In today’s digital age, it sometimes feels like hardware has taken a back seat to the software that drives our devices. Button of the Month is a monthly look at what some of those buttons and switches are like on devices old and new, and it aims to appreciate how we interact with our devices on a physical, tactile level.
I think a lot about power buttons these days. With modern devices — especially smartphones — we don’t really use them as power buttons, because our phones are never really off. But that’s a double-edged sword, because while they don’t actually “power” on our phones, we press them more than ever: my iPhone X’s “power” button probably gets pressed dozens of times every day now.