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Comment by capkutay | Hacker News Reader

I have a suspicion that removing the home button and relying on swipe-interactions might be a step back in usability for the non-tech savvy people who have made up a large share of iPhone users.

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might be a step back in usability for the non-tech savvy people who have made up a large share of iPhone users

"non-tech savvy"? I write software for the damned things, and my first thought was, "oh, great, more obscure swipe gestures to try and memorize." As an added bonus, the control center is now a swipe from the top, not the bottom like it's been for the last, what, five versions?

Actually, it's a swipe from top right. Top left is for Notification Center

That actually makes intuitive sense, now that there's a notch there dividing the clock—notifications are associated with time, so that's easy to remember—and the battery/wi-fi indicators, which are associated with the control center.

Jarring if you're used to swiping from the bottom, but it does make sense at least.

It reminds me of Motorola's option to remove Android's black button bar and rely instead of swiping gestures over the fingerprint reader [1]. I tried it and, to their credit, it works very well. But it felt unnatural and my muscle memory didn't adjust quickly, so I disabled it.

[1] https://motorola-global-portal.custhelp.com/app/answers/inde...

My P2 does that, and I find it works well. It's implemented slightly differently- there's no swiping.

Touch button (without actually pressing it down)=back

Long touch button (still without pressing it)=recent apps

Physical press of button=home

I have it set up to wake&unlock with a touch instead of a press, so the only time I have to press the button is to go the homescreen.

The Palm Pre did something similar and going to Android with buttons felt like a step back

I gave it a try and I like it. I think it's better than to waste screen space.

In my experience, it works like a dream. The combined fingerprint reader / home / back / app list button on MG5+ is great. I think it took a few minutes to fully internalize it. Also "make a twisting motion to start camera" is incredibly handy. I don't use the "shake for flashlight", as I fear it will misfire and empty my battery.

Maybe I should give it a second chance, but I agree that the other gestures are great. You should try the flashlight one, I have it activated in my MG5+ and has never misfired, since you need a pretty vigourous shake to activate it.

The presenter claims that once you've tried it for the first time you will realize that it was the best way. I agree with you and think that it's quite an assumption. Sure the homebutton may of created problems when it needed repair etc, but I really love having actual hardware buttons on a phone.

iPhone 7 solved the broken home button and to me it is perfect.

I think you're right. Swipe up to go home is fine, but swipe up and pause for multitasking is going to be a pain to explain to my parents.

But swipe left/right on the bottom bar shouldn't be too hard for them to learn. This also switches between apps, and it was blazing fast in the demo.

Indeed; one of the things that struck me about iOS devices versus anything else nowadays is the discoverability that the home button provides. The device is sitting on the table, and there is a single button to press. With a home button, it's obvious what to do.

That said, maybe the X branding is akin to 'Pro' and is not intended for the less tech-savvy

I don't think you'll see this be the default experience across Apple devices for quite some time. I don't think even the iPad Pro will have this edge-to-edge screen for at least a couple years – the home button is not dead.

This made me curious, so I picked up my iPhone 7 Plus and tried it. Of course I got the control center because it's not an X, but it feels completely natural. I'll be perfectly happy when that gesture replaces the home button.

In fact, this actually improves the lock screen quite a bit now - no more accidentally missing my notifications because the home button that woke up my phone also unlocked it and took me away from the screen.

I agree! I don't know how many times Ive seen a notification that caught my eye and before I could recognize what app it was from or what it pertained to I'd already auth'd and missed it.

I had to disable double-tap for multitasking (and bunch of other gestures) on my family iPads because they caused a lot of issues with older users. I wonder if there's going to be an accessibility feature to make it more friendly to people who have issues differentiating between "swipe up", "swipe up from bottom", "swipe up from bottom and pause" and other overloaded gestures.

Under accessibility iOS already has a floating menu button, that a lot of people, especially outside the US, enable. It actually works very well, and I wouldn't be surprised if we start seeing iPhones sold with it enabled.

Any idea why people outside the US use this feature more often?

It was discussed at length at the time on different podcasts such as ATP and The Talk Show, and I recall it was the case mostly in Asia.

It had to do with the perception of the physical button's flimsiness and unreliability. And was coupled with the far different experience in regards to Apple Repair centers (sometimes not even provided by Apple itself) which made the whole experience an ordeal. So, to preserve the value of the phone, they preferred the software button instead.

Others chimed in to say that, other than having to deal with repositioning the button from times to times because it obscures something below, it was actually a step up in usability as it offers more options (there is a whole user configurable menu there).

Why they continue to do it after the 7's fake hardware button? Probably because of the latter cause.

Question regarding these new guestures: Are these a iPhone X only thing or they now supported on all IOS11 devices? I think from a hardware point of view it should be possible to let iphone 6/7/8 users to chose whether they now want to use the button or the guestures for this functionality.

I believe I've seen on Twitter that they are only on the new X model.

Don't most people (other than in the USA) already use an on-screen home button instead of the physical one?

I hadn't heard that. Why would they?

Apparently it's just Asia? https://www.quora.com/Why-do-iPhone-users-in-Asia-have-an-on...

I have the setting in my EU,NL version. Do not use it though.

For what it's worth, I really miss the gesture bar on the Palm Pre (and other Palm) phones.

It had a little button there too, but swapping the swipe up for this works fine imo. I think this is a great move forward, but will wait until I have to use it every day to decide.

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