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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.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Please note:
I have an iPod, iPhone, Mac mini and Apple TV. This is not a troll, only the truth that can be seen even by Apple users.
#DeleteFacebook
with a unique, identifiable and recognizable shape for their phone is an idiot. Just like anybody who needs everyone to know what phone brand they use.
You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.
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?
I’ll be sticking with my notch-less iPhone 6S for a while longer.
While there are certainly different tiers of smartphones, we’re really at the point where these are more or less commodities. They’ve been powerful enough to keep using multiple years for some time now.
So sorry, Mr. Veblun, but I won’t be spending $1000-1200 on a phone.
#DeleteChrome
The Essential Phone does this, in a slightly less obnoxious manner (since the cutout is smaller) -- and receives much ridicule about it.
Justifiably, in my opinion -- it's a terrible design decision. It could be OK if the status bar sat below the cutout instead of being cut in half by it.
Marco Arment said:
Many Apple fans were amused when Phil Schiller explained the removal of the headphone jack on last year’s iPhone as “courage”. But that was nothing compared to what happened last week.
Since we're using "courage" as a synonym for "stupid" these days, the removal of the headphone jack took more "courage". The cutout has mostly an aesthetic impact. The headphone jack removal has a functionality impact.
Isn't it obvious? The 'notch' screams QUALITY so loud that even non techies are eager to part with their $1,000. Combined with the clearly identifiable Apple Watch, these proud owners will turn their noses up at the rest of us unwashed common folk.
...omphaloskepsis often...
The funny thing about the notch to me is I don't really care about it, it seems like non-Apple people are making a bigger deal out of this than the Apple people...
I thought Apple people were the ones who cared about superficial looks, but that does not appear to be the case.
On a side note I didn't get the part of the video where he was swiping up to home, he was pretending he meant to scroll instead? But who does that from a tab bar, honestly. The rest of the video was amusing though.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I enjoyed the article, until the last line: "That’s courage." Really? Reminds me of this ...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
It would be OK if Apple didn't force all apps to use the areas on both sides of the notch and always displayed status icons on a black background.
The whole thing would bland and sort of become invisible. But that would be good for users and bad for marketing, so screw the users.
#DeleteFacebook
But even there he had to circle the thing in big lines to call it out. In real use after a week or so you'll not even notice the thing is there.
In real use people rotate phones rarely, even looking at photos they are more inclined to zoom to see a landscape image than they are to rotate.
In watching videos most people rotate, but if you consider how tall the screen is doesn't it seem like most aspect ratios for movies / tv shows will have black bars at the sides of the screens anyway? It's only video shot on the phone itself that would really fill the screen like that unless you were cropping the top/bottom of the video.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Judging by the design decisions being made in the computer industry over the last few years, there seems to be an awful lot of designers who think that bad design is the hallmark of good design. It's the curse of the UX crowd.
In the past few years, cell phone makers appear to have "embraced" the fashion design world, in the manufacturing of a tool, namely the smartphone. Watch just about every announcement, read pretty much any story about a new smartphone, and what's typically the #1 thing they announce? How fashionable, stylish, colorful and slim it is. Heck, if they even mention it, it is at the BOTTOM of the article, on how well it works in it's name...AS A PHONE. You have stupid stories about how "ugly" bezels are, how it detracts from the design to have a hideous camera bump on the back. Instead of having a good tool, they have relegated the smartphone, to the red carpet runways of the hollyWEIRD crowd. It's now nothing more than a status/fashion symbol. Can't wait for the low attention span crowd to move on to something else to screw up, and the smartphone will be off it's silly diet, allowed to wolf down a few pizzas, some cheese fries, gain some WEIGHT. Thicken up the smartphones, put back the LARGER batteries, add some slight bezels to hopefully stave off any impact to the edge of the phone, cracking the screen, place a retractable 5-10x zoom lens and larger camera sensor on the back. This fashion icon crap, is nothing more than a way for manufacturers to jack up the price even more because morons continue to buy into the "fashionable/slim/colorful/stylish" crap. With build costs of the flagships (Apple/Samsung) of around $300 dollars, but "commanding" prices above $1,000 dollars now, you'd thing people would demand the price come back down. Heck, people claim pharmaceutical, oil companies and other are ripping people off, but no one blinks an eye, to overpay for a smartphone.
I just put a piece of duct tape over my old Iphone 6 so everyone will think it's an iphone X
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
This is how a fanboy admits that Apple really fucked up the aesthetics.
"It's not bad ergonomics if I can train myself to stop doing it."
The compromise is that it's asymmetrical from top to bottom, or from side to side in landscape. Rounded corners are ridiculous too IMO -- they certainly weren't a "feature" in CRTs -- but at least they seem like a deliberate choice. The notch feels like they tried to cram too much on the front of the phone. Personally I would have preferred removing everything from the front except a fingerprint-through-glass sensor. If an edge-to-edge screen is *that* important, then do it all the way. If it's not, then leave a bezel. A notch is a half-assed compromise.
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere