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Comment by mortenjorck | Hacker News Reader

I can understand the compromise of the "notch" for the sensor bar in portrait-oriented UIs. Some thoughtful juggling of the status bar, some added interaction, and you're all set. A reasonable trade-off.

What I cannot understand at all is the compromise in landscape mode, for games and video. Rather than just black out the uneven area and limit the drawable area to the largest unbroken rectangle, everything Apple shows appears partially obscured by the notch. The AR game example literally has the notch starting to eat into the UI. In my book, this leaps from "acceptable trade-off" to "bizarre sacrifice." It's like living with a cracked corner of the screen, right out of the box.

View on HN

This phone has a 19.5:9 screen so 16:9 videos will have vertical black bars on either side that are thick enough to envelop the notch. You can see that in this [1] hands-on video.

[1] https://youtu.be/OzTLlolkXxU?t=4m22s

Let me guess - it uses 19.5:9 because 18.5:9 and 18:9 were taken already and Apple can't really use a "used" concept? :)

I'd imagine they used that ratio because it allows (fairly standard) 16:9 videos to be displayed without the notch eating into them.

Said another way, why didn't they adjust the notch or other dimensions to support the nearest wider standard like 18.5:9?

These go to 19.5:9

Is 18.5:9 really a standard? And does it matter? They will sell a hundred million of these things and it will this become a standard size.

Well I think the notch at top of iPhone X is to make it a top notch phone.

Collect your last cheque from the front desk and get out

*sighs, looks down, shakes head

iPhone X fails to unlock and asks for PIN?

Thanks for the laugh. That said, I am concerned that HN is becoming more and more like reddit. No offense, but the reason I come to HN is for serious informative discussion, not puns and jokes. I realize this is an asshole thing to say but I just had to let this out.

Aah I agree. I do resist most of the time. But this 'HN is becoming Reddit' is itself a cliche repeated here far more often than I like. A direct "Please no joke' would be just fine.

I think it's good to leave that up to the app developer. They can choose to use the space around the notch or crop it.

It's not as significant as the notch, but the corners of the display area are also rounded off, so the screen has some fairly interesting effective geometry in terms of viewable pixels.

I wonder if the graphics and UI SDKs will have built-in functions to determine where these boundaries are (as they're likely to change in future models), or if developers will just be expected to work around them as best they can.

New metrics covered at https://developer.apple.com/videos/play/fall2017/801/

I imagine most developers won't want to design a tweaked layout specifically for the iPhone X. As a compromise, developers will probably just avoid putting important UI elements near the horizontal edges, similar to what console developers used to do to accommodate older TVs [1].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Safe_area_(television)

Apple is asking devs not to crop it.

"Don't mask or call special attention to key display features. Don't attempt to hide the device's rounded corners, sensor housing, or indicator for accessing the Home screen by placing black bars at the top and bottom of the screen. Don't use visual adornments like brackets, bezels, shapes, or instructional text to call special attention to these areas either."

https://developer.apple.com/ios/human-interface-guidelines/o...

That's one interpretation. Cropping video content doesn't necessarily fall into that, yet I can see how some other designs would and why they would want developers to avoid that. Besides, there's also:

> Be mindful of aspect ratio differences when reusing existing artwork. iPhone X has a different aspect ratio than 4.7" iPhones. As a result, full-screen 4.7" iPhone artwork appears cropped or letterboxed when displayed full-screen on iPhone X. Likewise, full-screen iPhone X artwork appears cropped or pillarboxed when displayed full-screen on a 4.7" iPhone. Make sure that important visual content remains in view on both display sizes.

Emphasis mine.

EDIT: Also here [1]:

> Adhere to the safe area and layout margins defined by UIKit. These layout guides ensure appropriate insetting based on the device and context. The safe area also prevents content from underlapping the status bar, navigation bar, toolbar, and tab bar. Standard system-provided views automatically adopt a safe area layout guide.

The diagram shown suggests a "safe area" even inset a little from the notch.

[1] https://developer.apple.com/ios/human-interface-guidelines/v...

I think they got their aspect ratio statement backwards. Surely 16:9 (iPhone 7) content appears pillarboxed on the 19.5:9 screen (iPhone X) and iPhone X content appears letterboxed on the iPhone 7?

