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.

While it’s clearly a publicity stunt, I’m glad to see Kogan smacking down other companies regarding cable prices:

When you buy a TV from John Lewis, Currys, or countless other high street stores, you will be offered hideously expensive accessories such as HDMI cables. These cables are sold with absolutely ridiculous markups, many multiples of the actual cost of the items.

These stores are trying to trick people into thinking they need an HDMI lead costing over £100 after buying a Full HD TV. This is simply not the case. You shouldn’t be spending more than £4 on an HDMI cable!

An HDMI cable is an HDMI cable. It’s a digital cable. You either get a picture or you don’t. Don’t get conned into buying a “fancy” HDMI cable because it will make no difference!

Amusingly, the company is now offering free cables and shipping to people who buy a TV from John Lewis or Currys; naturally, those companies are pissed off and so Kogan’s also challenging them to a blind test.

Thing is, this is a con that’s been going on for years, and it’s just become more apparent in the digital space (where cables either work or don’t); but even with analogue kit, too many people have been fooled into buying expensive cables. That’s of course mostly down to chains like Currys. Last time I attempted to buy a lead in one, I was ushered towards cables costing about 50 quid for a metre’s worth. I asked for whatever they had that was cheapest and ended up with some dickhead sales guy arguing with me that I’d “ruin my home system” if I plumped for anything other than unicorn-coated expensive-o-cables. I mentioned I’ve worked with sound engineers in the past and used to make my own cables, at which point the sales guy went a bit white and sulked off in a huff.

My advice today is pretty much as per the last sound guy I worked with: look for the cheapest cables you can get and then buy the next one up from that. As long as the connections are reasonably solid, you’ll be fine; and that goes for speaker wire, too—if you’re paying 20 quid per metre, you’re merely fooling yourself, since wiring a system with coat hangers (Consumerist) is often as good as using the most expensive wires.

A smart piece by David Barnard, Apps and the Apple TV, starkly showcases how the mouse and other abstract pointing devices are largely on borrowed time—at least for the most part. He talks about how he was using AirPlay to send video to his TV, and his toddler then concluded he could play his favourite iPad game on the same TV.

When handed the iPad, he looked down at it and launched this week’s favorite app, The Monster at the End of This Book. He looked up at the screen and was excited to see Grover on TV. Then he looked down at the book and flipped the page. Then he looked up and was again excited to see Grover on TV. Then he looked down and turned the page. After just 60 seconds the thrill was gone and he was mostly just playing with the iPad, only intermittently looking up to confirm that Grover was still on TV.

After a few minutes he exited the app and looked up to see the icons of all his favorite apps on the TV. He immediately set down the iPad, walked up to the TV, and tried launching an app by touching the TV screen. My wife and I instinctually told him not to touch the TV, but he looked back at us quite puzzled. The thing is, Luke has never used a mouse-like pointing device. Other than using the TV remote to turn the TV on and off, or turning a light switch on and off, he’s never used one object to remotely manipulate another.

Barnard doesn’t go all sensationalist by then arguing that all remote-manipulation and abstract pointing devices are doomed, but instead claims we’re in the midst of a fundamental shift that will see such things become increasingly niche. I think he’s right. And for those who think otherwise, bear in mind your world-view is coloured by your experience. If you don’t believe me, try handing a cassette Walkman to a young teenager and see how well they get on using it.

Around 28:26 in the Steve Jobs closing keynote of WWDC ’97:

A few weeks ago, the Wall Street Journal [said that] in this industry, the only companies doing really well are Intel, Microsoft and perhaps Compaq.

How things change. One thing that doesn’t was Jobs’s response to the question, highlighting how Apple has worked since his return to the company:

I think every good product that I’ve ever seen in this industry […] is because a group of people cared deeply about making something wonderful that they and their friends wanted. They want to use it themselves.

Original link via Daring Fireball.

One of the disadvantages of going on holiday, to a place without web access, is that you miss slices of pure crazy. This one involves everyone’s favourite games industry celeb Tim Langdell.

If you don’t know the story, Langdell ran a couple of software companies in the 1980s that released games for home computers. One of the most fondly remembered is Bobby Bearing, an isometric adventure game created by Robert Figgins and Trevor Figgins. Little was heard of Langdell during the 1990s and beyond, but he rose to infamy when he started suing the pants off of iOS developers (and others) who had the audacity to use the word ‘Edge’ in their videogame titles and other products. (The full story can be found at ChaosEdge.) Indie game developer Mobigame got hit particularly hard, with Langdell claiming its Edge game was somehow ripping off both his brand and Bobby Bearing, arguing that it had been named to capitalise on Langdell’s ‘famous’ trademark. This was, of course, total bollocks.

Langdell came unstuck when he decided to sue EA over Mirror’s Edge. The software giant used its powers for good, assisted indie developers being attacked by Langdell, and pretty much smashed him into the ground, culminating in his marks being removed. And with Langdell using all kinds of bizarre material in his ‘defence’, including a fake cover of a non-existent US version of Edge magazine, along with using a variant on the magazine’s logo for his company, he awoke the sleeping beast that is Future Publishing’s legal department. John Walker at Rock, Paper, Shotgun, offers a fantastic report into how Langdell fared there. (Spoiler: not well.)

Amazingly, though, on June 30, Edge did actually release a new game, which is supposedly a sequel to Bobby Bearing. Presumably, it’s called Bobby Bearing 2, you’d think, but you’d be wrong. Sort of. While the game is called Bobby Bearing 2 – “ReRolled” on its title screen, it has a subtly different name on the App Store: EDGEBobby2. Yeah, that sounds like an obvious, intuitive name for the game, and not at all some kind of attempt to ‘prove’ to courts that Langdell was making games that utilised his ‘famous’ mark (that, note, he no longer holds). I only hope he won’t use this to launch yet more crazy attacks on iOS developers.

Oh, and the game not only looks like crap but also plays poorly and isn’t a patch on its 25-year-old prequel-of-sorts.