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Apple, please don’t take all of the buttons away

theverge.com

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Re: Apple, please don’t take all of the buttons away

#11

Post by endemic »

solarkraft wrote: post #5
delecti wrote: post #2

I've seen enough people be astonished to learn that their laptop's touchpad is just using haptic trickery to simulate a button that I think their anecdata really just isn't representative. I've seen people who know that it's using haptic trickery use the depth rod of a set of calipers because they just don't believe it. I think that a poorly engineered power button (one which can become inoperative if the OS freezes)…

The touchpad's feedback is implemented very low in the firmware, so it almost never fails to respond. The device needs to be catastrophically out of power or catastrophically locked up. Both states are not easy to achieve.

Anecdotally, it’s happened to me multiple times. A good indicator of when the machine needs a hard power cycle.

Re: Apple, please don’t take all of the buttons away

#12

Post by morsch »

The extra physical button on my Samsung S10 is my favorite thing about it. Ordinarily it launches Samsung's voice assistant, which naturally is completely pointless, but you can patch it to do whatever you want. I've set mine to play pause on long press, toggle the flashlight on double press and act as a secondary lock button. I toggle podcast playback without taking my phone out of my pocket dozens of times a day, through the fabric even, which I imagine is difficult with a capacitative button.

I wish every phone had at least four custom physical buttons, two for each side.

Re: Apple, please don’t take all of the buttons away

#13

Post by izacus »

I'm sure they'll do it since it saves money.

I had a horrible time teaching my grandparents to use the gesture navigation on their new iPad (they still hate it, they still get regularly anxious because they can't reliably make the "home" gesture instead of clear feedback of a hardware button and there's many gestures they accidentally trigger which cannot be disabled in A11y or MDM settings) - but they saved money and made it cool.

It'll be the same with phones as it is with cars - it's cheaper to provide shitty experience. And it's not like you can go anywhere, Apple owns your data and ecosystem now. So we'll just make do with crappier things to allow the manufacturer to extract more money, like we have to make do with crappier products on other markets.

Re: Apple, please don’t take all of the buttons away

#14

Post by chrisoverzero »

jmyeet wrote: post #10

I still miss the home button on the iPhone. I know it takes up what otherwise would be screen space. I know it's been years. But the UX of what we have now is so much worse. Touch ID is significantly better than Face ID. Way less false positives. Way less false failures that force you to enter your passcode. You can use it in the dark. You can use it in your pocket. I ditched my iPad Pro for an iPad Air specifically…

> You can use it in the dark.

You can use Face ID in the dark.

Re: Apple, please don’t take all of the buttons away

#15

Post by ktosobcy »

jmyeet wrote: post #10

I still miss the home button on the iPhone. I know it takes up what otherwise would be screen space. I know it's been years. But the UX of what we have now is so much worse. Touch ID is significantly better than Face ID. Way less false positives. Way less false failures that force you to enter your passcode. You can use it in the dark. You can use it in your pocket. I ditched my iPad Pro for an iPad Air specifically…

100% this.

I still have last iPhone SE and I love the home button. (it's not my daily driver).

I also had oneplus 3 with very similar home button and genius fingerprint reader. I was able to unlock my phone with index finger without having to lift it up in any way from eh desk and quickly glimpse on the content.

no i switched to new Samsung with has optic under display one and its just an utter failure. very often it can't read the fingerprint and... its location is not tahr obvious before slightly lighting the screen.

with OP3 Or iPhone SE i can find that button without hassle even in the dark.

Re: Apple, please don’t take all of the buttons away

#17

Post by WildGreenLeave »

izacus wrote: post #13

I'm sure they'll do it since it saves money. I had a horrible time teaching my grandparents to use the gesture navigation on their new iPad (they still hate it, they still get regularly anxious because they can't reliably make the "home" gesture instead of clear feedback of a hardware button and there's many gestures they accidentally trigger which cannot be disabled in A11y or MDM settings) - but they saved money an…

I fully agree with you for 100%. Personally, I don't mind the home gesture and although I sometimes get annoyed by weird gestures that I never knew I can deal with it.

But, seeing my parents get anxious with their new ipad because they cannot reliably go back to the home screen, their "safe" environment, it makes me sad.

A pro tip from your fellow young(er) person, enable AssistiveTouch [0] and at least give them an obvious button to press. My parents are very happy with it.

0: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT202658

Re: Apple, please don’t take all of the buttons away

#18

Post by ChrisMarshallNY »

solarkraft wrote: post #3

I like my MacBook's Touchpad a lot. I also like the iPhone SE/X (hehe)'s haptic feedback combined with the pressure sensor. With this change they might actually get around to implementing a (software defined) shutter button.

I find the TrackPad haptic is excellent. It feels exactly like the old physical press. It's a bit weird, when the pad is off, and pressing does nothing, but, as long as it's on, it feels fine.

The Watch crown also feels good.

I do agree that the haptic Home button on my iPhone 8 (I keep it for testing) feels weird and wimpy, but I suspect the reason why, is their obsession with thin.

It's entirely possible to make haptics feel exactly like analog controls, but their behavior is software-defined, and can be odd as hell.

Re: Apple, please don’t take all of the buttons away

#19

Post by goosedragons »

delecti wrote: post #2

I've seen enough people be astonished to learn that their laptop's touchpad is just using haptic trickery to simulate a button that I think their anecdata really just isn't representative. I've seen people who know that it's using haptic trickery use the depth rod of a set of calipers because they just don't believe it. I think that a poorly engineered power button (one which can become inoperative if the OS freezes)…

I still don't think it feels as good as a real switch, the only benefit is you get a sort of overall meh feeling that works over the whole trackpad surface vs. a good click that only works well at the bottom. This is an okay trade on a giant trackpad but for a tiny button it's not great. It was even more obvious on haptic home buttons that it's not quite right.

Re: Apple, please don’t take all of the buttons away

#20

Post by conradev »

izacus wrote: post #13

I'm sure they'll do it since it saves money. I had a horrible time teaching my grandparents to use the gesture navigation on their new iPad (they still hate it, they still get regularly anxious because they can't reliably make the "home" gesture instead of clear feedback of a hardware button and there's many gestures they accidentally trigger which cannot be disabled in A11y or MDM settings) - but they saved money an…

It does save money, but it saves everyone money. Every part that moves is a part that has a fixed lifetime.

Replacing the home button was exceedingly common back when it was a button, and people had to either get a new phone or pay to have it fixed when it broke.

This was especially the case for the MacBook trackpad before it was made solid-state as well. That was not a cheap component to fix.

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