Same guidelines also specify the safe area to put actual content, which excludes that area. In addition they suggest not hiding the status bar, which generally would push your content below it anyway.

> Inset essential content to prevent clipping. In general, content should be centered and symmetrically inset so it looks great in any orientation and isn't clipped by corners or the device's sensor housing, or obscured by the indicator for accessing the Home screen

...and...

> If your app currently hides the status bar, reconsider that decision on iPhone X. The display height on iPhone provides more vertical space for content than the displays of 4.7" iPhones, and the status bar occupies an area of the screen your app probably won't fully utilize.

[emphases mine]

My take is they don't want you putting a black background up there to mask it (unless all of your background is black, presumably) but you don't have to lay out around it either. For videos and photos in particular, since black is the normal background for outside the image I doubt there'll be an issue using it at the ends.

My take on this is that they're aiming to have people experiment with the two little areas rather than have everyone immediately "letterbox" it away. (Although to be honest it's a little baffling since I think it detracts from the phone, especially when playing games or watching videos).

Probably, yeah. I think the proof will be in how they deal with HUD-less full screen games like Infinity Blade--will they expect an animated background to draw around the notch, will they be OK with a 16:9 crop to normalize between phones, or what?

> What I cannot understand at all is the compromise in landscape mode, for games and video.

I find that an odd glass-half-empty view. Since the screen has more pixels than earlier phones, instead of worrying about some being "taken away" by the notch, consider it as Apple adding some space for status info and the like to dead space that was previously bezel.

> instead of worrying about some being "taken away" by the notch, consider it as Apple adding some space for status info and the like to dead space that was previously bezel.

But my bezel didn't literally cover parts of videos or fullscreen app UIs.

I don't really get your point. Sure, overall you get more pixels but the screen still gets covered partially and you're not allowed to fill in the left and right of it with a black bar to make your content look not overlapped.

> I don't really get your point. Sure, overall you get more pixels but the screen still gets covered partially and you're not allowed to fill in the left and right of it with a black bar to make your content look not overlapped.

Plenty of content will use a black bar, especially 16:9 video.

For non-video content you could put info there that previously would have covered other content. (Plus I think the non-pixel notch area would be a perfect place for Safari to banish those stupid floating "share" buttons).

Instead of getting hung up on the camera zone and what it "takes away", think of the phone as having a large rectangular screen plus a pair of small rectangular additional screens, like ears. Even if those little regions were always black you'd still have more pixels than Apple's previous phones.

> Plenty of content will use a black bar, especially 16:9 video.

Huh? I'm not sure I follow. By default video playback does not unless you manually resize it. Apple's updated language means you can't explicitly do this to cover those gaps with a black bar, either.

It's not exactly the best user experience if I have to manually resize videos smaller to fit the screen properly.

> Even if those little regions were always black you'd still have more pixels than Apple's previous phones.

That would be great but Apple does not approve of that as per their updated language in their ToS for developers. You can't just fill it in with black bars (otherwise I would agree with you though I would argue Apple should have ways to automatically handle that).

The iPhone X display is 19:9. You cannot display video without either cropping or letterboxing, i.e. black bars.

And I don't know what you mean by apple doesn't approve of that: their own Human Interface Guidelines for the iPhone X ( https://developer.apple.com/ios/human-interface-guidelines/o... ) read: "Inset essential content to prevent clipping. In general, content should be centered and symmetrically inset so it looks great in any orientation and isn't clipped by corners or the device's sensor housing, or obscured by the indicator for accessing the Home screen. " They also include a picture showing precisely that.

Also just above that they read, "When designing for iPhone X, you must ensure that layouts fill the screen and aren't obscured by the device's rounded corners, sensor housing, or the indicator for accessing the Home screen." I.e. don't use a square element part of which would lie off-screen, do try to light up in a practical way all the pixels.

But regardless of what apple says, feel free to be unhappy about this if that makes you happy.

> The iPhone X display is 19:9. You cannot display video without either cropping or letterboxing, i.e. black bars.

So it looks like they do, in fact, black bar it by default. If you double tab it will zoom in which causes the video to be clipped by the notch. https://twitter.com/stroughtonsmith/status/90778373980314828...

> And I don't know what you mean by apple doesn't approve of that

Nothing what you posted is relevant to what I was discussing. In fact it was completely differently.

