If the leaked photo of the new MacBook Pro is in fact accurate, one of more intriguing aspects is that it lacks a clickable button on the trackpad. This might not be too surprising given Steve Jobs anti-button crusading over the years. There’s a well-known story about Jobs not wanting any buttons on the original iPod, but eventually relenting after he was finally convinced that users needed an obvious way to turn the device on.
In a story published in 2007, the Wall Street Jouran ran a piece discussing Jobs’ disdain for all things button related.
From the article:
“Buttons have long been a hot-button issue for Apple’s CEO. Bruce Tognazzini, a former user-interface expert at Apple who joined the company in 1978, says Mr. Jobs was adamant that the keyboard for the original Macintosh not include “up,” “down,” “right” and “left” keys that allow users to move the cursor around their computer screens, giving it a sleeker appearance than other personal computers have. Mr. Jobs’s reasoning, says Mr. Tognazzini: Omitting the cursor keys would force independent software developers to create programs that used the Mac’s mouse — a novel technology at the time.”
We’ll find out tomorrow what tricks Apple has up its sleeve, and it’ll be interesting to see if the new MacBook Pro’s are indeed buttonless. It might be a shocking omission in the eyes of many, but not too surprising if you know a little about Steve Jobs.
October 14th, 2008 at 10:14 am
Excerpt from “The Riddle of Amish Culture”, by Donald Kraybill”
The Amish were sometimes called “hook-and-eyers” because they considered
buttons too ostentatious, and some Mennonites were nicknamed “button people”.