No sooner had I written about the (possible) upcoming release of iOS 4.3 with personal hotspot facility when I found out that another hugely important feature possibly looks like being added to the iPad 2 and iPhone 5 too.
The change, which will make a lot of people very happy, is the fact that you will now be able to control the iOS devices using a variety of simple gestures. This way you can carry out orders simply and efficiently by swiping, flicking and varying the number of fingers you use.
The knock on effect to this is that the iPads and iPhones which feature this operating system will no longer need to include a home button. The most realistic sounding theory so far is that the iOS 4.3 will be released in a joint package with the iPad 2 in the next month or so. This would then leave us looking at an iPad 2 and possibly iPhone 5 with no home button. The 1st of February is the expected date of the official launch according to a lot of people but we can expect to see a lot more rumours flying about before this date I would imagine.
Bye Bye Home button?
In fact, the recent rumour about the loss of the home button came out before the one about the multi touch control feature, and while the first idea seemed a bit far fetched the adding on of the second change means that it all wraps up nicely and makes perfect sense. This development certainly fits in with Apple’s idea of making their machines as sleek and as intuitive as possible for users, and if you are going to be using multi touch control on a slim new machine why clutter it up with an old fashioned home button?
Will this change encourage more people to upgrade to the iPad 2, or will some of us be reluctant to lose the familiarity and security of the good old home button?
