Few things upset Apple product fans like a deletion. Apple’s been pilloried in recent years for “courageously” removing the headphone jacks on iPhones and virtually all the third-party ports on MacBooks and MacBook Pros. I wondered if Apple had any trepidation over what may be its most aggressive deletion of all.Apple’s continuing pride in the home button was clear to me as Schiller described how hard they worked on it and how, over each iPhone generation, it has changed, becoming more powerful, and, when they added Touch ID, critical to the iPhone operation and security.It’s hard to overstate the importance of the home button, as it’s still the first way everyone interacts with their iPhone. (Pick up your phone, where does your thumb go?)
Schiller sounded, for a moment, like he was making a case for keeping the home button. “So here we are at the pinnacle of the best single button interface ever on a device — truly, I don’t think that’s hyperbole — and with incredible strategic advantage compared to anyone else — no one has a touch sensor that works as well as Touch ID and just as we’re at a pinnacle, we replace it,” said Schiller. Then he laughed and added “That is so, so, so, so like us, like other things we’ve done.”
Replacing a feature people like, maybe love, and that Apple believes is as one of their greatest technological innovations is risky and only intensifies the pressure on every replacement technology in the iPhone X.
“We didn’t replace it because it didn’t work well,” said Schiller. “We replaced it because we wanted to do something else and therefore the bar was super high that it had to be great.”
Source: How Apple built the iPhone X
아까 소개한 글의 일부인데, 지문 센서의 삭제를 애플이 근년 해온 일련의 삭제, 이를테면 헤드폰 잭이나 맥북 등의 입출력단자 삭제 등에 비유를 한 글쓴이의 생각이 흥미롭습니다. 그리고 그런 의견에 대한 실러의 자신감도 인상적입니다.