Un articolo di Drew Millard, pubblicato su The Atlantic, si concentra sull’attuale rinascita dei pulsanti come status symbol.

For a while, gadgets without buttons were a technological marvel. The original iPhone, the journalist Brian Merchant writes in his book The One Device, introduced consumers to the wonders of capacitive touch screens, which, to grossly oversimplify things, turned our bodies into buttons, allowing us to interact with touch screens through movements such as swipes and multi-finger gestures.

L’apparizione di bottoni fisici sugli ultimi device tecnologici, come l’Apple Watch, Amazon Kindle Oasis e il nuovo Sony Walkman, è diventata una sempre più diffusa caratteristica del lusso.

In the simplest sense, perhaps buttons are back because they are inadvertent beneficiaries of the cyclical nature of trends, not unlike boot-cut jeans or low-top Air Force Ones. […] But what makes buttons seem expensive is that they are expensive. The price of touch screens has plummeted as they have gone mainstream, while buttons require more parts and for programmers and physical designers to work together in real time. And a button can’t be updated the same way an app can—it’s got to be right the first time.