Monday was the annual release keynote for new iPhones by Apple. The new camera button is a great idea and looks nice.

Nilay Patel and Allison Johnson, writing about the button for The Verge:

Let’s start with Camera Control, which is a physical button — it depresses into the case ever so slightly, with additional haptic feedback from Apple’s Taptic Engine to make it feel like a chunkier click. It’s not just a shutter button, although you can use it like one and click away to fire off photos from the 48MP main camera with zero shutter lag.

The reason it’s not just a shutter button is that it’s also a multifunctional capacitive control surface. The physical button itself is ultrasensitive, so pressing it ever so lightly brings up swipe-to-zoom controls, and double-pressing it lightly brings up additional controls you can swipe between, like lens selection, exposure, and the new photo styles available on the Pro. It took me a second to determine how hard to press, but it wasn’t hard to figure out. Apple says that as part of a software update later this year, the button will get a two-stage shutter function that will allow you to lock focus and exposure.

Sounds pretty cool. Unfortunately, the trend in recent keynotes continues where the most interesting feature isn’t even launching until “later this year”.

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On the presentation itself, M.G. Siegler describes the event perfectly:

It was just under 1 hour and 40 minutes – just about 100 minutes. It should have been 50 minutes. Just under one hour.

I know they could have made this happen because I watched all 100 minutes. Pretty much every single segment was too long.3 But the real soul sucker was what I called the “Previously, on WWDC” segment. Essentially, Apple went over every Apple Intelligence feature already announced – and still not ready yet, by the way – at WWDC a few months ago. Apple often reiterates what was announced at an earlier event, but not like this. Again, for features that are still weeks, if not months away. It felt like it was too geared towards Wall Street. Or perhaps would-be Google Pixel or Samsung Galaxy buyers – “don’t worry, we have AI too!”