

(Hat tip: Ian Betteridge.)

Apologies about linking to the Daily Mail, but it broke a story yesterday on the UK government’s plan to auto-block EVIL PORN from your internet access if you’re UK-based, unless you request access under an ‘opt in’ system.

SO THAT’S GOING TO WORK WELL THEN!

• Communications Minister Ed Vaizey has already managed to fire off the Mr Weasel card, saying that the government will legislate if ISPs don’t block porn first. This cunningly flings the inevitable PR shit-storm that’s going to happen at the ISPs. Nice.
• The UK government has a long history of being technically inept, and so if it does get involved in any way, this will become even more of a disaster.
• How will it be determined what is ‘porn’ anyway? Is The Sun porn, with its Page 3 girls? If so, it has to be auto-blocked. If not, equivalent ‘porn’ sites would have to remain unblocked. Unless—SHOCK!—the UK government somehow rattles off some bullshit about credible publishers (i.e. UK MP mates with deep pockets) being exempt.
• Who’s going to create and maintain the blacklists? There are quite a few sites on the internet. There’s literally no way that every single porn site will be caught; more to the point, there’s every chance innocent sites will be caught. I await Wikipedia being blocked to everyone with trepidation.
• What’s to stop the list being used for targeting? “Well, Dave at 37 is clearly a perve, because he opted in to porn. Let’s do a surprise raid and take his equipment away for weeks. MWAHAHA!”
• Young kids seeing porn isn’t great, obviously, but what about violence? Plenty of that online, and yet Vaizey didn’t even mention that.
• Young kids seeing porn isn’t great, obviously, but what about parental responsibility? How about looking after your kids and watching what they’re viewing? How about learning about internet controls before planting your kid alone in a room with access to the web?
• The ONS states that the majority of households in the UK do not have dependant children, and so this scheme will block for the minority (although I suspect it will appeal to Middle England voters—gosh, I wonder if that’s the real reason behind this bullshit?).
• What’s next? What else will our ‘big society’ and supposedly anti-inteference government decide we shouldn’t have access to, ‘for our own good’?

See also: Nigel Whitfield’s Censorship – Won’t someone think of the adults?