I'm honestly curious of those who have physical buttons still on their devices, phones mostly. forget the cost of a device, forget the idea you can switch to another operating system. What will those die hard fans of the home buttons, probably the volume buttons eventually and even the power button, what will you do? When everyone hated the headphone jack going away, I saw it as ok, one less port to get dirt or water in. When the home button went away my use case is the same. I'm not suggesting someone on here needs or should upgrade the latest technology, but are there really people who will use a device long past it's shelf life simply because there's a physical home button to unlock their phone or pay for something? What happens when down the road you are forced by any means to upgrade? You'll be up a creek without a paddle. There was a user who stated they didn't want a camera bump. For me I have absolutely no idea why it would bother someone. I am curious why though it's not my place to ask. Putting out a question, how would you handle a phone, that has no more physical buttons? would it be the end of the world and you'd go back to a flip? Not get a cell? I am by no means a technology expert, I still can't install a Mac plug in that i thought I did it correctly. Must facetime someone for help. Not starting a discussion of if there should or shouldn't be physical buttons. I'm just interested in why the long held belief of I want a physical button is established. How do you handle it when you have no choice? Let's put a little smarts in Apple's brain here and there is a groove for the power button or volume buttons so you know where they are. Enjoy this topic.
Comments
I don’t mind the buttons going away, But.
As long as whatever they choose to do instead isn’t just about making something look nice. As long as the replacement, if it comes gives the same or better functionality then I’m all in. The capacitive home button on the iPhone 7 was a good example. It was just as good as a button but had no moving parts, the Taptic Engine was enough feedback to feel like you were pressing a button and reliability was improved by not having a button. When the iPhone X came out, I got one on launch day. No home button was fine because functionality wasn’t reduced. Tapping the screen or picking the phone up did the same as the button once did. Authentication was handled without touching a fingerprint scanner which was better even if it took a massive half an hour to adjust and learn the new need to line the phone up with your face.
Headphone jack going away was less ideal because it removed functionality unless you spent a significant amount of money to get wireless headphones that weren’t as good and still aren’t even though I’ve had every single version since launch hoping this is the one. Pro’s 2 are great but still not as good as a cable and having a 3.5mm jack wouldn’t stop me using a pair of Bluetooth headphones so I see that removal as quite anti user. The space saved inside the phone could have more than been made up for by increasing the thickness of the phone by 0.2mm which nobody would have noticed.
Anyway, they did it and we all lived. It was a douche move but we got over it.
As for future removals. It looks like apple aren’t all that confident at this point in time that removing buttons would work out well. When they introduced the first new button since the launch of the iPhone last year, they decided a traditional old fashioned button was the way to go. They could have easily gone for capacitive but didn’t which makes me think they aren’t too enthusiastic about removing all the buttons just yet.
I can however imagine a time when the volume is replaced with a capacitive version of the EarPods remote. That would allow more functionality like pause, fast forward rewind etc which I’d be a huge fan of. The rumour is the capture button that may be coming on the 16 pro might be capacitive which might work well as if it has a force sensor, it might allow for light touch heavy press type functions with auto focus like on a proper camera. Again I’m all in favour.
I’m interested though, who expressed the opinion that they aren’t in favour of the camera bump? To that person, sorry but if you want it to take great pictures it needs the hardware to do it and that means compromises. If a bump allows space to put bumpy things inside the phone then I guess it’s like anything else, I’m not aware of getting something for nothing when physics is involved. She’s a cruel mistress.
The only thing I wouldn’t be in favour of is removing buttons and putting that functionality on the screen. Volume controls could be adjusted by tapping on the volume icon then sliding a finger up and down but I don’t think anyone thinks this is a desirable or sensible idea which I’m happy about because it would suck for voiceover users.
I think sometimes people are nervous of things being changed because if it works why fix it and often changes don’t work out great for blind people so having a conservative approach is about safety. I mostly trust Apple not to screw this one up though. Even though I personally disagree on the 3.5mm jack it wasn’t all that bad and removing buttons without a good replacement would annoy so many people that I don’t think they’d risk it.
Home Button
My objection to not having a fingerprint-reading home button is that I hate the concept of Face ID. So while I still have a home button, I've stopped using the finger print, and just use the code. I've gotten fairly good at entering it without having to hunt for screen buttons, and I can switch to hand writing in public situations. And I can't say the fingerprint thing was working that well for me anyway.