What I was discussing was having games / apps fill in the rest of the bar so it looks like a flat bar (so it won't look odd with partial content above and below the notch). Many iOS developers have been chatting about this over twitter and other forums and the language being pointed out seems to prevent deliberate obscuring / hiding of the notch itself. https://twitter.com/cabel/status/907684825376595968

> But regardless of what apple says, feel free to be unhappy about this if that makes you happy.

I don't follow; I originally replied to offer a correction to a statement you initially made. I never even stated that I am unhappy with the notch. I'm not a fan right now but it would likely grow on me and I was thinking about getting a new phone later this year.

There are some UX concerns that I think are legit to discuss. I don't see why that would make me someone who is happy to be unhappy.

Whatever. He and others quoted the same sections I did, and in fact made the comments in regards to video having to be letterboxed.

Sure, if you zoom in part will be lost but then again if you zoom in, because of the different aspect ratio other parts of the video will be cropped too.

I guess we simply disagree that this is a big deal.

When I saw them rotate and play the video I exclaimed "what in the unholy f_ck" and an entire Starbucks looked at me like I am the crazy one.

Thats one of the most awkward things Ive seen on an tech gadget that wasn't made by Doc Johnson.

you're shouting "what the holy fuck" in a starbucks becauseIOS didn't black out the screen near the notch.

You earned those looks.

I assume they were kidding.

To be fair, "what the unholy fuck."

Well I guess that's a matter of theology.

Not so much that they didn't black it out, that the notch was a notch in the first place.

I get having a screen to the edge of the phone is "cool" there is a half inch of black on the top of the iPhone 7, cutting it down to a 1/4 of an inch or whatever it is on the X and not going to the edge would have been perfectly sane... right?!

Edit: It wasn't a shout, so much as a dumbfounded exclamation. In retrospect, I should have table flipped and yelled "Im switching to a Nokia!"

I'd like the notch more if it were less than half the width of the screen

Also, AND THIS MAY BE CONTROVERSIAL, but I don't need to take a selfie. Its cool, I'm fine. No one needs to see what I look like with my seat belt on.

I get that there is the FaceID, etc in there, but if they could reduce the size and focus on things that are necessary instead of narcissistic that'd be the bees knees.

Things that are in that cutout:

    - IR camera
    - IR illuminator
    - Proximity sensor
    - Ambient light sensor
    - Speaker
    - Microphone
    - Front camera
    - IR dot projector

Taking the selfie camera out doesn't let you make it significantly smaller, and FaceID probably uses that anyway (in addition to the IR camera).

https://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/Scree...

Yeah FaceTime to talk to your family is totally narcissistic.

Oh yeah, forgot about FaceTime. I've only used it like 3 times since it came out, but valid.

You may also want to recall that you are not the sole user of iPhones. Selfies are a valid use case even if you personally aren't a fan.

WHAT?

I've never used a tampon. Why do they sell them?

I'd venture say a tampon is not a narcissistic product.

That's a bizarre reaction to a little black bar. 'Meh' or 'Bleh' seem more appropriate.

I'm an emotional being what can I say?

sounds like you experienced a 0th world problem

Did anyone else notice the false/misleading images in their promotional media?

https://images.apple.com/media/us/iphone-x/2017/01df5b43-28e...

There is no camera bulge there... they just deleted it. This is not something I expect from Apple.

The camera is on the far (under)side of the phone, which isn't even shown in this clip.

From the shot it looks like it's a complete side view so should be visible.

In reality it's probably that the camera is positioned just right so that it's obscured.

They did the same thing when they made the iMacs skinny, just show them at the exact angle to hide the giant butt on them and make them look razor thin.

I think we can chalk up this sort of thing happening once in, what, a decade(?) to an honest mistake.

No! It turns out this is something they have a history of doing!

https://www.theverge.com/2014/9/16/6209759/apple-has-an-emba...

In the exact same way! I'm very surprised, I did not think Apple of all companies would deliberately do such a thing.

I hope other manufacturers pick up on this and just make their devices thick enough overall to match the camera bulge, with a huge bonus in battery capacity.

Phone cases fix the bulge.

And, isn't it true that phone cases are pretty much a necessity? I remember I took my iphone case off a few a months ago... and just a week or two in, the screen shattered when I dropped it on the concrete floor outside as I was stepping outside the car.

