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for a company that has probably made the best buttons in the history of electronics, it's a bummer that they're eschewing them completely

They also make the best trackpads in the industry. Solid-state haptic trackpads. You'd think making the little buttons on an iPhone solid-state would be easy by comparison!
 
There's "reduced mechanical wear" on the button but it's just transferred to the haptic engine which is itself mechanical. What is gained really?
Apparently you've never used any of Apple's haptic buttons. The Home Button on the last few iPhones that had them, or the trackpad on MacBooks, are some of the most impressive haptic buttons you will ever find. You'd have a hard time convincing someone that they weren't real buttons at all with the way they feel.
 
Apparently you've never used any of Apple's haptic buttons. The Home Button on the last few iPhones that had them, or the trackpad on MacBooks, are some of the most impressive haptic buttons you will ever find. You'd have a hard time convincing someone that they weren't real buttons at all with the way they feel.

Agree 100% about the trackpad. I recall the haptic home buttons on iPhone not being that great, though? They definitely felt quite different to the earlier mechanical home buttons.
 
Im down for this on the ipads and iphones...but the crown on the watch and airpods max...i dont see how they are going to make that solid state...that doesn't make any sense what so ever.

In fact, id love if they added the crown to the actual iphone and ipads...unnessary yes, but the idea of an actual scroll wheel to scroll though text on the ipads...if done right, i really like that idea!

I often wonder why the ipads never got a haptic motor in the first place? that and NFC chips as well. I never understood why those lack those core features in every iphone!
 
I wonder what the end game is here, because it can't just be about making the buttons more reliable or improving waterproofing, because the current design is great in both regards.

It has to be about more than just the buttons, such as them wanting to change the design of the phone's frame in a way that can't be done if the current button design is used (like, to choose a terrifying example, making it out of glass).
 
It would be more useful if extended and improved the voice control functions so I don’t have to press any buttons real or haptic.
 
My cousin works as an hardware engineer at Apple. There are different R&D projects running classified in different levels. Each department gets it yearly budget which they NEED to use for their products to improve or innovate in some ways. This solid state button has been worked on for three years now, it derived from the vibration module in iPhone and the now finished Macbook Trackpad. Even though it seems burning cash, it is an essential part of yearly budgets given departments at Apple.

So yes, most obvious innovations are worked on but the tech is not there yet, hence the slow progress on their products.
 
The iPhone 8 Plus’s solid state home button worked fine for me with gloves and when my hands were wet, and it’s a safe bet that the tech has progressed a long way since then.
Thanks. Although the phone's hard to use with gloves anyway, it's often useful to be able to use the buttons regardless.

My macbook has a fantastic "haptic" trackpad, but won't work with gloves. This isn't an issue, of course, as I've never needed to use my laptop while wearing thick gloves.
 
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For those of you who already have phones with a "haptic" button ... do they work just as well as a real button with gloves on, or wet hands?
Well I honestly don’t notice that I have a haptic button. So I guess they work just as well as real buttons.

Although that doesn’t mean we need them. Presumably they take up less space and less prone to failure than mechanical, but I don’t know if that’s true.
 
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