Buttons....Does Apple like them?

[flyfish29]

I find it funny that Apple has issues with buttons. Think of all the customer relations issues that have been based in something as simple as buttons on apple devices. Everything from two button, 1 button, and even no button mice. Remember the days when the argument against the Mac was no two button mouse!! Now the iPod shuffle actually has a huge selling point of having buttons. It is listed as one of the top three selling points!! I just found it odd (and somewhat positive) that apple is backtracking back to a shuffle with built in buttons.

Articles like this make me laugh and imagine what the PR meetings are like... Buttons move from iPod to iPod

Oh yeah, wasn't there a button issue with the iPhone having external volume, then not, then again?

Another issue iphone buttons switched

more button issues green button issues from the past

 

[*LTD*]

The philosophy is simple:

The fewer movable parts, the better. Fewer thing break, fall off, get torn off, etc.

Other than that obvious advantage, smoother, touch-based surfaces look a helluva lot better in terms of design.

 

[flyfish29]

The philosophy is simple:

The fewer movable parts, the better. Fewer thing break, fall off, get torn off, etc.

Other than that obvious advantage, smoother, touch-based surfaces look a helluva lot better in terms of design.

I agree- I think it is interesting to think about this:

The PC world was all about more and more buttons. Keyboards got more buttons, mice got more buttons (I think I had a 7 or 9 button mouse at one point)

Apple's world was all about reducing buttons which for many years reduced control of onscreen items but Apple's insistence on little to no buttons has come full circle and as we know having all touch screen actually gives us far better control of onscreen items.

Just sort of cool how for so many years I (as well as many others) thought Apple was screwing themselves over their insistence on one button mice, etc. Yet in the end it lead them to where they are today.

 

[*LTD*]

I agree- I think it is interesting to think about this:

The PC world was all about more and more buttons. Keyboards got more buttons, mice got more buttons (I think I had a 7 or 9 button mouse at one point)

Apple's world was all about reducing buttons which for many years reduced control of onscreen items but Apple's insistence on little to no buttons has come full circle and as we know having all touch screen actually gives us far better control of onscreen items.

Just sort of cool how for so many years I (as well as many others) thought Apple was screwing themselves over their insistence on one button mice, etc. Yet in the end it lead them to where they are today.

Yes indeed. There were some sacrifices to be made. And a lot of us were dragged and even pushed headlong by Apple into new paradigms and ways and means to use tech, kicking and screaming. Growing pains with the hockey puck mouse, testing the limits of small design (not so successfully at times) with e G4 Cube . . . and now reaching new heights in usability and design with all of what had been tried previously, expressed in today's mobile technology, thanks to Apple. Thanks to the "crazy ones" at Apple.

What a ride!

 

[flyfish29]

Yes indeed. There were some sacrifices to be made. And a lot of us were dragged and even pushed headlong by Apple into new paradigms and ways and means to use tech, kicking and screaming. Growing pains with the hockey puck mouse, testing the limits of small design (not so successfully at times) with e G4 Cube . . . and now reaching new heights in usability and design with all of what had been tried previously, expressed in today's mobile technology, thanks to Apple. Thanks to the "crazy ones" at Apple.

What a ride!

Very well put!

I actually liked the hockey puck....and the smaller iMac Keyboard that went with it.