Phone cases have a certain thickness (which is more or less equal to the thickness of bulge). In all likelihood, you'll have the case, so the bulge is perhaps not really a problem.

I hate cases, is like people covering their car seats.

I like using them the way they were designed.

>There is no camera bulge there... they just deleted it. This is not something I expect from Apple.

I would expect it from Apple these days. That bulge is the number one reason I will never buy a 7/8/X. Steve Jobs must have been rolling in his grave when they first showed that off.

The notch doesn't bother me that much. If anything, it adds character in a world where phone designs are getting more generic and less distinguishable.

The lack of a headphone jack (and no valid replacement, such as USB-C) gets me way more annoyed!

Wireless headphones are the future.

Weird annoying notches in your screen better not be the future.

You don't get to decide the future! Apple gets to decide the future. Notches and dongles for you.

Well, yeah. They're the ones putting in the graft. So it makes sense they're the ones who get to decide the future.

Wireless earbuds are yet another thing you have to remember to charge every night, easier to lose or break, expensive, and nonstandard. What's the point?

In the abstract, not having wires is clearly better in almost all situations - the only catch being, it doesn't take away features that wired tech have (lower latency, higher reliability/bandwidth, etc). Hopefully Apple's decision will spur some innovation in wireless charging/battery tech for headphones. Sometimes even if the decision is dumb, given the existing state of tech, it forces the industry to change, because of the market pressure that Apple exerts.

Except for musicians, who need a latency-free audio path that won't degrade depending on distance or saturation of the wireless spectrum. Given the amount of music apps in Apple's ecosystem, I'm pretty surprised they removed the one jack that made their device compatible with literally every musical instrument and mixing board out there. They're gutting a huge market.

Jesus. The adapter is like $7. Just leave it attached to your musical instruments and mixing boards.

...and charge it how? If it's in active use recording there's a decent chance it would be nice to charge and record at the same time.

Ditto. It's imperative to be able to charge while you're playing, since music apps along with the screen being on all the time really eats the battery quickly.

The iPhone was never a good choice to produce professional music anyway. An OS running garbage collected apps, running on a hardware platform that suffers from thermal throttling is a bad combination to begin with.

>They're gutting a huge market.

How big is this market of people using iphones to produce music?

Have you ever even used a music app on an iPhone? They do not suffer from performance issues, even with several running at the same time. And Objective-C is not even garbage collected; it's reference counted, so I have no idea what point you're trying to make.

Having attended and played hundreds of rock shows throughout the world, I've seen many musicians use iPads as synthesizers, loopers, effects pedals, and DAW recording studios. I and all of my professional musician friends use it in performances for both audio and visuals. The audio latency and MIDI support of iOS is legendary among musicians, and is why they dominate the musical app market compared to Android with its unusable 20-300ms audio latency.

> expensive

To be fair, OK-ish quality wireless earbuds are now available for ~$30.

You can get voice quality ones for less than $20.

Charging is annoying though. :(

To be fair, I think the wireless charging pad will help a ton here

I've very glad they went with a current standard like Qi instead of inventing their own.

It's hard to express the convenience and ease-of-use in wireless earbuds until one tries them. If you hate wires, then these are straight up revolutionary

What are they if you love wires?

I totally get wireless headphones. The problem is, not every device I listen to music on has Bluetooth. I don't take my phone on runs and I'm not buying two sets of headphones. Not to mention, even when I'm not running, I listen to music on my iPod classic and only use my phone for podcasts.

The Nintendo Switch is a good example - it has a headphone jack but no bluetooth headphone support.

It has Bluetooth comms to up to 8 Joycons and a general purpose operating system, so the limitation is probably a lacking audio implementation, not physical impossibility.

Good news... Apple has the device for you! (the Apple Watch)

Don't worry just make sure you plug in your families 4 laptops, 4 sets of wireless headphones, 4 phones, 2 tablets, 2 ereaders. If you arrange it right you could have an entire shrine to technology.

with inductive charging, this could be as simple as setting all of your devices on a table with a large enough mat (one day.. since obviously not all of those devices support it today).

Every night? You either don't have AirPods or you do and you use them a lot.

i probably charge mine every two weeks. amazing product.

Used to think like that. Bought a pair. Am 100% converted.

Wired earphones are cumbersome and don't really offer any significant audio advantages.

