For a good while, Mac hardware was held back because of hardware design. That changed soon after Ive left. Maybe the same can happen with software now.
I want the home button back, TouchID or no. It's (I'm not joking) among the best applications of computer UI ever and it has not been obsoleted, they just abandoned it for worse options.
Cell phones from other brands have Touch ID and it works great. Apple has Touch ID on their iPads and it also works great. As it does on the MacBooks. As it does on the iPhone SE. It should be brought back.
It works OK for me on Mac, but all touchID drops to about 50/50 for me in Winter, under the (otherwise) best circumstances. Dry air, I guess.
On iPhone, specifically, it was awful for me. I was too likely to have wet hands (raining, just got out of shower, whatever—even dried, the higher moisture in my skin meant it didn't work) or gloves on or some other problem that made it fail. Trying to hold it the right way, one-handed, to get a finger in the right position (waaaaay down near the bottom) was also a high-risk maneuver for a drop, and was not a way I'd otherwise have tried to hold the device.
I am not a fan, simply because of the screen real estate that needs to be sacrificed.
Other phones tend to have it on the back, and I have heard there's good progress in having embedded thumbprint readers in the screen.
I have, however, really come to like Face ID.
[UPDATED TO ADD] I think that it's interesting that folks ding comments they disagree with. I upvoted all the responses to my comment, even though they may disagree with me, because they were made in good faith, and contribute to the discussion.
> My Google Pixel 10 has both an in-the-screen fingerprint reader, and a Face ID, and I use both. They're both useful in different situations.
That sounds great.
> Some iPads have the finger print reader on the side of the device, on the power button.
My main iPad is a Mini (latest gen). It has the Touch ID on the top. I find it to be a bit "flaky." It often misses prints. However, I think it works amazingly well, given that it's just a strip.
I also have an iPad Pro, with FaceID. That works nicely. I like that it works in both portrait and landscape. That didn't happen in my older phones, but seems to be the case in my latest (17 Pro).
>I have heard there's good progress in having embedded thumbprint readers in the screen.
Samsung phones have had a perfectly working finger print reader under the screen for many years now. There is no more progress to be made, it is complete.
Face ID is severely lacking compared to MS Hello, simple as. It's at best 50:50 hit/miss compared to Hello which logs me in always. Granted, that figure doesn't include false positives, but the difference is substantial and makes Apple's implementation look really lame, to the point I'd like to see it removed.
See there are users who like Liquid Glass, just as there are users who like TouchID. A lot of Apple’s best work turned out to be quite polarizing at the time.
iOS 7’s design language was almost universally panned, but if it were “the wrong decision,” other phones wouldn’t have adopted similar design language. Material appeared just a year later in 2014. It wasn’t bad, it was just arbitrary.
(“I like Liquid Glass! I like Liquid Glass!” I insist as i slowly shrink down into the size of a corn cob)
On the topic of Alan Dye and the home button though, the swipe gesture interface they introduced when they removed the home button strikes me as one of few genuinely successful system-level Apple design innovations in recent years. That at least seems to have happened under his leadership. Can’t think of much else good to say about what I associate with design under him.
It’s my understanding that Chan Karunamuni was largely responsible for leading the iPhone X home buttonless interface, which, I agree, is fantastic and probably the best bit of UI to come out of Apple in years. Also, the Dynamic Island, which is less impactful, but really good and clever! Anyway, he’s excited about Lemay, so I am too. https://9to5mac.com/2025/12/05/acclaimed-apple-designer-says...
At this point, they are still as high on their own supply on the software side as they were on the hardware side in the heyday of butterfly keyboards, slow/overheating CPUs and broken screens.
I'm not willing to cede the point on hardware design for as long as their primary mouse product cannot be charged during use. It's such a simple and obvious mistake, like a throwback to the days of hockey-puck mice.
Not to mention its ergonomics issues. I held onto mine as long as possible because I loved the capacitive shell. Eventually I had to ditch it though to keep my wrist healthy.
