iPhone Buttons Now More Pressable!

Back in 2011 I wrote about some unpressable buttons on the iPhone: the media-player buttons that appear when double-clicking the home button from a locked screen were too close together, causing accidental track skips instead of the intended pauses. You can see that problem in the left screenshot; I mocked up a quick fix shown in the center; now Apple has fixed it in iOS 6.1 as shown on the right! Yes, I know that correlation doesn't imply causation - but I'd like to think I was one voice among many who pointed out this problem. Good job, Apple, for making your buttons much more pressable!

2 comments:

Joseph said...

YES! I have also complained and posted the same thing on my blog. Seriously, they are supposed to be UI experts. Regardless of which smart phone is the best, you could always say Apple iPhone usability was the better, except for stupid things like this. I was sick to death of trying to pause an audiobook while in the car only to skip ahead or back, and then having to spend 5 minutes trying to rewind to where I was.

Dave Gustafson said...

I totally agree! It's even more bewildering because there was never any reason for those buttons to be spaced too closely in the first place, except a whim of visual design. If it were a tradeoff with another usability concern, it'd be more understandable!