I have a pair of studio headphones for listening to music when I'm at home. But when I'm out in the gym or heading to work on the metro, wireless earphones are 200% more convenient.

Remembering to charge them is easy. I reach my office and plug the charger right next to my laptop charger. Impossible for forget it

Notches will disappear when we’ll be able to put all those sensors under the screen. Until then I think of them as “more” screen rather than less. However cutting into videos/photos taken on the phone is wrong.

It's amazing they can make screens that are non-rectangular. Are there any details on the manufacturing of them?

The actual tech challenges aren't that bad, it's more just supply/demand. Check out below for more info.

https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/102540/why-t...

The idea is that you don't break things that work fine and then replace it with a proprietary island solution that isn't even supported by your non ipad/iphone devices. If I buy lightning headphones can I use them on my macbook? No.

I haven't used wireless headphones yet but I will continue to hesitate until they have fixed the audio quality and pairing issues for good.

Try Airpods. They are amazing and the audio quality and pairing are stellar if you can deal with their fit/shape. It's been about 5% of people that I've had try them where they just don't fit or sit right in their ears.

> the audio quality and pairing are stellar if you can deal with their fit/shape

Wait, you mean for music? I've tried them once and I felt as soon as there's more than 5-6 instruments the expression goes way down, it becomes basically impossible to even identify all the strands. Would not recommend - you can get something like AKG k702's for cheaper and get better sound.

I've got a pair of Grado headphones and a set of those exact AKG phones and I test a few different songs with each pair of anytime I'm assessing a new set of headphones. I test "Fame" by David Bowie, "Bohemian Rhapsody" by Queen, and "Paranoid Android" by Radiohead. The Airpods sounded great for in-ear headphones but they did have a significant break in period of almost 2 weeks. In addition to the fit, ease of pairing, and the overall experience, I can still wholeheartedly recommend them. The AKG's are great but they're not for the same target. I'm not going to go running or working out in my AKG's or my Grado's.

Fair enough. I could see myself wanting wireless headphones for physical exercise, because cable noise is annoying. Thanks for the break in info, it does explain quite a bit!

I've heard they are not better than ear-pods sound-wise

They may not be but I even the EarPods sound good to me and have good range once they're broken in. If you only ever put them in your ears for 1 song and decided they were no good, you're not going to get the best or most objective sound.

Have you tried Shures, or any other decent pair of in ear monitors? If you haven't, you should.

I have. None are wireless and offer the same ease and consistency with as good of sound as the Airpods.

A headphone jack doesn't stop you from using wireless headphones.

That's true, but it's not a sufficient argument. An integrated MiniDisc player would also not stop you from playing music from files stored on the phone, but it wouldn't be a strong argument for including an integrated MiniDisc player.

I want this.

Maybe use it as product placement in the movie 'Last Action Hero 2'?

The real argument is that having a wired option is not a money maker for apple. Apple wants YOU to buy accessories, which are the meat of their business with ridiculous margins. That's just selling to users something they don't need in the first place and making them pay premium for it.

> Apple wants YOU to buy accessories, which are the meat of their business with ridiculous margins.

This is laughably false. Accessories are a tiny percentage of Apple's revenue.

Apple will likely sell tens of millions of AirPods this year. At $159 each, and presumably at very healthy margins.

This is no small business, even by Apple's standards!

Removing the headphone jack was a marketing-driven decision. AirPods are a cool product, but wouldn't have sold anywhere near as well without the forcing effect of the jack removal.

This guy managed to install a fully-functioning jack back into an iPhone 7:

https://strangeparts.com/bringing-back-the-iphone-headphone-...

I never said that accessories don't make Apple money, but that money is a tiny percentage of the amount brought in by devices.

How many fewer AirPods do you think they would sell of the iPhone 7 still had a headphone jack? Given that every iphone 7 came with lightning EarPods and a lightning to headphone jack adapter, I would guess that AirPods sales would barely have been affected.

What is that an argument for? It seems like you should be arguing why removing the jack is a bad idea, but plenty of good ideas could also be implemented purely to make money.

Maybe they're the future, but they're still much crappier than a pair of wired Shures, by a long shot. When that changes, then wireless headphones will be the present. Until then, leaving off a headphone jack is an idiotic omission.

Agreed, I like the notch. Mind you, I don't even own an iPhone, but I also like the Essential (Android Phone) notch. The Android phone's notch was less wide, sure, but I'm not sure it matters.

