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Steve Jobs Hates Buttons
ElvaWSJ writes "While many technology companies load their products up with buttons, Steve Jobs treats them as blemishes that add complexity and hinder their clean aesthetics.
The iPhone is Steve Jobs's attempt to crack a juicy new market for Apple Inc. But it's also part of a decades-long campaign by Mr. Jobs against a much broader target: buttons.
The new Apple cellphone famously does without the keypads that adorn its rivals. Instead, it offers a touch-sensing screen for making phone calls and tapping out emails. The resulting look is one of the sparest ever for Apple, a company known for minimalist gadgets. "
Buttons are intuitive.
I design high end interfaces for home theaters (where the remote it's self costs around $2500.00US or more.) and the number one thing my customers like is not the fancy graphics, cool animations or nicely laid out controls on the touchscreen.. but the VOLUME CONTROL HARD BUTTONS built into the side edge. They like being able to without looking press volume up or down or mute instead of having to look at the screen and press a non tactile feedback graphical button.
Buttons have their use, you cant get rid of them.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
I see his point, but OTOH, there are times when buttons ARE preferable. I can text a message on my cellphone without looking at the phone because there is a tactile reference to where each key is located. This is quite handy (pun intended!) Try texting a message inconspicuously at your next boring meeting.
The hard part for me was that to type a letter you have to cover the letter with your finger; I'm used to palm pilot so tended to type with the tip of my finger and got the key below and outside the one I was aiming for. It takes a little getting used to but after a few days use you can type nearly as fast.
What would really help is if all of iPhone's apps used the widescreen keyboard when you turn the unit sideways. For now it only does this in Safari (and it has to be in landscape mode before you bring up the keyboard).
Like it says on the Apple support page for the iPod and in the manual: hold menu + select for five seconds and the device will reboot.
Mouse -- keeps on pushing the minimalist single button. I detest this, and know many people (linux, mac, and pc users) that feel the same. Another button simply adds to the functionality -- I right click several hundred times per day, and don't want combo presses or holding down to approximate this. Overall, I view this as a bad move.
The new apple mighty mouse (which comes with macs) does in fact come with two buttons, and the right one can be enabled my going into the system preferences and telling os x that it's a right click. It's there, so don't complain!
I hit the wrong buttons all the time. The beauty is, the iPhone corrects me. As long as you type real words, not abbreviations like wtf, omg, brb, and c u l8r, the software will get my sentence right. Don't stop to correct your mistakes. Don't even look at the typed words, look at the keyboard. Just keep typing, and you can be very fast. Use the force.
mod me funny
By the time products like iPhone become ubiquitous for the general public it will probably be illegal to use a mobile phone while driving, nearly everywhere.
As for your texting with the phone in your pocket.....I'm not one to question the habits of others but that is a new one on me.
"Sacrifice for the good of The State" - The State
You may be joking, but the first few generations of Apple's LCD monitors really didn't have buttons. They had touch-sensitive symbols printed on the plastic with lights behind them for feedback.
You'd think so, but ask any woman who has breastfed a newborn baby, and she'll tell you that you have to teach them to get it right...It's just that it's a...hem..."one button" interface, so it's pretty easy to learn.
Pretty much every interface is a learned interface, but the simpler the interface, the easier it is to learn.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
It doesn't fix bad spelling. It fixes imprecise typing. These are two VERY different things. For example, if I am typing the word "example" and I'm a bad speller and I think it is spelled "exampal" the iPhone doesn't fix this - I get "exampal". However, if I know how to spell it correctly and I press down in the exact same spot for the p and l, I get "p" and then "l". In fact, when I tried typing this word in a very sloppy way, it was hard to get the iPhone to not recognize it correctly. I even intentionally missed the x by typing c instead and by the end of the word it had auto-corrected it. So, no, the iPhone doesn't ruin (or fix) your spelling.
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>...those of us who are able to drive and talk safely...
scientific studies have proven that talking on a phone while driving is dangerous even when completely hands free. even more so than a real life conversation because the lower quality signal requires more concentration to process.
these are scientifically proven facts. I notice that you, on the other hand, only seem to offer the fact that you haven't killed anyone yet as evidence of your super-human brain functions.
"I want a few dedicated buttons for important functions like volume, power, and send/hang up"
The iPhone has dedicated buttons for volume and power.... and the send hang up buttons are big and large when you're using those functions that require them.
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But having no separate volume control really harms the usability of the device. While I'm listening to music, I don't want to have to look at the screen.
And you don't. The default function of the click wheel is to change the volume. No looking necessary. Also, the click wheel offers much better control over the volume setting than +/- buttons would. With the click wheel, I can pretty much instantly set the correct volume for a song, unlike +/- buttons (see my other post in this discussion)
Want to select a song and start playing it in a fresh on-the-go playlist and, while it's playing, add more songs to the queue? Navigate down to select the song, up to the root, down to play from the playlist, back up to the root, back down to select your next song.
Why go back to the root between songs? You can just keep selecting songs from any playlist to add to the On-the-Go list.
No, in fact, you are missing the point. People have lots of reflexes. Having a reflex is not the same as being able to perform a task that depends on that reflex. They most certainly do not have a reflex for breastfeeding...They have a reflex for suckling, which is not the same thing at all.
As you are clearly speaking from zero experience, and just as clearly, have never breastfed anything, I'm going to treat your Wikipedia knowledge with the contempt it deserves, doubly so, because you didn't even bother to look up the correct article. Read down to the "Conditions that interfere with breastfeeding" section, then have a nice big glass of STFU on me.
I suggest you inform yourself before you talk to an actual girl.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
I call bullshit. You've got no credentials to put on the table in this forum, so the fallacious appeal to authority, is, as usual, trumped by the "appeal to actual sources"...Your claims that there are never problems with breastfeeding are trumped by tens of thousands of pages saying you're wrong.
Even if you have the experience you claim, which I find highly unlikely, the only other possibility is that you're one of those La Leche style breastfeeding nazi's who refuse to accept that there could ever be a problem with breastfeeding...Equally deluded on the other side of the fence.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
"However, I want a few dedicated buttons for important functions like volume, power, and send/hang up."
You're in luck. There's a sleep/wake button, a home button, volume up/down buttons, and (in the headset) an answer/hangup switch.
Any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so.
I know I shouldn't be, but I am still amazed that they give mod points to retards. I've drunk the koolaid since 1992 (I think. The early 90s are a haze of drugs, booze, hookers, and quadras), and I've got the fucking right (dammit) to make fun of Steve Jobs, Apple, and the Macintosh.
I'd like to think this is just WMF fucking with me in a friendly way, or that I'm important enough to have a mod troll stalking me, but the sad truth is that some Mac users are Mac users because they're mentally deficient.
It's not offtopic, dumbass. It's orthogonal.