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I find it hilarious that the camera button is the breaking point for you, not their push into generative-AI slop, or their abandoning the Time Capsule home backup solution in favour of wildly overpriced cloud storage, or their continued and underhanded push to oppose the right-to-repair, or their malicious compliance with EU law over alternative app stores, or their increasingly beta-quality releases of OSes and new features, or their slow abandoning of their interface design guidelines in favour of inconsistent and increasingly inaccessible solutions?

No, it's the optional camera control button that signals impending doom 🙄
 
I can't tell whether you're kidding-- that image you shared shows the photographer not only squeezing their camera but cradling it with both hands. I think if that photographer hadn't said please it would be molestation. What they aren't doing is holding it on one side and pressing down on the other even with a tripod for support.

No, not kidding. You should probably tell Canon, Sony, and Nikon about the "squeezing" technique and update their manuals to reflect.

Nobody is squeezing their DSLR from "top and bottom" when using a "real" camera. I don't know anybody who wants to squeeze their iPhone in that fashion either.
 
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I find it hilarious that the camera button is the breaking point for you, not their push into generative-AI slop, or their abandoning the Time Capsule home backup solution in favour of wildly overpriced cloud storage, or their continued and underhanded push to oppose the right-to-repair, or their malicious compliance with EU law over alternative app stores, or their increasingly beta-quality releases of OSes and new features, or their slow abandoning of their interface design guidelines in favour of inconsistent and increasingly inaccessible solutions?

No, it's the optional camera control button that signals impending doom 🙄
Apple giving the EU the finger is a feature, not a bug.

Personally, I think Apple should use both hands on that one.
 
I would prefer they kept 3D Touch over this, but so far I have no significant complaints in my testing.

Only thing I would change / ask for is the ability to change the acceleration curve of the slide, or the pressure needed to activate said slide.

I find it really useful for an easy way to do smooth Zoom during video. Sure I can pinch, but I find that less useful, and I don't like blocking my shot.
 
Apple giving the EU the finger is a feature, not a bug.

Personally, I think Apple should use both hands on that one.
I disagree, I like having control of the things I own and generally feel like having options for the extent of that control are good. If you don't like having control of your own devices, I can see why the EU rulings might seem unappealing.
 
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I disagree, I like having control of the things I own and generally feel like having options for the extent of that control are good. If you don't like having control of your own devices, I can see why the EU rulings might seem unappealing.

If I wanted that level of control, I would have bought a different phone.
 
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If you look at people in tourist areas, most of those with iphones don’t know you can take a photo with the volume buttons. I give this button a couple of years before Apple eliminates it.
 
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If you look at people in tourist areas, most of those with iphones don’t know you can take a photo with the volume buttons. I give this button a couple of years before Apple eliminates it.
Just the iPhone version of the touch bar.
 
I realize that lots of people don’t seem to like it, though I’m not one of them. Should I assume that you’ve performed some sort of statistical analysis to back up “most unbiased reviewers”? And how have you gone about determining that the reviewers are unbiased and without an agenda? This is a serious question, not a frivolous one. After all, it’s much more common for those who don’t like something to post than for those who do.
No, of course I’ve not done statistical analysis. Don’t be pedantic. If you can’t determine who or who isn’t unbiased vs fan boying out, I don’t know what to tell you. Try the ones who give balanced reviews and generally have high enough subscriber counts to not be dependent on giving Apple favorable reviews to make it as tech reviewers.

If you like it, cool. I tried it in the Apple store and thought, meh.
 
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I don’t want to be rude, but I am going to be.
Everything on this list was either replaced by something better, improved, or is just your subjective opinion.

Seriously, this is some old man yells at cloud stuff.

Apple (twice) in recent years made a phone that was smaller/pocketable, and sales were awful.
Consumers were abandoning iPhone for android when 4 inches was the largest size, never mind 3.5 inches.

Yea they got rid of the headphone jack. Does the Pixel have one? The Galaxy S24? There must have been a ‘first car’ to get rid of the tape deck, and then the CD player, but good luck finding a new car with one now. People were up in arms about the iMac not having a floppy drive.

This is just nostalgia. Look, I love System 7, it’s important to me and the place where a lot of my youth happened, but I’d still take Sequoia every time, despite its flaws.

The home button point makes me suspect that you are trolling.
The dongle for headphones is terrible. I so want a real headphone jack. The dongle breaks easily… unless you lose it.
 
The dongle for headphones is terrible. I so want a real headphone jack. The dongle breaks easily… unless you lose it.
The future is now old man😂. I too was a wired headphone jack sycophant. Extolling the virtues of lossless wired audio’s superior sound quality.

Then I realized it was good enough.
 
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Third, for almost all the half-press functions, they are vastly inferior to the on screen controls. Take zoom for example, it's physically much slower to go from 1x to 5x. Whereas by using the expanded half circle dial, you can zoom to 25x with even less time. Not to mention that with Camera Control you cannot zoom to small increments, like 2.5x.
I kinda assumed that physical controls make sense if you are trying to take a photo with one hand free. IE: You are holding your iPhone with your right hand, and your index finger is able to rest on top of the camera control button. You don't have a spare hand to fiddle on onscreen camera controls, and you can at least still adjust some of the settings on the fly.