By all means, if you're displaying UI stuff there then great, don't obscure your buttons with the notch. However I love seeing images/etc with all possible screen visible. I've been wanting a head/chin-less phone for years now.

From the looks of it, I love both of them. The Android and iPhone version.

For all the things Essential Phone didn't do well, it actually did do this part correctly and letterboxed videos & games to avoid the camera cutting into the content.

Any reasonable developer will likely just use the safe area (which excludes the notch) to display video, photos or games.

Is Apple a reasonable developer for the built-in media apps and Safari full screen video?

The aspect ratio of the screen is wider than 16:9, so full-screen 16:9 video will be boxed in on the other dimension first.

Apple specifically says not to do this in their updated Human Interface Guidelines.

Just when I thought we had finally kissed "Title-Safe Area" goodbye...

If you use Safari to view a web page in landscape mode, is the majority of the left edge of the page just chopped off?

Or did they make an exception for that, since most webpages are not specially designed for each and every device that Apple makes?

This is a weird UI problem and I'm looking forward to seeing how Apple addresses it in each of the built-in apps.

No, the text stays in the center portion only. The guidelines say that content covers the screen in landscape unless it’s text, in which case it’s inset.

So those stupid share icons on the side of news sites are going to be completely inaccessible?

It looks like this: http://i.imgur.com/yXA0Reg.png

Done. I’m out. I’ve bought every top level upgrade for the last 10 years of upgrade cycles. But now I am out. No new “rose gold” status for me. :(

Wow that's messed up. I didn't realize it extended beyond video.

On the plus side it's only gonna be an easy software upgrade to fox this for video and the web although it remains to be seen whether apple will accept they're wrong.

Apple is the worst about not following their own Human Interface Guidelines.

Do you have an example of where they don’t follow their guidelines? In my experience they’re pretty good about it; it’s Google that can’t get it together and follow Material Design or whatever their new guide is.

The iTunes app is a notorious example.

What part of the guidelines are you referring to? [1] says "Adhere to the safe area and layout margins defined by UIKit", and the graphics show a "safe area" which excludes the notch at the top.

[1] https://developer.apple.com/ios/human-interface-guidelines/v...

It’s part of the new WWDC videos they posted today. Let me see if I can find a link to them.

Good luck getting your app rejected.

The problem is not the notch but the rounded corners.

I think they wanted to show how "cool" is the whole edge-to-edge screen with all the four rounded borders. If you black out the notch and keep that side square, then you must do the same on the other side and the screen will just look like the old rectangular display.

While I'm sure there will be some option to do this, at least for video, for me, a square shaped phone would have made sense.

> I can understand the compromise of the "notch" for the sensor bar in portrait-oriented UIs.

Me too. Still, it'll be nice if there's an option to disable the notch and just use a slightly shorter display. There are no doubt Apple engineers out there who want this, so I hope it's a hidden accessibility setting :)

This is something that can be largely fixed by the software, but it requires 3rd part developer coordination, that honestly only Apple can pull off. In iOS11 there is a concept of a safe area that UI should respect. With constraint based layout you can have a single layout that moved critical UI components outside of the notch area if its present.

The problem is that the AR game was most likely built with Unity, which has its own 4-5 different UI systems, and my guess none of them are aware of a safe area.

The problem is fixable, but why did Apple allow demo that was not polished enough to work well with their flagship phone?

I agree, when they first demoed it I was pretty shocked. For games, I can kind of understand, they can likely work around it...but for video? No videos are recorded with the thought of the left side of the screen being cut off.

Not necessarily true. There's still quite large amount of video (or film) content adapted from wider aspect ratios that has been thoughtfully framed with the expectation that it will eventually be squeezed into a consumer device-friendly 16:9 aspect ratio.

I don't expect the area encompassed by the notch to be meaningful to a lot of video content (possibly most). I think there are scenarios where it would be a minor problem, though.

Pretty much all professionally recorded content pays attention to safe zones, and has done so since the CRT days: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Safe_area_(television)

Phones historically have been weird for not cutting off part of the image that CRTs and even flat screen TVs have been known to do.

Annoyingly, my TV won't let you turn it /off/. Not only that, but it won't accept it's own panel's native resolution of 1366x768, only 1280x720 which it then scales up to crop off a bunch of pixels. It's like they were dedicated to making a 720p television look like blurry bigfoot butt.

