It's not dead yet (the Home button)

August 04, 2022

If you thought the good ol' Home button was on its way out, think again.

The Home button has been a fixture on iOS and iPadOS devices since 2007, but Apple seems to be slowly phasing it out in favor of gestures and Face ID.

However, a leak of an entry-level iPad due later this year suggests Apple may not be done with the Home button quite yet.

To me, the Home button is anachronistic, but maybe Apple is right.

Touch ID continues to be popular with many people, and old habits die hard. I'll bet there's a sizable number of users who actively want a Home button and will buy a new iPad because it has one.

-- Leander Kahney, EIC.

The 10.2-inch iPad expected in fall 2022 supposedly will get a face-lift. Leaked CAD drawing indicate the upcoming tablet will have a larger screen and the flat edges Apple includes in its other tablets. But the low-cost iPad 10 reportedly will remain the last iPadOS device with a Home button after the redesign.

Dimming your lights is just the most obvious feature of the newly announced Wemo Smart Dimmer with Thread. It uses mesh networking to provide fast, reliable connections to your HomeKit home-automation system so you can control the switch from anywhere.

If you ride a bike, now you can now get turn-by-turn navigation from Apple Maps in all 50 states. That’s because cycling directions recently arrived in Hawaii. If you get rolling now, there’s just time to bike through the whole country in ... never. Not gonna happen. But it’s nice to know directions are available if you need them.

Exclusive to Cult of Mac readers, we have a massive price drop on Microsoft Office for Mac until 11:59 p.m. PDT tonight. No one else is offering MS Office for this low.

It’s about time! But don’t get greedy and expect the upgrade immediately. The Redmond tech giant says the rollout to users will be incremental.

The Soundcore Motion Boom Plus is a powerful, portable outdoor speaker you might want to nab before summer’s over. The boombox-style Bluetooth speaker brings the brawn — 80 watts of power — along with a bit more heft than some competitors.

On August 4, 2008, Steve Jobs acknowledged Apple's mistakes with the MobileMe launch in an email to employees. The message was considerably less severe than the tongue-lashing an angry Jobs dished out during an in-person postmortem.

Tweet o' the day

One more thing ...

"I think if you do something and it turns out pretty good, then you should go do something else wonderful, not dwell on it for too long. Just figure out what's next." -- Steve Jobs

Reply

or to participate.