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Touch Screens Are Over. Even Apple Is Bringing Back Buttons. (www.wsj.com)
submitted 10 months ago by to c/technology@beehaw.org
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The tyranny of touch screens may be coming to an end.

Companies have spent nearly two decades cramming ever more functions onto tappable, swipeable displays. Now buttons, knobs, sliders and other physical controls are making a comeback in vehicles, appliances and personal electronics.

In cars, the widely emulated ultra-minimalism of Tesla’s touch-screen-centric control panels is giving way to actual buttons, knobs and toggles in new models from Kia, BMW’s Mini, and Volkswagen, among others. This trend is delighting reviewers and making the display-focused interiors of Tesla and its imitators feel passé.

Similar re-buttonization is occurring in everything from e-readers to induction stoves.

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[–] 10 points 10 months ago* (7 children)

Fuck yeah: Buttons! Keyboards, expandable storage, and swappable batteries next please. I miss being able to accurately touch type on my phone without looking. Virtual keyboards have never been great and the mainstream ones are getting enshittified more and more (Heliboard is OK with some minor modification, but it's open source).

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  • [–] 4 points 10 months ago* (2 children)

    Yeah I'm not really a fan of virtual keyboards that are basically querty on the screen. The compact size of the phone kinda demands a different approach.

    I use flickboard which helps me minimize typos. My all time favorite virtual keyboard was the now defunct minuum. I was able to reliably touch type with it. I stopped using because it wasn't open source (but miss it despite that).

    https://www.cnet.com/reviews/minuum-keyboard-review/

    https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=dZh8r-xErGE&pp=0gcJCR4Bo7VqN5tD

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  • [–] 3 points 10 months ago (3 children)

    Virtual keyboards have never been great

    I'm actually surprised that nobody ever fundamentally reinvented text input for touchscreens in a way that caught on.

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  • [–] 2 points 10 months ago

    There have been touch-specific keyboard layouts, but not really for English or other languages with Latin characters. You can probably imagine that CJK touch KBs can be pretty creative sometimes though.

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