Developer Marco Arment Shares Thoughts On iPhone X's Notch (marco.org)

Developer Marco Arment writes about the infamous notch on the iPhone X, which Apple has told developers to embrace rather than ignore: This is the new shape of the iPhone. As long as the notch is clearly present and of approximately these proportions, it's unique, simple, and recognizable. It's probably not going to significantly change for a long time, and Apple needs to make sure that the entire world recognizes it as well as we could recognize previous iPhones. That's why Apple has made no effort to hide the notch in software, and why app developers are being told to embrace it in our designs. That's why the HomePod software leak depicted the iPhone X like this: it's the new basic, recognizable form of the iPhone. Apple just completely changed the fundamental shape of the most important, most successful, and most recognizable tech product that the world has ever seen.

Comments

Who is 'Developer Marco Arment'?

[that this is not und]

And why should we care?

Has Apple trademarked 'the notch'?

At times in the past, Apple has chosen to blatantly 'wear' mistakes they have made. Will this be the same? Will there be further generation 'notces' even when the notch is even less necessary?

Will 'screen protector' stickers with a darkened 'notch' area on one side become the trendy thing to stick on your older Apple Gadget?

The many benefits of FaceID

[SuperKendall]

There are a lot of FaceID detractors - that is to eb expected of course, since what Apple does is wait until they can make technology not suck before they include it. Before Apple added TouchID, the only experience people had with touch sensors was very poor sensors that mostly didn't work. But now TouchID is beloved and people fear its removal..

FaceID is the same way. Some phones now have face recognition, but it's so primitive it can be fooled with a picture - and even then it often doesn't work really well, because lighting can affect it badly.

Apple's approach to FaceID will pretty obviously work much better than existing systems, so it will be a lot more reliable and quicker than what exists.

But that's not really what I mostly wanted to point out - in the face of FaceID detraction I wanted to explain the many benefits of the way FaceID works that many people may not have thought of.

1) Most important - it will work for the elderly. You may not all be aware of this, but fingerprint sensors have more and more trouble reading your prints as you age. The U.S. government Global Entry readers cannot even read my mothers fingerprints, at all - TouchID sensors can, but even then sometimes it will not work and that will only get worse as she gets older. But FaceID will work well for anyone of any age.

2) I think the flow for working with the system will work better with FaceID than TouchID. There've been a number of times when I've raised the phone to take a picture, and accidentally unlocked to the home screen instead. Similar deal for the Today view on the lock screen...

3) Since it can "see" when I am looking at the phone I no longer have to pick up the phone if I want to check for notifications on the lock screen.

4) For authentication requests there will be zero delay like there is today where a dialog comes up and asks you to confirm with TouchID. Instead it can simply ask if you approve, having already validated your face before the dialog even appears.

5) People seemed concerned about the bar but honestly who even notices things like that after a week? Those kinds of things always fade into the background after days of use and the brain does not even notice them. It takes a lot of sensors to do what they are doing with FaceID and I'd rather they have that then have the entire screen be clear, and do something wonky like move a TouchID sensor to the back of the phone...

Is the X some kind of leap? No, but FaceID come closer to being a real leap than most iterations have.