Published at LXer:

One of Apple’s famous minimalist design principles is to get rid of buttons whenever possible. With touchscreen devices like the iPhone and iPad, almost all of the buttons appear when needed on the screen. But what about Macbooks with aluminum casings? A new patent application titled “Disappearing Button or Slider” shows that Apple is at least thinking about how to bring elements of touch computing to all devices by replacing buttons and other controls with capacitive controls which appear only when needed.

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