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Apple did a good job of executing on a bad idea with the iPhone X notches. But I don't believe Steve Jobs would've let the iPhone X (or Touchbar) out the door b

Apple did a good job of executing on a bad idea with the iPhone X notches. But I don't believe Steve Jobs would've let the iPhone X (or Touchbar) out the door because they're so clearly half-measures. Apple is implementing temporary workarounds (that won't exist in future devices) in their top of the line products. This is the kind of short-term thinking that they're so famous for avoiding. They're still doing quite good overall but this is clearly something they're struggling with.

sekou 9y ago
In addition to the attention to design detail it speaks to the brand strength of Apple that if any of their competitors released a phone with a similarly unconventional screen shape it would have been a weakness that would drastically affect the acceptance of the phone, even if it was engineered in the exact same way. The notch is truly a feature only Apple would be able to have success with.
djrogers 9y ago
> I don't believe Steve Jobs would've let the iPhone X (or Touchbar) out the door This is a ridiculous trope that needs to die. Among the many ‘half-measures’ people whined about during Steve Jobs’ tenure are things such as the original iPhone not having 3G, the iPhone 4 antennagate, the infamously scratch prone iPod Nano, the crack prone poly MacBooks, etc etc. Apple was never a company that produced only flawless, non-controversial products, and Steve was perhaps the most controversial and opinionated product person to have ever lived.
- bahram_banisadr 9y ago
  Apple's biggest asset has always been design. On a tehnical basis Apple products sometimes beat the competition and sometimes are outdone by the likes of Samsung, Thinkpad, etc. They have dominated the American consumer market because of fit and finish, attention to detail, and overall functional beauty in design. The flaws you're speaking of are a different sort from the, frankly weird looking, notch. While executed as well as possible, its a design compromise.
  - stouset 9y ago
    The notch is a literal non-issue that only people who don’t actually use this damn device seem to complain about or even notice. I for one am happy that an entire strip of nearly-useless status icons has been shifted upward into the extra area afforded by the notch. The number of times I notice it in a given month easily rounds to zero.
    - Sir_Cmpwn 9y ago
      >The notch is a literal non-issue that only people who don’t actually use this damn device seem to complain about or even notice. Do you suppose it's possible that it's no coincidence that people who dislike the notch don't use the phone?
      - tedunangst 9y ago
        Certainly not a coincidence that everybody who hates the notch feels compelled to tell the world about it.
      - stouset 9y ago
        It’s the same story every time Apple releases a new product. People who overwhelmingly don’t buy Apple products in the first place lose their minds over some nit, while the overwhelming majority of their actual customers never seem to understand what the big deal is. I’m not surprised at all: these people knee-jerk so hard and often, they probably can’t afford Apple products after the paying for orthopedic surgeons. And the “ignorant Apple fanboy” narrative that seems to be the counterargument to this falls laughably short when you realize that the number of Apple’s customers has been increasing exponentially for the last fifteen years, all while they continue to enjoy the top spot in consumer satisfaction surveys across virtually their entire product line.
    - 8note 9y ago
      different shapes cause the strength to change in different ways. certain notch designs are much better than others for keeping the screen from breaking.
    - 9y ago
- ninkendo 9y ago