As far as all the other buttons, I hate the concept of having to say something to a device to wake it, if they take the power button away and don't replace it with something physical. I'll just be perpetually irritated with Apple taking features away and replacing them with things I don't like. Same as always with Apple; same as always with the world.
I'll give you the wired version
I do agree about wired being better. Except you can to my knowledge use a charging port and lightning adapter. I never use headphones anyway and I'd rather they upgrade the speakers and fix a longstanding issue with sounds. I've explained this before but if you didn't know this please do an experiment. Go to sounds, pick a text tone or ring tone. Turn off speech. touch the sound. It sounds good at 100% doesn't it? Now turn off voice over completely, trying it again. The sound is at least 25% louder. Now i see apple's flip side. If you remember a long time ago, you'd be on a call and a message or email would come in, blasting the hell out of your ear causing four letter words to shatter glass or insult small children you didn't know were behind you with Mom and dad. Apple did fix it, and I am grateful. except when a phone's buried in a bag because society thinks women don't need pockets and are happy with purses, spoiler, I'm not, then you can barely know it's even ringing. Now the objection to my experiment is any ringtone created and released by an artist, such as the band I follow, Halestorm. You can hear that banshee meters away. I'm not insulting the young lady, simply proving that the sound is possible to be louder then the current ringtones suggest.
You’ve picked up on a couple of my biggest annoyances ever.
Firstly the introduction of that proximity sensor with a speaker in the ear peace. I remember writing a comment when it was introduced that it would be likely to blow our ears out because it wouldn’t be perfect and having a high power speaker in the same place as the ear peace was going to lead to blind people having their ears blown out. That one turned out to be a major problem for years. As you said though. They did eventually fix it and hopefully not too many peoples ears were too badly damaged following apples little jape. I honestly think there would have been a class action lawsuit if they’d done something similar to sighted people. Burned their retinas with light for example from a screen brightness sensor that could overdrive the LEDs to dangerous levels but hey. Alls well that ends well and that hasn’t happened to me in a good long time now and its not like I particularly value my hearing as my only remaining distance sense so not to worry. And yes for Americans that was very definitely sarcasm.
The other annoyance is around sound quality when voiceover is enabled. It’s just not as good. Music doesn’t sound as good, video’s don’t sound as good, ringtones don’t sound as good and even plugging in external microphones doesn’t record as well. I don’t fully understand whats going on but I’ve always noticed that iPhones sound way way better when they aren’t mine which means don’t have voiceover turned on.
I used to think it was something to do with sample rate, maybe it was being lowered to match voiceovers voice sample rate but I don’t think thats it. There is definitely a difference though and it’s very very annoying indeed. I value sound more than the average bear so don’t appreciate it being reduced when other people appear to get something I might value more than they seem to.
Remember Touch Bar?
Yeah. Nuff said. Even sighted people aren't always appreciative of a loss of tactile precision, particularly when using tools for work. The insight here is that sometimes touch is appropriate; sometimes it's not. And, yes, since you ask, I would buy an older device to avoid touch. A printer or cellular modem without a touchscreen, with less modern specs but no touchscreen, is manifestly more useful to me than a device with a touchscreen but less or no alternative accessibility. Sad but true.
I'm not the world's biggest fan of FaceID, but I'm now used to it, specifically how to avoid triggering it unnecessarily and causing it to lock me out. But it still doesn't afford the same control as Touch ID did. I have an iPhone SE 2022, but in the end, it was easier to just carry my iPhone 15 Pro Max (formerly, 13) too and fro. Fancy that! A phone that you can carry between rooms of the flat! What are they going to come up with next, a portable computer? 😛
Headphone jacks? Sigh. But with the release of USB-C iPhones, it's less of a problem because the options for audio interfaces are now much, much wider. We'll get there eventually, even if Apple's move was obviously self-serving and stupid.
