Apple's sleek hardware is stunning, but sometimes it's hard to beat a button

Remember Gil Amelio? He was the cursed picture of a suited mid-level executive who ran Apple for a while before bringing back Steve Jobs and then being eaten alive by him. In one of his many awkward appearances as Apple CEO, he once said he wanted to make the Mac a Maglite: simple, utilitarian, useful. 28 years later, could this bit of Amelio wisdom finally have its day?

Apple’s new products often make headlines. But what interests me right now is how the company is making its existing products easier to use through hardware features.

The design depends on how you use it

For years, Apple has built a reputation for minimizing. Under the glare of Jony Ive (have you ever seen his mugshot of an Apple executive?), the company made laptops so thin that the keyboards came with an expiration date. Thinness and beauty are laudable goals, but they shouldn’t be pursued at the expense of everything else.

It’s no secret that Apple has been returning to this mindset over the years, ever since the MacBook Pro with TouchBar. Today’s MacBook Pros have more ports and better keyboards. And yesterday’s MacBook Pro users got some of their money back, thanks to a class-action lawsuit against the company. Apple has learned the hard way that it’s great when your products look great, but they also need to work well.

Thiago Trevisan

Any port in a storm

You can give users ports without keeping floppy drives, VGA ports, and SCSI connectors. Give them the ports that make sense now. Or, better yet, a year from now. Go skate where the hockey puck mouse is going.

The Mac Studio proves that you can put ports on the front of a Mac and still have a great-looking device. If current rumors are to be believed, even the new Mac mini design will feature USB ports on the front. Imagine a device with front ports in a size that would make even Jony Ive’s poker face smile, made possible by getting rid of the USB-A connector. Just the ports you need, where you need them.

This might be considered heresy, but you could even… dare I say… put ports on the front of the iMac as well. Too many? Okay, what about the bottom?

The fact is, Apple can make devices that still look great, but are just easier to use. And that’s exactly what it did this week.

Wachiwi / Shutterstock.com

I see you trembling with impatience

When the iPhone was first announced, it was famous for having just one button — okay, just one button on the front. It also had a power button on top, a volume rocker, and a mute button. Want to feel old? Of course not, who does? But that was 17 years ago.

Apple removed the front-facing button without losing any functionality, allowing it to add one back. On Monday, Apple unveiled the camera control button on the iPhone 16 lineup, a hardware feature that makes it easy to quickly do the one thing people want to do most quickly with phones.

Apple

Don’t answer phone calls. What kind of monster wants to do that faster? No, when you’re quickly reaching for your iPhone, you want to take a picture. Apple has been trying to make it easier to snap a quick photo for years by adding software features, but many of us (and yes, I’m talking about me) get stuck in the moment. Swipe left? Press and hold the camera icon on the lock screen? Shout and swipe up and find the camera app? Oops, too late. The dog isn’t cute anymore, your kid’s grown up and gone to college.

As Jason Snell points out, the camera control button:

…Does Apple realize that people don’t and won’t do this? [use iOS’s software affordances for quickly taking pictures]and I try to give them a safe, dedicated place for all their photographs.

Add a button, add a utility.

There are limits, of course. A cup holder has its uses, but you wouldn’t want one on your iPhone. A headphone jack has its uses, but AirPods have more.

As great as software is, it can’t do everything. Sometimes you just need a button or a port in a convenient location.

More like this please

Ever since the first iMac ditched the floppy drive, Apple has had a reputation for savagely removing things. Sometimes removing things actually makes products better. No one would look back at the Bondi Blue iMac today and shake their head and say, “It should have had a floppy drive.” But when you get down to the basics of a product, you can also see what it really needs to make it easier to use. Most of the time, it’s a physical element. As Apple does with more and more products, I’m more excited about that than a bag full of Vision Pros.