I was pissed off at my projector doing that (same problem with a different native resolution), but then it was a $90 projector. Sorry for your TV.

And this is the true irony of the persistence of title-safe areas: Broadcast switched over to digital nearly a decade ago, analog set-top boxes haven't been produced in large quantities in years, and thus the concept of overscan should be completely dead by now.

Yet TV manufacturers, for some reason I cannot wrap my mind around, continue to implement it, often by default (or in the extreme case, as you mention, with no way to disable it). And so title-safe areas continue to be an issue long after the obsolescence of the technology they were invented to work within.

Tvs historically have been criticized by filmmakers for cutting off part of the image. Safe zones are only useful when using analog film cameras and movie projectors, not with digital video. Of course, you will never place the face of an actor on the edge of the frame, but that doesn't mean that space is useless for the director or the cinematographer. Every filmmaker has a rectangular frame in mind when composing.

And even if you don't care about watching the film in the right conditions, isn't it annoying to know there's something you're missing behind that notch? It's like having somebody's head in front of you when you go to the movies. Also, there are many films that have a 2.35 aspect ratio, which is wider than 19.5/9.

Sure most of the videos are not films and you wouldn't use a phone to watch films in the first place, but for that price I expect those little details that make the difference. I think Apple has lost that in the recent years.

Honestly the video producers are already used to this bullshit, and have recorded expecting it already. Why? Tube TV. Just when I thought we were going to be able to kiss overscan-safe area goodbye (I mean it's 2017 come /on/), we now have to keep it. Maybe it'll be called "funky phone safe area" now.

I've also heard the screen itself is slightly wider than 16:9, though in which direction I don't know. Hopefully, wide enough for native 16:9 to naturally black bar the notch

Maybe that's where you're supposed to put your thumb.

I already find watching video on a phone annoying because my fingers get in the way. I'd think it would be worse on this device.

Probably that's marketing I would expect game developers to rationally use the unobscured portion

But they will use the obscured portion irrationally.

Oh man that notch bothers me. I suppose maybe I'll get used to it, but is making such a drastic design decision really worth the extra few millimetres of pixels on each side of it? It just bothers me aesthetically looking at images of it.

I had a similar though about video playback shown. Given it's OLED it seems like leaving it black should work OK in landscape

Here we go...

"Placing black bars makes your app feel cramped"

Screenshot from Apple design video: https://twitter.com/SteveMoser/status/907686208154816515

It's good the screen extends around the sensors. People will figure out better way to use it, or you might say, work around it.

Same feeling I get when websites have sticky headers – just like the one on apple.com

Yep, Apple doesn't want devs to blackbar it.

https://developer.apple.com/ios/human-interface-guidelines/o...

"Don't hide it because there's nothing wrong with it... but don't draw any extra attention to it either."

It's like the way people talk about moles or scars.

Which begs the question:

Would Jobs have delivered this?

note: I personally say no. The form factor is, with all it's curves, a failure for creating UI/UX that feels complete. It's going to force more people to go Android first with their software development. When Android starts getting newer and better software more frequently the sea change will continue to widen and even long lasting fans will want to try something else.

It only begs the question because you decided to bring it up.

Probably not, but trying to run the company by the philosophy of "Would Jobs have done this" is impossible, since if emulating Steve Jobs' brain was possible, he wouldn't have been a unique talent.

Eh. The ethos died, too.

The protruding camera on the back of recent models would be considered unacceptable.

https://begthequestion.info

On what authority does the author of this site tell me what things mean in my own native language?

The author did not lay claim to authority but they did give a reason for taking the time to tell you what things mean in probably their own native language; that reason was laid out in the second paragraph of the section with the heading 'What it is not'

Well, "beg the question" is a translation from latin - petitio principii - so pedants could say it isn't from your native language (unless you meant latin).

Language evolves - things that start out as misunderstandings or errors become informal usage, then dominant usage, then the correct way.

Others stay misunderstandings or errors.

It pays to learn the correct way so you sound educated as you speak, and so other educated people don't automatically discount what you say, but there's little benefit in attempting to correct others.

That said, mis-using erudite words or phrases spoils the effect.

You are allowed to use the same words as an idiom while not using that idiom. The words make sense as a non-idiom. It is not a misuse to do this.