Forced Change
If I didn't decide to jump ship to a superior operating system, the answer is quite obvious. As I've said numerous times in the past, Apple does what they want, and if you don't like it, you can f*** off as far as Tim is concerned. You play by the rules in Apple land, or you GTFO, and I've chosen to GTFO because I've had enough of their arrogant attitude. For a company dedicated to accessibility and diversity, isn't it very interesting and telling how user choice is never a consideration? I prefer physical buttons and always will. They could have kept the haptic button, but oh no, they have to be douches and do things their own proprietary way. Instead of having logical touch buttons on the screen like Android, we're forced to either use ridiculous slide gestures, or create custom VoiceOver ones to do actions we used to do using a button. Instead of a fingerprint reader built into the screen or power button, we have to use facial recognition which is inferior as far as I'm concerned, particularly with the attention awareness mode disabled. I can't look directly into the camera because I don't open my eyes, so it defeats the purpose of the feature. How would you do things like power on the device or access special recovery modes if they removed all buttons?
It wouldn't bother me.
If they can figure out a way for a blind person to use voiceover without a button to go to the home screen, i'm sure they can figure out a way for us to use the phone.
I think they're thinking of getting rid of buttons in the next phone if I'm not wrong. I don't see why, is it just something to push so they can say we have something new? They can't keep this up for ever.
Braille Displays?
Interesting topic. Isn't this one reason for Braille displays? I mean, couldn't somebody just read each button that appears on screen with one of these displays? I have yet to experience this myself, but to me this sounds like a pretty viable solution.
Braille Display
You could map commands to a Braille keyboard, but there are 2 problems. First, it assumes you have a display, and second, iOS and iPadOS don't have very good USB Braille support. From what I've heard, displays using the HID standard can communicate over USB, not older devices. If Apple would bring plug-and-play Braille support from the Mac to iPhones and iPads, this would solve the problem. Bluetooth isn't always ideal, hence why I spent the extra money to get the Belkin Lightning Rockstar.
Siobhan,
I will get you to move to Chicago so you can do it for me.
"When lack of physical buttons aren't around"?
If there's no lack of physical buttons (i.e. "when lack of physical buttons aren't around", as the original poster so eloquently put it), then I'll continue using my devices as I do now, since they currently don't lack physical buttons. Remember - words and their order and usage matter.
Oh wow, Neosonic’s back to brighten everyone’s day.
I’ve been away for a few months but I forgot how much I love this place. It never changes and nor should it.
Here comes the superiority complex
Android must not be the superior operating system, sir, as you are posting on a forum us apple users are on. Saying such, I was not asking for your opinion about how a company was run nor was i hoping to read such a rude and vindictive comment. Hey it must not be as you obviously subscribe to "douches" as you put it somewhere do you not? Now... I was merely asking how a lot of you would feel were apple to not have physical buttons but the under the display types as they do now. As for the face ID? Love it wouldn't change it. I also have the attention off and guess I know how to open my eyes as the only trouble I get is when I'm supine and that makes enough sense for me not to go completely off my rocker. stay warm all. Remember, if something's so superiority why waste time responding to us Apple people? Sarcasm at it's finest. I see the moderator coming though... P.S. Make no mistake I am not under the illusion that apple's perfect in every way, nor am i under the illusion that should i end up on the Droid side I would be so ruthless as to not accept others points. Now can we get back to the original topic if that's possible? thanks.
Pockets
Siobhan, do you really think you could fit everything you put in a purse into clothing pockets, then still have room for a phone? I suppose they do make cargo pants for women...
They're just trying to help.
I did originally put in the title that they were having fun but I don't think so anymore.
I think they're just trying to help you.
I'd love for them to do what they did with the Iphone 7.
That button that wasn't a button was great! If they're all like that then I'd be all in.
If they're not then I'd probably just get used to it,the idea of change doesn't bother me at all.
Lack of Buttons
Fair enough, I went on a bit of a rant. Sorry about that. I would have stayed with the iPhone SE line, but if the rumors are true, the new SE will not have the home button, and I wouldn't be at all surprised if this happens. My original point stands. For those who want to continue using Apple devices, you'll eventually be forced to accept the changes whether you like them or not, particularly when they drop support for the devices that have buttons and they stop functioning at the level you'd find acceptable. As for how it will work, who knows. My first guess is using the touch screen to do more, or perhaps haptic buttons, though I'm not holding my breath for the second option. We had haptic buttons, and the powers that be decided that wasn't good anymore. I have no doubt whatever Apple does will be accessible, but my problem is efficiency. I don't consider Face ID, the Touch Bar, or slide gestures to be efficient, but they're technically accessible. Fortunately, the Touch Bar is dead, but it looks like everything else is here to stay.
