I have an evolving theory that buttons are amazing and people love them.

There were rumors Apple was going to remove all physical buttons from the iPhone. As recently as April of this year, there was reporting that the iPhone 16 lineup would have no physical buttons! But in 2 years they’ve added 2 physical buttons to the iPhone. Probably not too bold a statement, but I think people are happy with more functions available on these phones.

It’s hard to remember, but there were rumors in the early iPad years that Apple was going to make a MacBook without a physical keyboard. MacBooks would still come in a clamshell form factor, but the bottom half would also be all screen. There were also rumors of iMacs being able to project a keyboard onto your desk for you to type on.

Needless to say, none of these have come to pass, and in both cases, we’ve gotten more physical buttons and those buttons have gotten better than the ones that came before. Hell, Apple tried to remove one row of buttons from their keyboards and replace them with a touch bar, and people largely disliked it so the whole row came back.

And outside of the Apple ecosystem, mechanical keyboards are more popular today than ever and products like the Stream Deck which let people add customizable buttons to their desk have become hugely popular as well.

Buttons are good. People like buttons. Thank you for coming to my TED Talk.