Touch Screens Are Over. Even Apple Is Bringing Back Buttons | Hacker News Reader

Touch Screens Are Over. Even Apple Is Bringing Back Buttons

wsj.com

31 pointsmfiguiere17 comments

I don’t disagree with the overall premise, but I’d characterise Apple’s move to include more buttons in the iPhone as desperation - they’re increasingly running out of ‘innovations’ to justify each new generation of iPhones being worth an upgrade.

Really appreciate this overall move back to physical buttons. This was our favorite excerpt from the article:

> Fundamentally, the problem with touch-based interfaces is that they aren’t touch-based at all, because they need us to look when using them. Think, for example, of the screen of your smartphone, which requires your undivided gaze when you press on its smooth surface.

> As a result, “touch screen” is a misnomer, says Rachel Plotnick ... Such interfaces would be more accurately described as “sight-based,” she says.

I've been dying to go back to a few buttons here on Android 14.

All there is on Pixel is Lock/Vol, and then rest is gestures.

There's at least one full screen app I use a lot, that makes task-switch really perilous. I swipe the bottom about 5 times before the handle appears, and the full screen app always receives breakthrough gestures that ruin its state.

"Back" is fine; I'm fine with that gesture and it works 99%. However, there are apps such as Maps that lead into a maddening labyrinth of "back, back, back" to where I am screaming for a Home button! There's no "Home" gesture. Let's have an easy reset to sanity.

My phone has a bottom panel... a left 'menu' touch screen area, a right 'back' area, and in the middle is a home button. Galaxy S6! Before that I used a droid and it had a nice optical joystick/center button.

I die inside a little when I have to use gestures to 'go back' whenever I must borrow an iphone.

I don't see the point in the entire front of a phone needing to be a screen also.

And audio jacks are just gone now from phones. Horrible designs and impractical decisions forced upon comsumers.

The fact that buttons reappearing on phones is now noteworthy is just hot garbage, it is all nonsense trends.

The back button situation on iPhone is easily the worst thing about the device IMO. There's not even a universal gesture.

I think that the Android panel works well, no need for a physical button, it'd be too fatiguing I think to use over and over.

I don’t know about universal, but every app I just tried went back to the parent page when I swiped in from the left side of the screen. This included apps from Apple, Google and Microsoft, along with some random others.

It works until it doesn’t. Say you are in a picture gallery - then you might have to swipe down. If you’re in the file browser you might have to click back.

It’s pretty arbitrary to be honest.

But android still lacks a forward button, and instead has two buttons (square and circle) that I can never tell apart.

Touch screens have never really worked well for me. they show contacts around my fingers, no contacts at all; or spurious touches when im some distance away. If I ground myself they work better, but still not well. NFI what could do that.

I wish Tesla (just the whole design department really) shared this sentiment.

I don't.

If you so fixated on buttons, stalks, whatever - you can buy third party solution for few hundred dollars and still come out cheaper than competing EVs.

Having recently driven car with poorly made buttons (Toyota) I was actually happy to be back in my Tesla.

Holy fn shite. WSJ usually has proper articles, but this one is just plain ridiculous bs.

The big question should be: how come the sober thinkers' voices were suppressed in this "debate" at a company the size of Apple (and Tesla). So in essence you know that jumping off a cliff would hurt, but nonetheless you do it, crawl back to the mountain and then explain your idiotic moves and the groundbreaking insight like it's some next big thing. No, you were stupid, now gtfo.

How come you cannot set what a fucking button should do on your OWN, overpriced phone? How come you cannot do proper text editing on that overpriced shit? How come every feature of an iphone, plain things like reordering shit on your main screen, is lauded?

gtfo, it's an oppressive device.

I miss resistive touch screens. Those things were neato. Nobody could keep track of a stylus though :(

Sounds like rose colored glasses. Resistive touch screens were atrocious. Needed substantial pressure to register touch. Couldn’t be made with a glass layer, since you had to deform them, so they scratched over time. Never precise if you used your nail, so you had to use the stupid stylus. Just awful.

I've composed quite a few chiptunes in nitrotracker (DS Homebrew application), and as long as you have the stupid stylus, it's awesome. In my opinion, significantly better and infinitely more precise for productivity applications than a capacitive display. Also, I've owned multiple NDS consoles, and never scratched or deformed the touch screen on a single one of them. I'm working on a DS homebrew game right now actually!

Are you just... never using them? I've owned 3DS and DS's and the screens just absolutely get scratched to all hell through use. Every one of them. It's not like it makes the screen unusable, but it's certainly visible. And it's inevitable; you're using a plastic stylus to press on ... plastic.

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