If the action button becomes a feature of all devices, not just the pro iPhones, that could provide all kinds of interesting uses. It's interesting that they brought back a button after going on this crusade to remove all buttons, so maybe they're reversing some of their decisions? They certainly did with the Touch Bar.
Inevitability.
Apple is well known for its "One design to rule them all" approach. I am referring to Uniformity, of course, in Apple's products. When I began my journey into the world of iOS, it was with an iPhone (4S) and a whimper. Because I was coming from an Android device that had 2 volume buttons, a power button, 4 buttons on the bottom of the display, and. . . a little joystick-like control in between those 4 buttons. Those buttons were:
• A "back" button.
• An "App Drawer" button (think App Library).
• A "home" button.
• A "search" button.
This was in 2012, so yeah, lots of buttons on Ye Ole 'Droids. So switching to my very first iPhone meant giving up 3 buttons and a joystick. However, I quickly learned how, at least with the iPhone, one button was all I needed. Back then Siri was brand new, and there was no such thing as biometrics (in Apple products).
As the years went by, I experienced the evolution of the iPhone. In 2013, I got my first upgrade to the 4S, an iPhone 5c (Yellow). That was the first big change for iPhones, as the original iPhone 5 introduced the Lightning Port. This, in turn, meant replacing charging cords or getting 30pin to 8pin adapters.
Good times. . .
Sadly, the 5c was a train wreck. For those who are unaware, those particular models were made of cheap plastic, and were prone to things like:
• The entire front of the display popping out of the case.
• Home button falling out.
• Volume/power buttons getting stuck inside the casing.
• Entire device breaking in half. Literally.
Needless to say, that model was bunk, but I digress. . .
I eventually upgraded to an iPhone 5S, and was introduced to biometrics, as this was the first iPhone (for me) that had the TouchID feature. That was, in my very biased opinion, a game changer. In 2014 I would upgrade to an iPhone 6, and then came the next big change with the following upgrade.
The iPhone 8 was the first iPhone I experienced with the 'haptic' Home button. I acquired this model in 2017, and at first I hated it. TouchID seemed not as reliable, and the home button would sometimes not register touch pressure at all. Also, where the hell is my headphone jack?!
In 2020 (or '21) I upgraded again to the iPhone SE2. Interestingly enough, I still have this model, though it was not my last upgrade. I absolutely love the look and feel of the SE2 models. They look like an iPhone 8, but are far superior. The 'haptic' Home button works much better and the phone is faster, and far more responsive. I mentioned another upgrade, and it is unfortunately full of tragedy and sadness. . .
In 2023 I upgraded again, this time to the iPhone 15 Pro. While this was my first iPhone without the physical Home button, it was not the first time "using" such a device. Sadly, within about 11 days the 15 Pro overheated to the point of bricking. $1k paper weight, anyone? Luckily my cellphone provider has a 15 day guarantee that allows a customer to return a new device, for any reason, no questions asked. So, they swapped out my 15 Pro for another. That iPhone lasted almost 2 weeks before meeting the same fate as the first one. And no, I did not charge it over night. Either one.
Lucky, indeed. . .
So now I am back on the iPhone SE2, and it works incredibly well. Running iOS 17.2.1. Even the dreaded glitch with the Lightning port on the device seems to have been resolved, as I no longer get random moments of absolutely no sound when unplugging the charger, etc.
While I am rediscovering the joy of a fully functional iPhone with a working Home button, TouchID, and an App Switcher control that actually works, I will admit that FaceID was phenomenal on the 15 Pro. Probably about the only thing that worked "correctly" on that damned device. . .
If Apple decides to build a device that eliminates all physical buttons, I would be all for it, providing said device has all the functionality as good as (if not better than) devices with physical buttons.
I don't believe people are necessarily afraid of doing things differently, so much as they are afraid of things not working at all. Apple has, as of late, a track record of "hit or miss" when it comes to innovation.
Until the 15 Pro, I hated the concept of no TouchID. I didn't mind losing the home button, as I mentioned before, I have used iPhones without a Home button, long before obtaining my own. However, I like the TouchID feature. FaceID, nevertheless, is much faster, and when you are actively using the iPhone, it makes things like unlocking sensitive information, logging into accounts, and making purchases a breeze.
So, bring on the next gen innovation, Apple. Just make sure everything does more than simply look pretty. 🤨
Fine by me, with a few custom tweaks
I'd be fine with the removal of buttons as long as there's an accessible way to do what the buttons did.
