

Does the iPad Have One Button Too Many?  - danso
http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/04/02/does-the-ipad-have-one-button-too-many/?hp

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crazygringo
"the bezeled edge seems a bit overkill for a company so obsessed with
understatement"

This is silly. How else are you going to casually pick it up, with your thumb
and forefingers of a single hand, without accidentally clicking on areas of
the screen? The bevel is quite "functional".

This whole article feels slightly ridiculous, almost like the author is
trolling.

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hack_edu
Plenty of sketching and writing apps already have really good wrist-detection.
It shouldn't take much effort to extend that to assume a pseudo-bezel if you
enable it in Settings.

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kennu
Or the iPad could normally work in bezel-mode, but allow a separate
"fullscreen mode" to take advantage of the whole surface area for some uses
cases.

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jerrya
If Apple gets rid of that button, they would be sued for copying the look and
feel of almost every Android 4.0 tablet manufacturer.

When Samsung sued them for look and feel infringement, the entire court system
would be in danger of dividing by zero and suffering gravitational collapse.

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iamcalledrob
Apple's design of the single button is really smart, and I doubt they'd
abandon it any time soon.

Why is it smart? Because it allows people who have no prior knowledge of an
iPad (or iPhone) to understand how to work it immediately.

The fact it's a hardware button is a bonus, because people know how to work
those who've never used a touch device before.

The problem with gestural interfaces is that creating affordance is difficult.
It's the reason that draggable things on iOS usually still have drag handles.

When there's a single button that brings you back to a predictable state, it's
impossible to get lost.

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danso
Yes, though I wonder if the power button could conceivably fit that role?
Pressing it once returns you to the home screen. Holding it down powers the
system off.

I do prefer a physical button over the gestures...there are many apps that use
multi finger touches and those sometimes are interpreted as iOS multi-tasking
gestures, which interrupts the app.

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gareim
I'm a little bit paranoid about physical buttons breaking down over time, so
if the power button got increased usage, I'd probably get a bit worried.

That is the reason I dislike the idea of a physical home button, but at the
same time, it seems like it's the best idea right now. A friend didn't know
gestures existed on the iPad until I showed her recently and she is by no
means not smart. I also know many people who didn't know about gestures on
WebOS and instead used the flimsy home button on the TouchPad.

For now, I think Apple's home button is the best solution, but I'm constantly
hoping for a better way to do it without getting ordinary users confused.

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benohear
The problem is discoverability. I've had an ipad since 2007 and had no idea
about most of the gestures he mentions. Novice users would get horribly stuck
without the one no-brainer emergency exit that the physical button offers.

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vectorpush
_I've had an ipad since 2007_

The first iPad was released in 2010 and these gestures are only for iPad2 and
up (unless you jailbreak).

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golgo13
That is no longer the case. I have an unmodded iPad 1 and I can do the Grab to
close, 4 finger app switch, etc. Just enable them in the settings.
[http://www.zdnet.com/blog/hardware/how-to-activate-
ipad-2-mu...](http://www.zdnet.com/blog/hardware/how-to-activate-
ipad-2-multitasking-gestures-on-the-ipad-1/16186)

~~~
vectorpush
Thanks for this.

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hack_edu
If they must have a bezel, it should at least disappear when the device is
sleeping/powered-off. Why not extend the screen fully to the edge and instead
illuminate a bezel with the screen itself. You could even allow users to
customize it a bit. Then you could _gasp_ remove the Home button for a soft
button or buttons.

Soft buttons are possible and sexy, really. Just because they are executed
poorly on second-rate Android devices does not mean that they are all bad and
impossible.

After all the hurdles they've crossed, do you really doubt that Apple can
solve that UX problem?

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cleverjake
One reason why I bet this won't ever happen is because it would create an
inconsistency with how we use the iPhone. You can't do a five finger pinch
easily on the iPhone, so you would then have two different ways of 'going
home'. This is one too many for apple. Remeber how they changed the rotate
lock to a mute switch even though it didn't make that much sense to do so?
THey did it /just/ to create consistency with the iPhone. There will be better
iPad-centric ways of navigating iDevices, but a pure gesture based one is
unlikely.

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nxn
Is there a way to return to "normal mode" in the home screen after being in
"edit mode" (moving, grouping, removing) that does not involve pressing the
physical button? I seemed to have tried all "obvious" attempts of doing so
with no success.

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mdanger
I had always assumed that the home button was designed so that if an app
locked up or something, there would be an immediately obvious way for users to
get out without powering down the device. Does anyone know if this is the
case?

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iaskwhy
Is it just me or using more than two fingers at the same time on that screen
feels wrong? The way to go is webOS-like gestures. I don't think I used my
TouchPad's home button ten times in one year.

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jinushaun
On the other hand, I wish more Android phones would return to using real
physical buttons instead of unreliable haptic soft keys, or the new on-screen
buttons like in ICS.

