11th
What's Apple's problem with buttons?
With both the new buttonless trackpads and the new iPod Shuffle, it seems that Apple’s going on an all-out war to eliminate as many buttons as possible from their products.
There’s a lot of value in simplifying controls, to a point. But nobody was complaining that either the laptop trackpads or the Shuffles had too many buttons before. In both cases, the devices are now worse off than they were before, but they look a bit cooler.
It’s easy to see signs of a perpetual internal battle at Apple between usability and appearance. Usually, they find a good balance and achieve high quality on both fronts. But sometimes the appearance-driving forces choke usability enough to leak toxic usability flaws into a shipping product. And I think, like 10.5.0’s translucent menu bar and slanty Dock, and Safari 4 Beta’s tab bar, and heavy shiny glass screens on lightweight laptops, and the Mighty Mouse, that this new Shuffle was a victim of the Apple style police defeating any semblance of common-sense usability.
I’ll agree that moving all of the playback functions on the face of the previous shuffle to one button on the headset of the new one is not as discoverable. However, I’d argue that once the new functions are learned, they are more usable.
The intended audience of the shuffle are people who are otherwise distracted by another task. They simply want to pick it up, hit play, and listen to music in the background while doing whatever they need to do. By moving all of those functions to one button, it creates an easier and more consistent experience.
Consider the following:
- You don’t have to think anymore where the control is. No matter what you’re doing, it will always be dangling from your ear right below your chin.
- You no longer have to find the correct button to perform the task you want. One button means one place to go for every function. (I can’t tell you how many times my wife hits the rewind button on her shuffle while driving, when she means to hit the next button.)
- The most common functions are also the easiest to perform. One click pauses, and two clicks skip the current song.
He’s right, sometimes Apple favors form too much over functionality. But in the case of the new shuffle, the updated style complements the changes in functionality.
