Here is something annoying. Hidden buttons on devices. What is the obsession with hiding buttons? Here are some examples:

I rarely use Mac computers. One time I was using a Mac and it had a mouse with no visible buttons. I knew it had at least one button. Then my friend told me it had a left and right click. How was I supposed to know? It was one solid piece of plastic. There was no indication that there was a left and right button.

I had a Sansa mp3 player. It had a rotating wheel to scroll through the menus and you could click the wheel to select. This was good because I could pause and play by feeling the button in my pocket. Then I got a new model that had touch sensitive buttons. This sucked for multiple reasons. 1: There was a major delay in response. 2: Sometimes touching the button didn’t even work. 3: I couldn’t feel where to touch without looking, so I couldn’t operate it from my pocket.

I have a lamp with a turn knob to turn it on and off. The knob is a hemisphere just behind the bulb, so that the knob is not obvious. The worst part is that it is hard to get a grip on the knob. It is a half sphere, and sometimes my fingers would slip off. Imagine trying to pick up a golf ball by pinching the top part of it. Finally, I glued a bottle cap to it so that I had something to grab.

Televisions. Why do the buttons have to be hidden behind or under the screen? God forbid people see buttons! I have a Samsung TV with touch buttons on the front, but they are almost invisible. If you shine a light at the correct angle you can just make out where to touch. So I put a sticker on the TV and wrote where to touch.

Then there is the PS3 original model. This is not terrible. You can clearly see where the power and eject buttons are, but you still have to hold until it beeps and works. Then there is the damn PS4. I hate the invisible buttons on the PS4 Pro. I can never remember which is the power and which is the eject. What is next, invisible buttons on game controllers?

Why are companies so afraid to show buttons? Buttons are important.