[armandhammer]

>A circle given the same height provides a smaller pointer target than a square.

To be fair, the click target of the traffic light circles isn't limited to the actual drawn pixels. You can click a fair few pixels outside of it and still get the same result (basically wherever the hover state activates).

[SllX]

Yes but given the same margin for error, a square would still be a bigger target.

The stoplight was a pure aesthetic choice, I would have preferred more functional choices, but it was probably the right call at the time to go for aesthetics. A new aesthetic on a new operating system, that’s exciting, that gets people talking. That said, it’s one of the last elements of Aqua that has remained almost entirely untouched, through pinstripes, brushed metal, stitched leather and now apparently, iOS 7 Strikes Back or whatever we’re going to call it in Mac OS XI.