I didn't love the swipe up gesture to get to the home screen, so I added a 4-finger tap in the Voiceover command settings, and voila, an easy way to get to the home buttens.
Swipes on the back of the phone could be a cool way for apple to replace the volume button. Frankly, I think a double-sided phone would be more useful than a folding one anyway.
Bring on the next neat idea. I love innovation. I'm waiting to upgrade my iPhone 12 pro, but I haven't seen anything in more recent models that I'd call an improvement.
"Machine learning"
Apple could learn a thing or two about sensors from Android. One example that I can think of, in relevance to this topic, was a unique feature on the Google Pixel 2 called "Active Edge.
This feature worked similar to 3D Touch on the iPhone, except it was built into the left and right edges of the device. You could squeeze the device to do things like.
• Activate Google Assistant.
• Silence Alarms.
• Ignore incoming calls.
Another feature this device had was a large Fingerprint sensor on the back of the phone. Besides the obvious, you could do gestures on the sensor to activate all kinds of functions.
While I am not suggesting Apple do the same thing on future iPhones, it is an example of things that "could" be done to eliminate hardware buttons. 🤷🏼♂️
Possibly switch to Android
Hi,
My first thought when I saw this was maybe I could get used to it. I got used to face ID and the slide gestures. Yes, I got used to them, but I don't really like them. If I could go back to a home button and touch ID I would. The lack of a home button annoys me much more than face ID. So in retrospect I really don't think I'd like a phone with no buttons at all. The thing that really annoys me about the whole face ID thing is you having no choice. I've got an iPhone 12 mini, and of course no home button and only face ID. But did they put a fingerprint sensor in the power button which would be the logical thing to do? Nope. In an ideal world, you would be able to go into settings, and choose whether you want face ID or touch ID. I really don't see a valid reason why Apple couldn't have done something like this. I haven't got a problem with the concept of face ID , but give people choice! And I don't like tapping the back of my phone for stuff. I accidentally tapped the back of my phone recently and got . . . well I don't know what I got but it was something I wasn't expecting lol! If the day comes when iPhones have no physical buttons, I would seriously consider switching to Android provided those phones don't also go buttonless. But the one problem with Android for me is typing with TalkBack. On the iPhone, I can double tap on letters (standard typing in VoiceOver settings), use dictation or predictive text. I do use a combination of all these to type, and thank God for the text selection option available as part of the rotor! And yes, I do actually double tap on letters, I hate sliding my finger around the screen and lifting it up to get the correct letter. I seem to be the only blind person in the world who types like this. I'm probably not, but it certainly feels like it. I saw an old Sony phone which did have this option, but on the Google and Samsung models I tried out, you had to slide your finger around or nothing. Maybe things have changed now, this was like six years ago. And of course there is always the SmartVision phone from RAZ Mobility running Android with physical buttons. I prefer mainstream products, but I might well end up going down that road. I wonder how many blind people actually use the SmartVision phone anyway? I only heard about it recently on a podcast about blind tech and so on; One of the presenters was using it. The blind people I know use a mainstream phone, either Apple or Samsung etc..
Progress
Sad but is call progress. This is more if it will happen but when. At the end of the day, is a sighted world. Just hope that is accessible. We blind nuts do not rule the world, OK, maybe in the Apple TV serie see which did not last. It will keep to the point that it will be a a glass pannel that has no buttons and be able to be like a credit card. Probably by 2030.
Re: Audio jack
The lack of an audio jack is not a problem if you still want to use wired headsets.
I have a pair of Bose noise canceling headphones that I like to use on airplanes. I bought a short adapter cable at Best Buy for just a couple of dollars that plugs into the iPhone on one side and the 1/8th inch jack from the Bose plugs into the other side of the short adapter. I just keep this adapter on the Bose headset most of the time and can easily transfer it to other devices if needed.
Since I updated my iPhone from the iPhone X to and iPhone 15 Pro recently, I bought a new adapter that uses USBC on the iPhone end and can still be used with my Bose headset.
--Pete
Re: What will I do when there are no more physical buttons
When that happens we'll finally have parity with sighted people since theyh won't be able to find the buttons either if they put their iPhones in a case!
Just kidding. Despite many of the negative comments in this thread, Apple seems to be very sensitive to accessibility. I'm guessing there will be some kind of tactile indication along with haptic feedback. That will also benefit sighted people since they also like the tactile feedback.