By all accounts, the iPhone 16 sounds like a pretty versatile device. Camera control for launching the camera regardless of which app you are in (no more reaching for the control centre first, and you can also remap it to any camera app of your choice), freeing up the action button for some other function (like say, triggering control centre with iOS 18.1). This means you can also remap the flashlight and camera icons on your lock screen to launch two other apps or shortcuts, and this is in addition to the 4 other apps / widgets already available there.

I don't know if these were ideas that Jony Ive previously rejected when he was at Apple, and while more buttons / ports don't sound very "Apple", I find it hard to argue with the end results.
 
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Only New Apple could add a dedicated and finicky pseudo-button for something you can already do just fine on screen. Pretty much the antithesis of the original point of iPhone which aimed to remove clutter.
 
Don't have a 16, don't plan to get one, but Apple giving you a button dedicated to the camera is the best evidence they've lost their way? How dare they give you a button dedicated to the camera?! It's as if they want it to feel like... a real camera!
 
Camera control is not the best evidence that Apple lost its way. iOS 18 is the best evidence. Apple’s origin is exceptional software. Steve Jobs always were saying that Apple is software company. The state-of-art software. iOS 18 fails in so many ways, brings so many controversial decisions and fails to delivery so many promises that Apple should really reconsider its current values.
 
Isn't most of this subjective? I use Writing Tools at least a dozen times a day. Battery life is atrocious, but I still love it. Are they behind schedule? Without a doubt. Will it get better? Here's to the future!
 
Don't have a 16, don't plan to get one, but Apple giving you a button dedicated to the camera is the best evidence they've lost their way? How dare they give you a button dedicated to the camera?! It's as if they want it to feel like... a real camera!
It is not even close to real camera. I have Nikon Z5 and 16 Pro Max. I tried to use Camera Control once and then never used it again. The implementation is just horrible and lazy. I don’t know who will be using that weird swipe controls when on-screen touch controls are much more intuitive and x5 times faster.
 
It is not even close to real camera. I have Nikon Z5 and 16 Pro Max. I tried to use Camera Control once and then never used it again. The implementation is just horrible and lazy. I don’t know who will be using that weird swipe controls when on-screen touch controls are much more intuitive and x5 times faster.
Lmao. What a completely unreasonable way to evaluate the benefit of something. You're obviously going to need to test new features out and find how they work best. Or, hey, maybe you have no interest in trying at all, but then you also have no real leg to stand on when you make claims about how bad it is.
 
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Lmao. What a completely unreasonable way to evaluate the benefit of something. You're obviously going to need to test new features out and find how they work best. Or, hey, maybe you have no interest in trying at all, but then you also have no real leg to stand on when you make claims about how bad it is.
You can try to convince yourself that this feature is worth trying, but the truth is that it is a gimmick. I tried it for about 3 hours for testing the camera. The UX of that is just really sucks. I can tell as I’m UX designer. Also, I’m a hobbyist photographer, and this button is not even close to what photographers get used to mechanically. There are multiple issues with that:
1. This is not a camera-like button. The traverse is really small and the half-press is not really comfortable. It just feels wrong.
2. The full press is too hard, real camera buttons are much more softer. Pressing this button results in the situation when your iPhone moves, which is a HUGE problem, especially in lower light conditions.
3. The button is only usable in landscape mode, while iPhone camera is being used a lot in portrait mode too.
4. Every function that this button provides also can be performed with on-screen controls much faster then doing it with button and without moving/shaking you iPhone.
5. Having several controls doing the same thing is very non-Apple thing, it confuses the user and leads to paralysis of choice. Such situation considered as bad UX.
6. This button gives you an access to settings that mainly used by experienced photographers. Most of the iPhone users are point&shoot consumers, that never change the camera settings. They will not be using that button, because they never needed that button.
7. Experienced photographers will not use that button because it just slow. Being slow in photography means you will be missing photo opportunities.

It is the same crap as Bixby button.
 
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Lmao. What a completely unreasonable way to evaluate the benefit of something. You're obviously going to need to test new features out and find how they work best. Or, hey, maybe you have no interest in trying at all, but then you also have no real leg to stand on when you make claims about how bad it is.
I think it's fine to be skeptical or even critical of Apple sometimes. I am guilty of this myself. But I see this aversion or even hatred of new features from a lot of posters here recently. It's like they've spun themselves into a never ending cycle of complaining and hate without giving things a chance. It's like some sort of Apple Derangement Syndrome or Feature Derangement Syndrome.

I've tried the camera button for a few days now. Is it perfect? Nope. The worst thing ever? Far from it.

I look forward to Apple providing some software tweaks to make it better but it's now my primary way to use the camera. I've removed the camera button from the Lock Screen and from my home screen and launch it exclusively with the button now.
 
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