On Hardware Home Buttons

Joe Levi wrote the following excerpts for a piece titled "Why the Hardware Home Button Needs to Go Away":

Try this as an experiment: Get a stylus...

That's where I stopped reading. I'm kidding, of course, but seriously I don't know what lead Joe down this not-quite-thought-out rabbit trail. But he suggests a soft home button that's "there when you need [it], hidden when you don't" while totally ignoring exactly how it is that my electronic device is supposed to anticipate when I'll want to return to my home screen. He simply declares that software buttons are "king" and while Joe is, of course, entitled to that opinion it does not make it a fact. Joe also totally ignores the all-important reset function accomplished by the home button on iPhone. I know that no matter what state my phone ends up in (occasionally it will become unresponsive for one reason or another) I can quickly execute a hard reset and make all well with the world.

All of these things need to be thought through a little better before we can make the hardware home button "go away". And if, by the way, it means an unresponsive capacitive home button that is always on the screen but not physical I will pass every time. I hate feedback-less capacitive buttons. Annoying.

iPad 3 Has No Home Button?

Ryan Faas:

The spacing of the icon’s on the iPad pictured on the invite clearly indicate that it’s in portrait orientation rather than landscape.  But there’s no sign of a home button – a design change that Apple has been allegedly been toying with for some time. Google has already deprecated the use of physical buttons on devices and moved to software-only onscreen controls.

I don't think the icon spacing reveals anything. If there is no home button then there needs to be a way to get 'Home' on-screen at all times. No. There is still a home button. The form may change (maybe) but they button remains. I virtually guarantee it.