Along the same lines, who would ever have thought that blind people would ever be using a flat piece of glass to interact with any type of device? Amazingly, Apple (and others) made it work and we take it all for granted now.
Similarly with Face ID - Many people thought that blind people would have a very difficult time using this reliably when it first came out. But again, now it is second nature and works more reliably, securely, and faster than the old touch method.
--Pete
Re: Re: Audio jack
Or we can just use a pair of OEM Apple EarPods with Lightning Connector. I have owned a pair of these since my iPhone 8 in 2017. . .
Removal of physical buttons
I don't really have much of a choice. I either have to adapt, or find another alternative that works to my specification. When I upgraded my phone to one without the home button, I created a custom gesture to get to the home screen, because I couldn't use the swipe gesture that was available. I'm not scared of change, I'm just scared that my device won't work as I intend for it to when I need to get a task done. When Something is broken, it takes forever to get it fixed, if it gets fixed at all.
And, yeah, I've also noticed that sound is better when voiceover is off. Strange, I thought I was the only one.
Lot of fuss about nothing.
Sorry guys not sure what all the fuss is about. Ultimately, there is no way apple would launch a phone without any buttons and not build in the ability for us to use it. Like when the home button went there was so much moaning on here and yet I suspect now that 90% of those who didn't want a change are happily using a phone without a home button. Even if that meant creating your own gestures to get home etc. It maybe the same hear We can add our own gestures to any non existent buttons. For me it would be great if I could do a swipe to turn up the phone or down. Really, we have to move with the times. We as a community make up a tiny user base for hardware and we can't expect apple to just say "oh the vi community won't like this" so lets not bother. We'll adapt and all will be fine.
Strongly condemn Lee
Sound harsh? I was worried I would type something harsher there so just typed that word and quickly moved on to the body/comment field. They add all those stuff like wallpapers for the "LGBTIQAP+" community and black people, and "inclusive" emoji for the "LGBTIQAP+" community, and at the very same time, they ignore those with disabilities? They do take the steps to rename the Siri voices to make them "genderless" and then add voice 5, but the very same voices get deleted all the time and users can't use them with VoiceOver. The voices you find in Settings>Accessibility>VoiceOver>Speech>language X>Siri, and those you find in Settings>Accessibility>Spoken Content>Voices>Siri, even have different sizes. Why? Could it be because they don't care about VoiceOver at all? If you're the CEO of some global giant, identify as "LGBTIQ+" yourself, brag about adopting a so-called inclusive approach and advertise your stuff on the basis that you care about accessibility and lead the way for innovative accommodations that make it easier for more "disadvantaged" customers to use your products, then you do have to do what it takes to make your sh*t user-friendly and convenient for as many as possible instead of just targeting the so-called average customer base and get the most out of the least investment and effort possible. It appears that Tim Cook's interpretation of "inclusiveness" is not really inclusive enough or the whole "inclusiveness" thing is just another promotion strategy. What they do is force as many as possible to use their stuff as they are instead of adapting their own stuff for as many as possible to be convenient to use. It is ultimately customers that adapt to the products; not the other way round. I have an iPhone SE3 with a home button and don't want to switch to a device without it mainly because I find Touch ID more convenient than Face ID. I may be able to use a device without a home button without any problems myself, but not everyone will. Plus, the removal of the 3.5mm jack or the plan to eventually remove wired charging altogether, are not even accommodation problems concerning a particular group of users. So Apple is a company that just plans and implements its own strategies without caring so much about user feedback and opinions, as all customers are supposed to do is act as voluntary promoters of its products walking around with them and bragging about them. The thing is, this elitist attitude first requires that we have truly good stuff deserving to be bragged about.
@Enes Deniz wow.
Lee just said that we will adapt, which we will. It's not on apple if you don't like the way they're going, if you don't like it, keep your old phone or switch to android.
It also isn't on apple if you are being stubbern when it comes to their new phones.
They work with blind people otherwise blind people wouldn't be using them.
The LGBT stuff had nothing to do with phones. As Lee said, we're a very small part of the apple userbase, as much as blind people may not like it, we just aren't thought about as much as non disabled people. But you know what? Apple has thought about blind people enough so that I can do whatever I like on my phone so I'm completely fine with that.
