Article Image

IPFS News Link • Science, Medicine and Technology

The Year the Home Button Died

• https://www.wired.com

The most convincing lie Steve Jobs ever told was "you already know how to use it." For years, Apple crowed about its ability to build gadgets that were so simple and obvious, they were practically ingrained—as if you could emerge from decades of cryogenic freeze and instinctively understand how to 3D-Touch the camera app icon and snap a selfie. Need proof? Just look at this adorable video of a two-year old, already playing games on her iPad!

That notion, of course, is false. Apple's very good at teaching people to use products through ads, videos, even the setup process on their devices, but nobody's born knowing how to use an iPhone. It never mattered, because Apple included one feature everyone did already know how to use: the home button. The home button was the thing you pressed when you didn't know what else to do. It let you feel free to explore, smashing and swiping on the screen, because if it all went haywire you could quickly undo it all and start over. It was like Ted Danson snapping his fingers in The Good Place, starting the whole thing over with no one the wiser.

The companies making the next wave of tech products are increasingly forcing users to figure things out for themselves.

But in 2017, Apple did away with the home button. It's not the only company to do so, but it's the most prominent one. For the iPhone X, Apple replaced the obvious thing—the button you subconsciously want to push just because it's right there—with a small horizontal line you're supposed to know to swipe up on. Or swipe up halfway on. Or swipe down on. Nothing has buttons anymore, really. The future of tech, at least from what we saw this year, is filled with products much more versatile and complex than anything that came before. And the companies making those products are increasingly forcing users to figure things out for themselves.


JonesPlantation