Oh God I hope so. I'd like a brightness button so that when I walk into the sun I don't have a whole pattern to memorize to turn up the brightness on my phone. Better, a brightness dial, like in the old days (ditto volume dial). Which, you know, worked.
I have no idea what I'm going to do when my SE 2020 iPhone craps out and there's nothing with a home button to replace it. I don't retain gestures for shit.
Touch screens on everything is an accessibility issue as well. Older people often have drier skin which messes with how touch screens register input, and people with hand tremors also report issues with mistaps.
My Macs would sometimes go dark or full volume “on their own” and it was that my pinky accidentally had rested on the Don’t Touch Bar. I ended up replacing my old Intel MacBook Pro with a cheaper Air just because the Air M2 got rid of the Don’t Touch Bar before the Pro line.
Touchscreens work when it is some territtain to explore. But a button to push to get an expected result - just annoying. Esp when they crap out. @jonbell.bsky.social
I appreciate your work and this is not a critique at all on your part… but reading that headline made me so tired. I’m fully aware of the hamster wheel we are on.
People always do this... something new comes around they implement it everywhere and then it settles back into its best use cases. Tactile response will never go away as the preferred mode of interaction.
Having bought a touchscreen laptop a year ago, it's handy BUT as a sometime designer, you cannot overload a region, getting multiple functionality out of one spot. While sensitivity can be used to regulate input, wear and tear, consistency of the environment all work against it. Handy but ...
OnePlus phones have a little sliding switch on the side that toggles it between Ringer On or Mute. It's so simple and so good, and every phone should have it
I remember how my old iPod Shuffle had every single function easy to access in the dark, without lighting up as I was trying to sleep. Now I listen to audiobooks on my phone, and while I like having internet access, I have to turn the screen on just to hit pause. Touchscreens are not for everything.
There's definitely a place for *some* touchscreen controls, (they make sense on phones in many cases, and I actually like dynamic touch scrolling on e-readers) but at the very least we should be exploring where manual controls are better, such as in a car. 😅 Hopefully this doesn't swing too far.
Buttons and knobs give a pleasant tactile feedback, making things feel "real" in a way that screens don't - and allows for building muscle memory for tasks.
My daughter insisted on a car with manual crank windows. She was convinced that electric windows in cars will fail since she had a 85 Ford that had that problem. I personally love touch screens now that they are fairly reliable.
This is great. Buttons have better discoverability as long as they aren’t overdone.
I’m glad that dedicated shutter buttons and mappable action buttons are coming back. Now I need a dedicated music play button to turn on my music app with a single click, like how it was in the Walkman era.
Touchscreen consoles started being introduced on medical ultrasound machines. In the vet world I see them in clinics used by non-radiologist vets who may only use an US machine in limited capacity. But for workhorse sonographers nothing beats the tactile feel of buttons, knobs, sliders, rollers, etc
Love this but I wanna add a caveat: ban TPE (that rubbery coating on buttons that makes devices feel "premium" at first but eventually degrades to a sticky goo)
Truly speaking, the touchscreen and mobile industry has reached a plateau of innovation. This eventually leads to reintroduction of something that is left behind a retro-kind and make products look refreshed, innovative or making people that particular button is more useful!!!
I like touchscreen for things like my phone. But when driving, I have to be able to use the controls without looking at them and touchscreen is not tactile and totally impractical for that.
Thank goodness. There are no haptics that can replace the ability to feel where your hand/fingers are relative to the rest of the controls. Also pushing buttons and turning knobs feels good in ways that touchscreens don't, and the kind of immediate feedback they impart is very important to UX.
Everything Elonia has done has a been a giant Ponzi scheme - unfortunately it’s not just investors who will pay the price, it’s broader society falling for his cons, e.g., investments in an EV strategy that is unsustainable in the US, down to more mundane things like this
I hit my breaking point on this when I was in the market for an EV. I’m sure taking my eyes off the road for 15+ secs to play around a bunch of menu options on a screen instead of driving is totally cool. Bring back buttons (specifically, one button that does one thing!)
This is why Teslas suck. And Elon has doubled-down on removing controls by eliminating turn signal stalks on the latest Model 3. Just stupid. I guess it's preparation for FSD ... which will kill us.
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Can they also improve the user interfaces entirely!
I'll only ask for removable battery and rear-mounted SIM card tray again please thank you.
They’ll brand it as “retro“ so the youngsters will think it’s cool.
Hope your weekend was okay, Christos 🤞🏻
I’m glad that dedicated shutter buttons and mappable action buttons are coming back. Now I need a dedicated music play button to turn on my music app with a single click, like how it was in the Walkman era.
When it had touch screens? Programming confusion all the fucking time. Lights going on and off. Screens switching.
I also made less horrible typos.