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

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

#71

Post by samwillis »

bsder wrote: post #55
samwillis wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure a touch sensitive button is a lower cost component than a physical button, you need an IC to drive a touch button. I can't see this being driven by cost savings. I'm not even convinced there would be a cost saving when you take into account buttons failing and needing to be replaced. Reducing the number of buttons and replacing them with on screen-only (say move to on screen-only volume) would be a clear…

Removing anything "mechanical" is a huge cost saver and a massive reliability improver. Those buttons require special drilling and machining steps on the case. Removing those speeds up the production of cases by a lot which equals cost. Mechanical switches are way more expensive than huge areas of silicon chip. It's not even close. Finally, solid-state touch sensitive stuff effectively never fails. It never gets dirt…

I'm still not convinced, back when I worked in product development (I was a product design engineer) edge mounted micro switches designed for this use case were dirt cheep, rated to IP 6x (no dust ingress) and hundreds of thousands of presses.

There would still be side operations during machining of the case to make the raised profile (I assume there still will be one you can feel). And if anything that means more waste material. That or they still have an insert.

Maybe at Apple scale they can be similar in cost, but I don't believe there is a significant cost saving at all.

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

#72

Post by mamcx »

dagmx wrote: post #54
mamcx wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wait... Exist a "home" gesture???? Checking... Oh!!!! --- I move to a iPhone 13 mini from iPhone SE 1st and the lack of a home button is the singles most stupid thing in the world....

How have you been using your phone without knowing the home gesture? It’s the only way to multitask or exit apps or unlock your phone

With the on-screen button.

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

#73

Post by dagmx »

mamcx wrote: post #72
dagmx wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How have you been using your phone without knowing the home gesture? It’s the only way to multitask or exit apps or unlock your phone

With the on-screen button.

But you said you moved to an iPhone 13. There’s no button on that one. Surely you didn’t just discover the gesture from this thread as your previous comment suggested?

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

#74

Post by jareklupinski »

alwillis wrote: post #46
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'm sure they'll do it since it saves money. It’s not about money—we’re talking about pennies here. The Pro series iPhones start at $999. It’s always been an Apple thing to get rid of as many buttons, ports and cables as possible. Unlike other smartphones, the iPhone never had a physical keyboard or SD card slots. In the US, new iPhones no longer have SIM slots, only eSIM. So we shouldn’t be surprised that they may…

assuming this number is true: 95 million + iphone 14 units https://www.zdnet.com/article/apple-orders-95-million-iphone...

95 million * a few pennies is still $950,000 at least.

As long as that number is more than the salary of the person who was hired to make that button go away, in Apple's eyes that's good news.

You just have to repeat this mentality over the entire ecosystem to get to a trillion: a button removed here, a port removed there, year after year...

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

#78

Post by archagon »

batmanthehorse wrote: post #44
karmelapple wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t quite follow - what is the reason? That you wish there was a haptic home button? iPhones never had haptic buttons on the front face - only real physical press buttons.

That’s not true. Starting with iPhone 7 the front home button is haptic solid state. It feels better than the old one and breaks less. For this reason, I’m totally fine with them doing the same for volume buttons. Also feels great on the AirPod pros

It does not feel better to me.

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

#79

Post by alwillis »

jareklupinski wrote: post #74
alwillis wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm sure they'll do it since it saves money. It’s not about money—we’re talking about pennies here. The Pro series iPhones start at $999. It’s always been an Apple thing to get rid of as many buttons, ports and cables as possible. Unlike other smartphones, the iPhone never had a physical keyboard or SD card slots. In the US, new iPhones no longer have SIM slots, only eSIM. So we shouldn’t be surprised that they may…

assuming this number is true: 95 million + iphone 14 units https://www.zdnet.com/article/apple-orders-95-million-iphone... 95 million * a few pennies is still $950,000 at least. As long as that number is more than the salary of the person who was hired to make that button go away, in Apple's eyes that's good news. You just have to repeat this mentality over the entire ecosystem to get to a trillion: a button removed…

> 95 million * a few pennies is still $950,000 at least. As long as that number is more than the salary of the person who was hired to make that button go away, in Apple's eyes that's good news.

While I appreciate how pedantic HNers can be, it’s meaningless because that’s not how Apple works.

Nobody at Apple is incentivized to shave pennies off the production cost of an iPhone.

This should be obvious in a world with plastic phones with off the shelf, generic components.

A multi-trillion dollar marketcap company doesn’t invest several billion dollars to create their own custom silicon to then change the design of their most profitable product to save a few insignificant cents.

Let’s be real here.

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

#80

Post by hilbert42 »

crazygringo wrote: post #69
hilbert42 wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, if you don't know by now you need to do ergonomics. The answer is so blatantly obvious I can't be bothered answering it. Did you actually read the article? There's a few clues therein.

Please don't be insulting like that, it's against HN guidelines, which you've broken two of (the other is insinuating someone hasn't read the article). I actually have extensive knowledge of ergonomics, which is why I'm asking. There are zero clues in the article, so I'd love an explanation. Because just to be clear -- haptic buttons activated by pressure are just as easily located by touch and require the same amoun…

1. Not once did I mention 'haptic' in my post so why did you raise it in your reply?

2. My comment is about poor and unacceptable ergonomics of much modern equipment and software and how it's getting worse—not better. My post is in support of Allison Johnson's story except that I've taken the wider more general case to point out that Apple is not alone in subverting good ergonomic design for manufacturing convenience and profit; that is, it's a widespread problem. My point is that customers/users must take a stand if it's to stop.

3. You asked the question 'What do haptic buttons have to do with ergonomics?' I'll answer that by first briefly defining ergonomics. Ergonomics (aka HFE, Human Factors Engineering/Ergonomics) is a rigorous discipline concerned with the study of how humans work and interact with inanimate objects: tools, chairs, parts or elements of systems, software, etc. and the application of that data to optimizing the performance of that human/machine interaction (I'm sure there's a more succinct definition but that'll do for now).

4. Haptics is an integral—in fact essential—part of ergonomics, the science couldn't progress without it: https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-642-14075-4_.... You say you have extensive experience of ergonomics, so why did you question the connection between the subject and haptics? Your question is the equivalent of asking 'what's the difference between counting or multiplying and mathematics?'. What you asked is essentially a non sequitur. Assuming you understand the meaning of ergonomics then it makes no sense.

5. I never make comments on HN that are deliberately intended to offend at a personal level and that's my position here.

My comments are often forceful and opinionated but I generally try to structure and present them as one side of a formal argument†. My comment here was understandable and a normal reaction given your nonsensical comment. Please don't read anything more into it than that.

__

† Edit: Formal argument has rules which most seem to forget, if most people stuck to them then the internet would be a much more civilized place.

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