Accessible
As long is accessible to me, I do not care.
Emerging from lurk mode
Apple gave us a phone with a button and told us how great it was. Then they built touch ID into the button and told us how great and secure it was. Then, out of the blue, they release a new phone design with no button and no touch ID. And they never tell us what was wrong with the old design. They simply tell us the new design is even more great and more secure. Projecting a few years into the future, we can expect these design features to also fall by the wayside without explanation.
If I haven't turned you off with that opening salvo, let me tell you a story.
I had an original iPhone SE with a home button that I loved. Unfortunately, that phone developed an issue. It became increasingly impossible to raise the volume while the phone was in handset mode. Realizing it was pointless to have a phone that didn't allow me to hear the caller, I upgraded to the iPhone 10R. No home button on the 10R. Yes, Apple provided gestures, but they were slow and clumsy compared to what I had been doing with a home button for over 10 years. After a few months of being appalled at my much more expensive phone with my bigger screen that I couldn't see and it's skunkworks gesture interface to compensate for the lack of a home button, I gave the phone to a friend and bought an iPhone SE 2020. It's not the original iPhone SE, but it's almost a reasonable size, I can hear callers most of the time, and the home button is easier and more intuitive to operate. This is not a blind thing. Even my sighted spouse with her iPhone 13 complains about the awkward interface that replaces the home button. But, in a way, it is a blind thing, because Apple's rationale for this design change was to add 8mm of screen real estate that is useful only to the sighties.
Page three.
I'll be upgrading very soon, to either an iPhone 15 or, if I can wait, to a 16. This is for a paid writing gig that's in the works. I'll need to be on current hardware. So, love it or leave it, I'm losing my home button.
This brings me back to Siobhan's original question. What will I do? I'll adapt, as Lee pointed out a few comments back. It doesn't mean I'll like it. And, one day, when Apple decides to get rid of this interface and replaces it with some other sparkling new interface that gets them lots of marketing hype and column inches but does nothing to actually enhance the user experience or increase usability, then I will have a good laugh. Because that's all we can do.
May the muses dance in rhythm to the tapping of your canes.
If you blabber on and on about "inclusion" and don't care...
If you blabber on and on about "inclusion" and say you're gay and whine about being subject to discrimination and add stuff that makes the "LGBT+" community feel "valuable" but then don't care about the disabled, then you're supposed to make your definition of "inclusion" as "inclusive" as you assert it to be.
Don't touch! by All Doubt
I know just what you're sayin' So please stop explainin' Don't tell me 'cause it hurts.
No buttons on a smart phone? I mean when are we going to get there? I had a bluetooth device with earphones and on the stick it had a tactile surface that you can rub up to increase volume and down to reduce volume. You still need the human touch, now that is Bruce Springsteen wanting to get laid real bad.
Since when did pants have a gender? Women if you did not know actually wear the pants these days. However, don't expect me to sport a skirt or women underwear, should have said lingere but damn word correct failed me!
Please apple hire me, I would design your new iPhone with no buttons, no screen, no speakers and completely dust free. It's been raining since you left meNow I'm drowning in the floodYou see, I've always been a fighterBut without you, I give up
I can't sing a love songLike the way it's meant to beWell, I guess I'm not that good anymoreBut baby, that's just me
And I will love you, baby, alwaysAnd I'll be there forever and a day, alwaysI'll be there 'til the stars don't shine'Til the heavens burst and the words don't rhymeAnd I know when I die, you'll be on my mindAnd I'll love you, always - Bon Jovi
Lyrics aside
Though there was only one decent song out of the three you quoted, I gotta have speakers. I know you were in jest but I can see a major conniption coming after all, the headphone jack had it, the home button's death also caused trouble. I'll continue to use what works until I choose differently. If I upgrade I'll deal with any issues then. Oh wait, two songs were decent.
LOL! Siobhan
Let me guess the 2 songs that you liked, they are old fart material now: Don't Speak by No Doubt and Always by Bon Jovi
However, I love Bruce Springsteen equally. When you speak of no buttons it realy hurts when you can't use the washing machine, microwave and other items you would like buttons on anymore. I was looking for smart home accessories but I ain't the fortunate son, no I ain't, no I ain't the fortunate one.
Honestly, the Times they are a changing and if I saw you in heaven would you build the wall? How much of yesterdays technology is still relevant? Welcome to the machines