TOBY SHAPSHAK: Goodbye, home key
Ten years ago Apple introduced the single button to smartphones. But the new iPhone X came without it
By dropping the home key the original iPhone introduced to the world, Apple has lived up to Steve Jobs’s famous exhortation: "If you don’t cannibalise yourself, someone else will." What seems like a tiny design change is actually a major shift in the way we interact with smartphones. When it was introduced in 2007, the iPhone broke with convention by ditching all the keys we’d previously used on feature phones. Instead, the phone came with a large touchscreen and a single key — the home key. This simplified interface has been dominant in the smartphone era, offering a simple way of navigating, much like using only a single left mouse click to get around what is actually a sophisticated operating system. Android copied the interface, but added the excellent back key and a key to see previously opened apps. With the iPhone 5 in 2012, Apple’s home key evolved into a fingerprint reader. The company later reinvented the home key, giving it a two-click option that let you see other open a...
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