  Another really obvious half-measure was that the original iPhone didn't have an app store. "HTML5 is your SDK", basically, and adding sites to your homescreen was all you could do. Steve Jobs tried to pretend this was a good thing: > And guess what? There’s no SDK that you need! You’ve got everything you need if you know how to write apps using the most modern web standards to write amazing apps for the iPhone today. So developers, we think we’ve got a very sweet story for you. You can begin building your iPhone apps today. They fixed that the very next release.
  - TrainedMonkey 9y ago
    Apple store is primarily a distribution/discovery channel, I would not be surprised if it started as - hey let's build a catalogue of all the websites that work well on iPhones.
  - wodenokoto 9y ago
    At the time Google was experimenting with off-line apps with their proprietary Google gears. At the time, Google and Apple had a very close relationship and I thought it was odd that Apple didn't implement offline web apps via gears. Most iphone apps are, after all glorified web pages.
  - detaro 9y ago
    One might argue that it was merely to early for that, since web standards around it didn't exist and weren't provided by Apple either. Not having the required focus on the App Store could have been great!
- staunch 9y ago
  Except your list of misfeatures is actually a missing feature and a list of bugs. No one would claim Steve Jobs or Apple was ever perfect, just that he wouldn't have released these blatantly obvious misfeatures. Can you think of anything similar to these weird misfeatures? I'm genuinely curious.
  - sbuk 9y ago
    Hockey puck mouse.
RJIb8RBYxzAMX9u 9y ago
FWIW, Job also (allegedly, but probably didn't actually) said "real artists ship" [0]. [0] http://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?story=Real_Artists_Ship.txt http://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?story=Real_Artists_Ship...
wvenable 9y ago
If you look at iPhone iconography -- it's always been basically a rounded rectangle with a circle and square for the home button. Easily identifiable as an iPhone with just 3 shapes. With the home button gone, the notch is used to distinctively represent an iPhone. Perhaps the whole thing is purposely form over function.
- kurthr 9y ago
  Don't believe that their competitors will have notch-less phones... they will copy slavishly! Count on it (unless they have a design latent in the notch).
  - kurthr 9y ago
    Yep, no patent on the notch. http://bgr.com/2018/02/01/iphone-x-review-android-copy-design-lol/ http://bgr.com/2018/02/01/iphone-x-review-android-copy-desig...
- twothamendment 9y ago
  Form over function? I think you nailed it. Would it be less expensive to manufacture using circles? Would sales decrease if they had? Would anyone really notice? I wonder how many man-hours were spent debating the shape of the corners.
dilap 9y ago
I don't know, I have one and I genuinely love the notch (and the other rounded corners). The device feels organic and sci-fi in a way that strictly rectangular screens do not. (But I haven't seen an all-screen phone yet, so maybe I'd change my tune if I did.)
eanzenberg 9y ago
LUL. 20b in 3 months profit and they're struggling!
eanzenberg 9y ago
What is wrong with the touchbar? What is wrong with the notch? I've been on a touchbar mac and it's just as usable as having keys, with the added flexibility of changing them around (adding a lock button, etc.). It's mostly a non issue and does everything the prior bar did. The notch essentially houses the 1 feature most people love on their X's, it becomes a non-issue once you use it. Or, if you're like me, you recognize that instead of losing a notch, you gained 2 ears of information.
- Veen 9y ago
  I find the Touch Bar frustrating. It's probably because of the way use my MacBook Pro on my lap a lot. I find that I often accidentally press buttons on the Touch Bar because my hands naturally rest in that area. My real problem with that model is the sticky keyboard, though. My space bar and several other keys are intermittently unresponsive, which irritates me no end.
bluthru 9y ago
Having all of the corners be equal is a very Apple thing. The notch will recede over time.

