Power Trip
Your Power Button Won’t Last Forever
Companies like Apple want to strip away every mechanical bit
You’re close to becoming powerless over your phone, and it all has to do with the little “wake” button on its skinny right side.
Companies like Apple have worked for decades to remove mechanical parts, including true power switches, from the gadgets they release to the public. Opening up these devices, fixing them, or even fully disabling hardware features has become much more difficult. That’s created a new status quo of slender electronics that corporations have full control over — displacing you, the consumer who paid a lot of cash to “own” a modern smartphone.
This transformation didn’t come out of nowhere. In fact, the seeds of this tech transition can be seen in completely unassuming appliances from long ago. My grandparents had one of those lamps where you would touch the metal casing to turn it on. It was a fun gimmick, but the novelty wore off quickly.
It turns out that physical switches have a lot going for them. They work when your hands are wet — my grandparents’ lamp was impossible to use after I washed my hands. A switch’s position can tell you if something is on or off. They are predictable. And cats don’t turn them on in the middle of the night.
