> In the first row we see a series of icons that are supposed to be buttons. The only way you could potentially recognise them as such, however, would be if they were implemented in a user interface. So it is in fact only the context that lets you recognise them as buttons, not their appearance by themselves.
So what is the problem? If you can recognize they are buttons in context, that sounds like a successful design.
> In touch interfaces however, that is often not the case. There, the actual outline of the graphic – let’s say the minus – is often the only thing that can be touched.
If you implement your touchscreen buttons like this, I’m not sure what to say. It’s not a problem with the style of button, but a bug in your implementation. I can’t say I’ve ever come across it in the wild in anything that is remotely competently made, as it would basically be unusable.
> Apple is using lazy button shapes for “Select” and the ellipsis character (…) on the right. On the left however, the button for going to your albums is just the word “Albums” and a little arrow shape. Why those two different concepts on the same screen? In the redesign, everything that works like a button also looks like one.
There’s a perfectly good reason why they look different. The back arrow is a navigation pattern that is used across the entire OS. It should be consistent with the same pattern on other screens and in other apps. The design should be deferential because it is so ubiquitous. On the other hand, the two buttons in the right are specific to this screen. It would be a mistake to make them so similar when their scope and purpose is fundamentally different.