LEAK: Next iPad & iPhone To Ditch Home Button?

Hey guys, we are getting some very strange, but possible, news. Sources are saying that Apple’s next iPad and iPhone will NOT be having physical buttons on the device.

Today, Apple seeded iOS 4.3 to iOS developers and I have been using iOS 4.3 on my iPad for a few hours now, and after activating the “secret” multi-touch gestures, I haven’t found a use for the home button. Personally, I always saw the home button as very awkward, rumors that were circling BEFORE the iPad was announced suggested that 5 finger gestures would be the way that we would be enabling multi-tasking in the (back then) near-future.

People who would know this sort of knowledge say that Steve Jobs always wanted a buttonless iPad & iPhone since the beginning, but that today, that dream can finally start to be realized.

For those of you on an iPad on iOS 4.3, enable the secret multi-touch gesture user interface by connecting it to your computer, opening XCode, open the organizer, and go to the iPad tab. Now, click “Use For Development” and wait until it’s done. Now, go into the Settings application on your iPad and you should see the option magically appear!

Let me know what you think, home button or no home button? So far, I’m digging the no home button. My only concern is at the time of jailbreaking, how will Apple make the new button-less device go into DFU?

Comments

  1. Josh says

    Excellent point about dfu. Maybe they will make it ALL software related. Maybe iTunes controls it and has to be approved by apple servers. Possibly making it very hard to jailbreak unless someone made iTunes think it was a ligit firmware just like using old shsh to approve

    • says

      Thank you. 🙂 Also, yes, I find it very possible that Apple would do that just to lock us out, however, I don’t think it’ll last long. I believe that any software restrictions can be circumvented. Apple might completely take out DFU, which I doubt they will, it’s a hardware failsafe, it would be pretty stupid to do, but hey, it’s Apple, we never know with them.

      It’s possible that they will just change the buttons that you will need to press in order to get into a DFU state. or hold the power button while plugging the charging cable in, it’s all possible, we’ll just have to wait and see.

    • Jason masters says

      Yeah I’m hoping this isn’t true I actually like the home button it makes it easy to get back to my main screen.

      • says

        It does, but until you use iOS 4.3 on an iPad, then you’ll see where I’m coming from. I have always imagined the iPad to be able to close apps by making a “close” gesture with my hand. It just feels so natural.

        The only thing that they haven’t figured out is the rearranging icons, you still need a home button to stop the icons from jiggling.

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