iPod’s circular apps

iPhone’s home button and then the swipe up home gesture are so important and well done that they probably need to be covered as Unsung Heroes, but I wanted to mention something else today as we’re revisiting the whole “app icons in squircles” story (my most recent post + Louie Mantia’s post). The first iPhone in 2007 put apps as squircles on the home screen, and it also put a matching shape on the home button: The shape on the button didn’t survive very long. It was removed starting with iPhone 5S in 2013, which introduced Touch ID – I guess it wasn’t possible to print the icon atop the button without sacrificing the finger detection accuracy. Then, in 2017, the button itself disappeared with the iPhone X. The iPod Touch was the iPhone without the cellular radio – it was made from 2007 to 2019, supported all the same apps as the iPhone, and sported a home button with a squircle up until the end. (Ironically, despite its name, it never got a Touch ID.) But there was another iPod that…