Yesterday, the first information about the new panel appeared Assistive Touch implemented by Apple in iOS 5 beta 3 especially for people with disabilities. This new panel allows us to control directly from the screen of our own terminal a series of functions that can normally be performed using the physical buttons or sensors of our device. Practically, the Home button, the button for activating the Mute function or the volume buttons become useless if this touch panel is activated, and thanks to it, a series of speculations have appeared that are mainly focused on the removal of the Home button from iDevices.
What would be the point of a Home button if our devices can control the functions of the button directly from the screen? What would be the point of implementing a physical button if in its place the screen could be expanded and with it the workspace? The Home button is a "trademark", if you will, of iDevices, it is the tool that helps us to close any application even when it freezes or the screen stops responding to commands. Eliminating such a button would lead to the impossibility of closing an application when the terminal freezes, of entering the terminal into DFU/Recovery Mode or of resetting the terminal.
Leaving the practical aspects aside, from a design point of view a terminal without a Home button might be more attractive to customers, but they would have to learn again how to use an iPhone or an iPad tablet. I, for one, do not think that Apple will remove the Home button from its iDevices any time soon, no matter what gestures it implements in iOS, so speculations of this kind do not really make sense. What do you think, would you manage with the Assistive Touch panel and without a Home button?
