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Steve Jobs Wanted the First iPhone To Have a Permanent Back Button Like Android (bgr.com)
anderzole shares a report from BGR: Brian Merchant's new book, The One Device: The Secret History of the iPhone, provides a captivating and intriguing look at how the most revolutionary product of our time was designed and developed. Through a series of interviews with Apple engineers and designers who played an integral role in the iPhone's creation and development, Merchant maps out how the iPhone came to be after more than two years of non-stop work at breakneck speed. One of the more interesting revelations from the book is that the iPhone design Apple unveiled in January of 2007 might have looked vastly different if Steve Jobs had his way. According to Imran Chaudhri, a veteran Apple designer who spent 19 years working on Apple's elite Human Interface Team, Steve Jobs wanted the original iPhone to have a back button in addition to a home button. Believe it or not, the original iPhone could have very well looked like a modern-day Android device. "The touch-based phone, which was originally supposed to be nothing but screen, was going to need at least one button," Merchant writes. "We all know it well today -- the Home button. But Steve Jobs wanted it to have two; he felt they'd need a back button for navigation. Chaudhri argued that it was all about generating trust and predictability. One button that does the same thing every time you press it: it shows you your stuff. 'Again, that came down to a trust issue,' Chaudhri says, 'that people could trust the device to do what they wanted it to do. Part of the problem with other phones was the features were buried in menus, they were too complex.' A back button could complicate matters too, he told Jobs. 'I won that argument,' Chaudhri says."
Except the Home button now does multiple things depending on if you long-press, double or even triple click it?
The lack of a back button is the reason I'll never buy an iPhone. Just one button is a waste of space.
The iPhobd at first was going to have a keyboard also, and probably lots of other useless crap.
But as the article states, they realized it added too much complexity - which I find is true even today when I use an Android device. It seems like back rarely does what you expect.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
and he's 100% correct. That back button is nice.
Apple users just can't handle more than one button. Hell, even an Apple mouse has only one button. Two buttons would leave Apple users curled up on the floor crying their eyes out. "Decisions! Decisions! I just can't deal with decisions right now!"
Windows Phone has always had one. It's super useful. It's also used for showing all currently open applications, too. Much better UI than iOS.
I don't respond to AC's.
Having used both Android and iPhone OS I can say that the user experience with Android is superior with regards to navigation. The home button on iOS has far too many functions right now - one click for home, double click for multitask switching, three times for something else, hold for Siri, etc. It tries to be too much at once, which totally complicates things (the irony!)
I fully expected in a future release there will be a dedicated back button and maybe more, similar to Android - Apple's current implementation of a "back" function at the top left of the screen feels like a total kludge - not something Apple-like at all.
AC comments get piped to
I never though Steeve Jobs could admit being wrong. That story suggests he was less blunt that what I usually heard.
>"how the most revolutionary product of our time was designed and developed."
Oh what marketing-driven pompousness! Shall I barf now or later (or both)? In whose time? Mine? I can think of a zillion "revolutionary" products/inventions/technologies in MY time, none of which include the incremental step of the iPhone over the many PDAs and smart phones before it. Here are a few-
Unix, LED, computer mouse, GUI, MRI, GPS, Ethernet, ATM, Tesla Roadster/S/whichever, solar panel, pocket calculator, DNA sequencing machines, TiVo, so many things. Pick a first product from any of those and be amazed. Then add the internet- something you can't "buy" and isn't a product, but wow... THAT is "revolutionary."
I have to say that I like the recent set of Android buttons: back, home, tasks. Three icons, they look reasonably logical, and they are all useful.
But Android tried many permutations on the way there, and on phones with hardware buttons you often see the back button on the right. You may also have a menu, camera or search button, again included in a random permutation. They really should have come up with a more sensible way of organising the buttons than in a straight row.
Seemed like the perfect trio: Back, Home & Menu.
Unfortunately Android (apps) seems to be moving away from there as well...
Have you tried long pressing a car radio button? I mean time has been a component of car radio interfaces since at least the 90s for storing channels. For me every button on the radio does something different related to time. Stand by be power down, mute Vs menu, station select Vs station search, store Vs retrieve. Call Vs enable voice activation.
Sure it hasn't always been that advance but the last car radio I used which didn't have time as a component relied on those mechanical levers to move the tuning mechanism.
You just swipe from the left side of the screen to the right. It works great, I would rather that than lose screen real estate to a row of buttons or add another button to the phone. Fanboys will always be fanboys.
I miss WebOS's swipe left.
In iOS, if enter Safari & open a web page, then another one, then you click the 'share' icon, you have to use different methods to go back for each step
To exit the sharing, it's a 'cancel' button at the bottom of the screen. To close a given web page, it's click the 'tabs' icon, then the 'x' in the upper left corner of the tab in question. To exit the app, you click the 'home' button.
In WebOS, you just kept swiping left. (although, that would also go 'back' in navigation). If you wanted to quickly go back, you tap the gesture area, and then you see a stack of cards that you swipe up to throw away. (one for each 'tab' that was open).
You didn't have to go searching through the screen trying to figure out how to get out of a preferences screen for each given application. (if they even have one, and you don't have to go through the 'settings' app to configure it).
Build it, and they will come^Hplain.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Just look at the BlackBerry 10 devices. Completely touchscreen, no buttons on the front of the device. Only power and volume buttons on the side. Swipe up to wake up the device or go back to the home screen.
I miss my Z10.
"A plan fiendishly clever in its intricacies"- Homer Simpson
I typed that on a physical keyboard... hmm.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
The double-click on the single IOS button and the swipe to close a running app are NOT obvious. I had several iPhone users complain about how slow and sluggish their iPhone would run because they had no idea that they had tons of running programs open and if they did how they could close them.
If I understand correctly, "Suspended" Apps in iOS aren't REALLY running. They are "in stasis", with a "Poster Screen" the only thing actually consuming resources.
I was boggling at some inexplicable moderation... but someone with modpoints has apparently become quite offended by me personally. Must still be on Slashdot. People get grumpy when you point out facts here.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Not having a dedicated back button (even if it were part of the touch screen) is what drives me crazy about the iPhone. I do think this was a mistake. The notion of "back" makes perfect sense. Even outside of Android's Intent-app-mixing UI. I want to go back to where I was. Imagine not having a back button on your browser!
That's probably why iOS now has a Back Button.
But unlike Android's it has a consistent, and "Titled" behavior. Actually, there are two types of Back-Buttons in iOS. When down in a sub-view inside of an App, there is a " Level-Above" button at the top-left of the screen that let's you "pop-up" to the previous level in the same App. If you are already at the Top-Level in an App, iOS places a "Back to (previousAppName)" Button (more like a "Link"), again at the top-left of the screen.
So there you go: All the functionality you'd want in a Back Button, with none of the Ambiguity of Android's implementation.
Can you really blame him? iSheeps are not known for their intelligence. So yes, a back button or a menu would explode their brains.
Ya know, it really doesn't do you any favors to attempt to insult others' intelligence, while creating such unintelligent blunder like saying "iSheeps".
The plural of "sheep" is... "sheep".
Moron.
Since when did Steve Jobs not have his way?
And, yes, I mean before he died.
I still use a Blackberry. It has--gasp--FIVE hardware buttons. It's not confusing at all.