Will Apple remove the home button from the next-gen iPad and iPhone? | Hacker News Reader

Will Apple remove the home button from the next-gen iPad and iPhone?

networkworld.com

8 pointsoptiplex13 comments

I would be surprised.

The new gestures in iOS 4.3 are neither obvious nor discoverable. Will anybody instinctively know that getting back to the home screen requires a pinch gesture with five fingers? (Using more than one finger also precludes one hand use and is awkward on an iPhone or iPod touch.) You can currently comfortably use iOS without ever putting more than one finger on the screen. Zooming might be less precise but double tapping works perfectly fine (edit and correction: you need to double tap with two fingers to zoom out in Maps so this is not entirely true). A departure from that principle would be weird.

These gestures are nice shortcuts but, I think, not much more.

I might be less skeptical if there was any credible evidence that Apple plans to steal from Palm and Blackberry and will extend the touch surface onto the bezel. That would allow for much more obvious and intuitive one finger gestures.

That said, Apple does weird stuff from time to time. The iPod shuffle had no buttons for a year. (At least Apple is also willing to correct such mistakes. The current iPod shuffle regained buttons.)

Oddly enough, I asked 3 people in the office what they would do to close an app on an iPad and they all did the finger crumble gesture.

The gesture is remarkably natural to use. I was surprised.

The iPod nano could be seen as a prototype for an iPad without a home button. It still has physical volume and sleep/wake buttons, but everything else is gestured.

I doubt it. My two year old can easily use an IOS device as they are. There is no way she could do multi touch gestures. Disabled people can use them as they are many couldnt do complex many finger multi touch gestures. I think apple gets this.

I hope not. I own an iPhone, Nexus One and a HTC Surround (WP7). I struggle with the soft keys on my Nexus One everyday. I think they're absolutely horrible. The soft keys on my HTC Surround is much better than the Nexus One, but I still prefer my hardware home button on my iPhone.

That said, seems like I'm not the only one that thinks the Pre's off-screen touch area is a good idea worth copying. But I can't imagine these four/five finger gestures translating well to the small screen on the iPhone. There goes one hand use...

Home button is a major inconvenience on an iPad for me, I just never remember on which side it is, I would be totally happy if its replaced with a gesture. On an iPhone its a whole different story.

That would get them an extra inch of real estate on the iPhone screen. That's significant.

Fingers still need somewhere to go when holding it. It's not just the button that defined the size of the border. However there's no reason to expect the border couldn't be a bit more narrow without a button. They could also possibly do something tricky with touch zones extending beyond the screen and into the border so perhaps they could detect when fingers are wrapped around near the edges and filter them out.

For the iPhone it could be an advantage, but since the iPad has/needs a 'bezel' area around the screen, there's not much point in removing it. Still the gestures would be a good backup/alternative option.

This has more point on the iPad than on the iPhone. The iPad is big and heavy, making it much more of a chore to reposition/flip it in order to find/press the button. It's also very easy to hit the button by accident.

Double-clicking to switch tasks is especially difficult. The weight and size makes it very hard to get the right muscle tension to press the button rapidly. I often press it too slowly and get the home screen instead of the task bar. I'm surprised that Apple even released it this way. Maybe the long delay bringing multitasking to the iPad had something to do with this.

How would you take screen-shots? Or more importantly, do a hard reset when it crashes. I find the home button is also easier to use to wake my iphone than the power button is.

My home button died on my iPad after six months. Warranty replacement.

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