Exclusive: Apple will remove home button on next iPad and iPhone; Photo Booth and iLife coming?
We just got some pretty wild information from one of our Apple sources and while it's hard to believe at first, it does make sense. We have exclusively been told that the reason Apple …
Context & Ripple Effects
BGR's Apple sourcing track record frames this one: the outlet's July 2010 exclusive detailing how FaceTime would reach iPod touch and iPad preceded features that shipped, so its claim that the next iPhone and iPad will drop the home button lands with weight rather than as noise.
The claim arrives alongside a confirmed iOS 4.3 beta seeded to developers, which Daring Fireball's same-day pickup reads directly against the rumor, asking whether the build's switching gestures exist precisely to obviate the home button. A second unconfirmed thread — Photo Booth and iLife ported to iOS — would round out a desktop-style app suite on tablets.
First-order effects
- If the sourced claim holds, the next iPad and iPhone ship with no physical home button, making the multitouch navigation gestures appearing in the iOS 4.3 beta the primary way users leave apps and switch tasks.
- Photo Booth and iLife arriving on iOS devices, per the unconfirmed report, would give Apple's tablet a creative-app layer it currently lacks outside third-party offerings.
Second-order effects
- Case and accessory makers designing around a bezel-mounted button would need to retool if the button disappears, while every iOS app developer faces interface changes if gesture-based app switching becomes the default interaction model.
- Rival tablet and phone makers watching Apple remove its most-copied hardware control would face pressure to follow with gesture-driven designs or differentiate by keeping tactile buttons.
Third-order effects
- A buttonless iPhone and iPad would push mobile hardware toward screens-and-sensors-only industrial design, shifting input from fixed physical controls to software-defined gestures — a direction where Apple's own later product decisions remain an open question as of early 2011.
- Porting desktop iLife apps to iOS would blur the line between Mac software and iOS software, pointing toward a converged app ecosystem where the tablet absorbs consumer creative workloads.
The trend: Mobile interfaces are moving from physical buttons toward gesture-based, software-defined navigation, with Apple's home button the industry's highest-stakes test case.