sekou 9y ago

In addition to the attention to design detail it speaks to the brand strength of Apple that if any of their competitors released a phone with a similarly unconventional screen shape it would have been a weakness that would drastically affect the acceptance of the phone, even if it was engineered in the exact same way. The notch is truly a feature only Apple would be able to have success with.

djrogers 9y ago

> I don't believe Steve Jobs would've let the iPhone X (or Touchbar) out the door This is a ridiculous trope that needs to die. Among the many ‘half-measures’ people whined about during Steve Jobs’ tenure are things such as the original iPhone not having 3G, the iPhone 4 antennagate, the infamously scratch prone iPod Nano, the crack prone poly MacBooks, etc etc. Apple was never a company that produced only flawless, non-controversial products, and Steve was perhaps the most controversial and opinionated product person to have ever lived.

bahram_banisadr 9y ago
Apple's biggest asset has always been design. On a tehnical basis Apple products sometimes beat the competition and sometimes are outdone by the likes of Samsung, Thinkpad, etc. They have dominated the American consumer market because of fit and finish, attention to detail, and overall functional beauty in design. The flaws you're speaking of are a different sort from the, frankly weird looking, notch. While executed as well as possible, its a design compromise.
- stouset 9y ago
  The notch is a literal non-issue that only people who don’t actually use this damn device seem to complain about or even notice. I for one am happy that an entire strip of nearly-useless status icons has been shifted upward into the extra area afforded by the notch. The number of times I notice it in a given month easily rounds to zero.
  - Sir_Cmpwn 9y ago
    >The notch is a literal non-issue that only people who don’t actually use this damn device seem to complain about or even notice. Do you suppose it's possible that it's no coincidence that people who dislike the notch don't use the phone?
    - tedunangst 9y ago
      Certainly not a coincidence that everybody who hates the notch feels compelled to tell the world about it.
    - stouset 9y ago
      It’s the same story every time Apple releases a new product. People who overwhelmingly don’t buy Apple products in the first place lose their minds over some nit, while the overwhelming majority of their actual customers never seem to understand what the big deal is. I’m not surprised at all: these people knee-jerk so hard and often, they probably can’t afford Apple products after the paying for orthopedic surgeons. And the “ignorant Apple fanboy” narrative that seems to be the counterargument to this falls laughably short when you realize that the number of Apple’s customers has been increasing exponentially for the last fifteen years, all while they continue to enjoy the top spot in consumer satisfaction surveys across virtually their entire product line.
  - 8note 9y ago
    different shapes cause the strength to change in different ways. certain notch designs are much better than others for keeping the screen from breaking.
  - 9y ago
ninkendo 9y ago
Another really obvious half-measure was that the original iPhone didn't have an app store. "HTML5 is your SDK", basically, and adding sites to your homescreen was all you could do. Steve Jobs tried to pretend this was a good thing: > And guess what? There’s no SDK that you need! You’ve got everything you need if you know how to write apps using the most modern web standards to write amazing apps for the iPhone today. So developers, we think we’ve got a very sweet story for you. You can begin building your iPhone apps today. They fixed that the very next release.
- TrainedMonkey 9y ago
  Apple store is primarily a distribution/discovery channel, I would not be surprised if it started as - hey let's build a catalogue of all the websites that work well on iPhones.
- wodenokoto 9y ago
  At the time Google was experimenting with off-line apps with their proprietary Google gears. At the time, Google and Apple had a very close relationship and I thought it was odd that Apple didn't implement offline web apps via gears. Most iphone apps are, after all glorified web pages.
- detaro 9y ago
  One might argue that it was merely to early for that, since web standards around it didn't exist and weren't provided by Apple either. Not having the required focus on the App Store could have been great!
staunch 9y ago
Except your list of misfeatures is actually a missing feature and a list of bugs. No one would claim Steve Jobs or Apple was ever perfect, just that he wouldn't have released these blatantly obvious misfeatures. Can you think of anything similar to these weird misfeatures? I'm genuinely curious.
- sbuk 9y ago
  Hockey puck mouse.

RJIb8RBYxzAMX9u 9y ago

FWIW, Job also (allegedly, but probably didn't actually) said "real artists ship" [0]. [0] http://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?story=Real_Artists_Ship.txt http://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?story=Real_Artists_Ship...

wvenable 9y ago

If you look at iPhone iconography -- it's always been basically a rounded rectangle with a circle and square for the home button. Easily identifiable as an iPhone with just 3 shapes. With the home button gone, the notch is used to distinctively represent an iPhone. Perhaps the whole thing is purposely form over function.

kurthr 9y ago
Don't believe that their competitors will have notch-less phones... they will copy slavishly! Count on it (unless they have a design latent in the notch).
- kurthr 9y ago
  Yep, no patent on the notch. http://bgr.com/2018/02/01/iphone-x-review-android-copy-design-lol/ http://bgr.com/2018/02/01/iphone-x-review-android-copy-desig...
twothamendment 9y ago
Form over function? I think you nailed it. Would it be less expensive to manufacture using circles? Would sales decrease if they had? Would anyone really notice? I wonder how many man-hours were spent debating the shape of the corners.

dilap 9y ago

I don't know, I have one and I genuinely love the notch (and the other rounded corners). The device feels organic and sci-fi in a way that strictly rectangular screens do not. (But I haven't seen an all-screen phone yet, so maybe I'd change my tune if I did.)

eanzenberg 9y ago

LUL. 20b in 3 months profit and they're struggling!

eanzenberg 9y ago

What is wrong with the touchbar? What is wrong with the notch? I've been on a touchbar mac and it's just as usable as having keys, with the added flexibility of changing them around (adding a lock button, etc.). It's mostly a non issue and does everything the prior bar did. The notch essentially houses the 1 feature most people love on their X's, it becomes a non-issue once you use it. Or, if you're like me, you recognize that instead of losing a notch, you gained 2 ears of information.

Veen 9y ago
I find the Touch Bar frustrating. It's probably because of the way use my MacBook Pro on my lap a lot. I find that I often accidentally press buttons on the Touch Bar because my hands naturally rest in that area. My real problem with that model is the sticky keyboard, though. My space bar and several other keys are intermittently unresponsive, which irritates me no end.

bluthru 9y ago

Having all of the corners be equal is a very Apple thing. The notch will recede over time.