“Yet again, third-party accessory makers have revealed an upcoming iPad design,” Matt Burns reports for TechCrunch.
“Alibaba.com is awash in cases for a redesigned iPad. Nearly every case is for a device that has a thinner bezel and slimmer profile,” Burns reports. “In short, the next iPad will look like the iPad mini — except, you know, just not mini.”
Burns reports, “This has happened for nearly every iDevice launch since the iPhone 4. Every iPad — full size or mini — was revealed prior to Apple’s announcement through case makers. And a good chunk of case makers display their wares on Alibaba.com.”
Read more, and see the photos, in the full article here.
Related article:
Apple to announce markedly narrower, thinner, lighter next-gen iPad on June 18th, says source – April 16, 2013
Is there a missing home button here?
The absence of a visible home button in these photos is consistent with rumours that Apple is pursuing an alternative to the failure-prone electromechanical switch, possibly in software but also possibly through biosensor technology. Moving parts are a twentieth-century fad; observe the decline of the hard drive, the departure of the mouse and keyboard. Hand jive, all of it.
Look how long the belly button has been in existence. Who could live without it?
when i press my belly button, it doesn’t take me home
Press it enough and some nice men will come and take you to a new home! 🙁
A mechanical home button is necessary if you consider the necessity to achieve the aims of:
– Rejecting false positives or unintendend touches. If you have a capacitive touch home button, your finger(s) might brush against this and the button will need to interpret whether the touch was intentional and take you back to the home screen or if it was unintentional and let you stay in the app. Imagine if a user registered multiple false positives in a day. That would be frustrating in the extreme. An electromechanical button that responds to a user’s input must receive a button press that depresses the button to touch the contacts beneath it. Any presses that it registers must therefore be intentional. Also an electromechanical button registers two or three touches and takes you to the task bar or disability assistance whereas if you touch a capacitive screen button even slightly twice, does the OS interpret that as you wanting to go to the home screen or to the task bar. Too many subjective interpretative issues there.
– Separate the screen from command elements. You need to have a physical separation between screen navigation elements – back button, etc, from fundamental button elements which take you back to the home screen or to the task bar depending on the number of presses. If the home button were embedded in the screen as part of the screen, this might confuse users as to what was fundamental (home screen command) and what was ancillary to the app (back button and sub-menu items).
Addressing reliability issues. Apple has made great strides to make electromechnical buttons ultra reliable. The earlier iterations of the iPhone up to the iPhone 4 models were prone to home button malfunctions, stuck buttons, etc. Since the iPhone 4S and including the iPhone 5, the home button has been given a makeover resulting in higher reliability. The iPad from the second generation onwards has not had major home button malfunctions mainly because Apple made the home button extremely robust on the iPad.
They’re necessary until something better comes along. Never heard of any malfunctioning home button problems on any iPhone.
Next to the glass over the display, it is the most common component to fail.
I disagree however that a physical button is needed.
it has been thought – and said – that the bottom bezel might be multi-touch-able – like a Apple track pad or mighty mouse surface… however no graphic indication is even printed to express a home key? That is strange. Even SamyDong has backlit graphics for its touch sensitive RETURN, HOME and MENU buttons.
physical buttons are extremely important.
as we see – volume and power on/off remain physical buttons.
@ hannahjs, i hope apple keeps a physical home button; “a twentieth-century fad” my Apple keyboard has plenty of physical keys to press. My car, my home, the wall switches all are so “a twentieth-century” . Oh I am feeling so old now.
Yet, if mind control switches and thought activating buttons — OR HOW ABOUT — SIRI voice assistance to activate the home screen… well then, if Siri can set us free and well into the 25th century with accuracy and ease of use… then I am all for the lack of a physical home button – okay!
IMO, if no home button, no bottom bezel would be present. Image is fake.
Electromechanical switches work well. They’ll certainly outlast any device you buy under normal conditions. And I’m speaking from experience.
Outlast the life of the device? I just went through and replaced the home button, power switch and headphone jack of my iPhone 4. Still have the original display, so I certainly haven’t abused the unit. It is a moving part. It will fail.
“It’s an imperfect world. Screws fall out.” “The next screw that falls out, Bender, will be you!”
Yes, outlast the device. Do you use your iPhone as a hockey puck?
Then how much will you pay for my iPod touch 1st gen which works fine except the home button is inoperative? Or how much will you pay for my daughter’s iPhone 4 (white, 16GB) which has an inoperative home button (thank goodness for the Assistive technology option that puts a “button” on screen all the time)? Or how much will you pay for my iPhone 5 where not all presses of the home button produce a response other than an audible plastic compression sound?
easily airbrushed out.
Yes in a mockup of the iPad and case that the home button has no bearing on. Check the 5th picture there is a home button on that one.
You don’t need cases available on day 1.
IMO, you don’t need cases period.
agreed – Apples case will suffice if needed
Yeah and those leaked case stories have been wrong too.
Just watched iSteve. Nice.
Apple Insider.
Fake!
AAPL down almost $5 in premarket trading. Just might see $400 today. But hey, they have an updated iPad coming out soon. Oh boy! I was looking to pick up a few long-term calls today but I think I’ll wait till it drops further. Maybe around $325. Jeez, it’s got to be rough if you held all the way down from $705 down to this! Sad.
Never thought I’d say this, but the UI looks stale. Hope Jony and his team make some significant progress on that front.
It’s amazing how the UI looks stale when just 2 years ago it was cutting edge.
Think about it. How could it be any better, any easier to use, given the needs of the touch operating system?
It is possible to get it right the first time.
Could you please elaborate on how and why “the UI looks stale”.
It’s just a personal opinion, but here are my thoughts (in no particular order). Some of the items aren’t UI aesthetics related per say, but more functional in nature.
– The icons look drab.
– The colour scheme throughout the UI doesn’t
feel consistent, in general, the colours look
washed out.
– The notification centre isn’t overly functional.
It would be great to toggle settings for example.
– There’s nothing I can do on the lock screen except
unlock my phone. I’d like to see some
notifications/appointments/emails/weather (etc)
on that screen (allow me to customize it).
– The keyboard UI is ugly. The functionality is limited
(no swipe typing – if you’ve used swipe typing
it’s hard to go back to touch typing).
– The Settings section feels cluttered, sometimes
it’s a pain to find what you’re looking for. It makes
sense for app settings to be in there, but it needs
to be organized better.
– In general, the experience feels overly curated. While
this appeals to the masses, as a technical user I’d
like to be able to get underneath the hood. I realize
this last item will never happen.
I know I could get some of this functionality by jailbreaking my phone, and applying a bunch of third-party hacks to address some of the points above, but I’m really not interested in going down that road.