Apple Doesn’t Want Coders Messing With iPhone Buttons — Sometimes | Hacker News Reader

Apple Doesn’t Want Coders Messing With iPhone Buttons — Sometimes

wired.com

27 pointskmfrk34 comments

What's more likely here? That there's a nefarious plot inside Apple to let some developers use forbidden functionality hoping no one else notices the double standard, or that a human app reviewer missed this and it slipped through? I invoke Occam's Razor on this non-story.

Which is actually what the article says:

"Apple can’t stick to its own rules with the gigantic iOS App Store."

and at the end:

"App Store reviewers are not consistent with enforcing the rules, and therefore censorship still seems arbitrary."

Also, there's no allegations of special treatment in the article at all.

Did we even read the same thing?

Indeed we did. My comment is more a remark on the sensational tone of the headline, which I read as implying by the author a deliberate intent on Apple's part. I find the article disingenuous in that, since it does, as you note, leave the salient part for the very bottom.

However I certainly take your point.

However pendantic, I feel compelled to point out that including the word 'want' in the title does imply intent.

Even if this happened entirely by accident, your claim that this is a "non-story" is wrong.

When a particular desirable UI feature is available to some but not others, the playing field has become skewed.

If Apple is allowing the appstore process to pick winners entirely at random, it is weeding the best apps since most of these won't be picked in a random draw.

While true, there is a much bigger point here that you're missing. What is the point of the App Store approval process if it's not inherently reliable to the developer who has spent countless hours bringing him/herself up to speed on the guidelines of the store?

And this isn't really a secret Easter egg, either. The supposed rigorous approval process should catch something this obvious, I would hope.

Your comment seems to assume that this is a permanent state and won't be rectified by Apple. That's a bit like saying "what's the point of writing any unit tests if some bugs are going to exist anyhow?"

I see no loss of reliance on the guidelines here, but rather a simple one-off mistake to be corrected by Apple. We are of course in agreement that something this obvious should really be caught beforehand though.

Surely they have some sort of process to make sure the rules are applied somewhat evenly. It's not like modifying the function of hardware buttons is subjective, like some of the other criteria for inclusion in the App Store.

Does the App Store approval group have any sort of developer community liaison to manage this sort of thing? Sounds like a cool job to me.

Likely the approver forgot about that guideline from their training and let it through by accident. From the history of the other mentioned apps, it sounds like it will get pulled soon enough and all will be right again.

I can understand that inconsistency is annoying, but wikipedia applies the "notable" standard at least as inconsistently and stories about that don't make the front page. Thankfully.

There aren't dollars riding on whether a wikipedia story makes the front page.

"I hope the approver overlooks our egregiously violating app" isn't a very good business plan.

The approver overlooking someone else's violating app isn't good for your business plan...

Anyone do a camera app that triggers the shutter by voice? For example, just after the phone hears 'cheese'?

Wow, how has this not been done!

kinda unrelated, but is there proper framework to do this? I remember hacking the volume button for the camera back when I was doing stuff in the jailbreak space and all i remember was it was hella annoying

also, something no one bothers pointing out - atleast it's the case with first two generations of iphone - taking a photo with the volume button causes the user to move the camera and results in an out-of-focus image. I can't imagine the autofocus re-focuses fast enough to resolve this issue in later generation iphones.

On the plus though, for the developer, advertising the feature certainly helps drive sales; as does "negative" press on Wired like this :)

How does pressing the volume button move the camera more than using the touchscreen? I've always considered the lack of a physical camera button on the iPhone to be a UX flaw.

Because more force is required (and thus more movement) to press down a button than to brush against the touchscreen, in theory at least. But yeah I'd like to have a physical camera button. I'd imagine it'd be best if it wasn't as stiff as the iPhone 4's volume control buttons.

Since this is not a serious camera, why not a small delay on capture so the movement has ended?

I'm guessing that'd be more annoying than helpful, but it'd be interesting to try. If it were timed exactly right it could maybe work.

It's not a serious camera in the sense that I wouldn't take one to do a magazine shoot, but lots of people take really good photos with phone cameras these days, they've come a long way.

The best camera is of course the one you have with you. People have taken amazing photos with the iphone for sure! However, action shots are not likely among those unless in some abstract form.

If flash is off, the better thing is to just record video, and grab a picture from the moment the user likely started pressing the button.

If flash is on, advanced software could combine the before-movement non-flash image with the flashed image, but I think that (currently) is too computationally expensive expensive for a mobile device.

Is that force sufficient to truly affect the capture of an image with as low a focal length as the iPhone has?

I was going to say that using the volume buttons permits the user to hold the phone in a proper camera stance (hand underneath the base to improve stability, no elbows out), but having just held an iPhone 4.0, I saw where the camera is placed and where the volume button is relative it, and how to properly hold the phone. It does not seem like the volume button is in the right spot for where the camera is to even use it like a proper camera. You're going to have to hold the phone weird to take a picture without your finger in the way to use the volume button as a shutter.

tl;dr. The volume button isn't even in the right spot to use it as a shutter, and I wager pressing the volume button doesn't have any true advantage.

For a phone that has a shutter button in what I perceive as the correct location, see the original Motorola Droid.

It's probably not the autofocus that's the issue, but rather the blur caused by the motion induced by pressing the button.

Exactly. It doesn't take much of this at all to turn a great phone pic into a useless one.

Indeed. I didn't mean to suggest that it was, if I did.

How is this different than the phycial shutter release button on my Nikon?

I am not a professional photographer, but when I take pictures where motion blur is going to be noticeable, I use the timer. That way, I can be not touching the camera when the shutter opens.

(In the old days there were cable releases, but I haven't seen one of those since... 1990?)

I use an IR trigger and a tripod :). iPhone has a timer though (at least on camera+).

I'd day jiggle induced by pressing the volume button is a non issue. In fact, on the next iPhone I would love to see this as a default behavior.

Yeah, I agree. I don't think the volume button is going to be an issue. I have tried to take pictures with my touchscreen Android phone before. Pretty bad. I blame myself rather than the phone.

Also, I have never had a camera with an IR trigger. Want. :)

You could quite easily 'pre-load' the volume button before taking the photo by holding it down partially without actually engaging it. This would make the amount of remaining force necessary to actually snap the shot roughly comparable to that required for engaging a touch screen button.

Sure, maybe your average user may not do this, but it would make the hardware shutter button a useful feature for the rest of us.

why the downvoting? I implemented this and did the experiments. That the photo blur is harder to control when you use the volume button to activate the shutter isn't my untested opinion.

in addition, the iphone camera has a rolling shutter, not a physical shutter, so if the camera is not held still then motion issues are further exacerbated.

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