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To turn on my phone, I hit the ‘off’ button. To turn off my computer, I click the ‘on’ button. These things can’t reflect stupidity - they are the manufacturers showing contempt for their customers.

As for the article - they don’t put writing on the buttons because they want to use the same design world wide, and want to pretend that most of the world can’t understand English.

Many buttons on devices such as an iPad can be repurposed or configured thru the operating system Settings, so you don’t want labels on them at all. The perfect device would have no physical buttons at all (smartphones are almost there).

In a smartphone, the entire touch surface is an ever changing array of virtual buttons based on the app running. If these were physical buttons, you’d have an overwhelming number of them like the old Apollo command module.

Nonsense.

These days phones ‘on button’ isn’t an on button. It has various functions depending on what state you are in. To call it an ‘on button’ is technically inaccurate and miss leading.

On my phone if I hold it down, while it is on, the phone asks if I want to power down. If I tap it while it is on and the screen is active then it goes into Standby. That is just two but there are several other things the button does, none of which are accurately described by ‘on’. Calling it an ‘on button’ would be the designers showing contempt for their customers.

Same with computers they usually have a ‘power button’. It even used the universal symbol for power. The button does ‘on’ and ‘off’. And it is not just ‘on’ or ‘off’. a computer having power does not mean it is useable. It could be in sleep, or hibernate, or in the process of starting up. Likewise when you tell your OS to ‘shutdown’ that is a more accurate and useful label than ‘turn off’. Powering a computer off without a controlled ‘shutdown’ can damage the software. Hence selecting shutdown is NOT THE SAME as ‘turn off’.

This whole article is mindless drivel from someone barely competent to use technology.