>Language evolves - things that start out as misunderstandings or errors become informal usage, then dominant usage, then the correct way.

Yes, language does evolve. For example, American English has evolved in such a way that "beg the question" now means "raise the question" to the vast majority of people in the year 2017.

Forgive me, but I think you're in the minority of people who bristle at the contemporary usage of this phrase, which makes you come off as incredibly pedantic.

Please note that I responded to the "by what authority" comment, not the "begs the question" comment... The reason to care about official meanings is to avoid sounding uneducated.

I literally could care less about "begs the question". The formal use can be depreciated - we're not likely to staunch that floe. But irregardless of my feelings, people who flaunt the official meaning and right "begs the question" in the increasingly common usage have the wrong affect - they sound like they're putting on heirs - "raises" or "brings up" each sound more naturist.

(Yes, that was fun. I hope you like it, too!)

Top notch response! :)

> Language evolves - things that start out as misunderstandings or errors become informal usage, then dominant usage, then the correct way.

Kind of like how "I could care less" actually means you don't care at all, despite the literal interpretation of the sentence meaning that you're capable of caring less, which means you DO care.

You can mean what you want, but in this case you're using an important idiom from philosophy to mean something else. People will pick you up on it. Best to say "raises the question" if that's what you mean.

We lost this fight a while ago. I see and hear "begs the question" to mean "raise the question" from all sorts of media.

And people don't pick up after their dogs.

Oh, I do say "raises the question", because I'm aware of this debate and I want to head off language pedantry. That doesn't mean I don't disagree with said pedantry.

I've literally never seen a usage of "begs the question" that couldn't be immediately disambiguated by context.

None. I just imagine it's useful that other people understand you.

But hey, if you want to use the wrong words, phrases, etc, then it's your right to do so. ...

Well I am glad you cast it in terms of people understanding one another, because everyone understands the (scare quotes:) "wrong" version of "begs the question" perfectly.

Words mean things, but what they mean is a social phenomenon, not handed down from some authority.

> if you want to use the wrong words

You say while advocating for a mistranslation.

Perhaps I misunderstand you - what am I advocating for? I thought I was advocating to keep everyone on the same page?

Should I start randomly using your and you're? If you can figure it out, what's the point of using the "correct" one?

> what am I advocating for?

Aren't you advocating for the "correct" use of "begging the question"? I'm just pointing out that such a use is also wrong.

> I thought I was advocating to keep everyone on the same page?

As if it actually confuses anyone.

> If you can figure it out, what's the point of using the "correct" one?

Because misspellings slow down comprehension. Using words in a different manner that both people understand doesn't.

Language is such a messy affair lol.

I can see where you're coming from. It just sucks that this argument seems to be, "there is no right, get used to wrong shit". And I know, I know, you're debating whether it's wrong at all - but I can't help but feel when people say the exact opposite words than what they mean, it feels wrong. For example, "I could give a damn" vs "I couldn't give a damn" _(and variations of it)_. It's an almost hilariously opposite meaning to what the user intended, yet.. it's going to become the "right" meaning.

Is there no end in your eyes? When does this just start becoming broken English?

> "I could give a damn" vs "I couldn't give a damn"

That's more understandable to object to because the words in a literal context are being misused. This is the creation of an idiom because of people misremembering the phrase. It's probably too late to stop, but idioms aren't created at a very rapid pace.

Begging the question is nearly the opposite situation. There exists an idiom where the words as taken literally are a mess, and people are using the same words, basically-correctly, to not mean that idiom.

"When I use a word," Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, "it means just what I choose it to mean- neither more nor less."

"The question is," said Alice, "whether you can make words mean so many different things."

"The question is," said Humpty Dumpty, "which is to be master-that's all."

I don't understand what point you're making.

The point is that you don't get to mean what you want to mean. That's childish. You mean what others understand you to mean.

Relevant xkcd - https://xkcd.com/1860/

I read this comment and thought "oh I have a friend that would love this guy."

This isn't reddit.

People go iOS first because iOS has a much better market for paid apps - if Objective C wasn't enough to discourage this approach, I doubt a notch in the UI will be.

> It's going to force more people to go Android first with their software development.

I don't understand this comment. What do "all its curves", as you say, have to do with iOS developers suddenly preferring Android? The iOS App Store has approximately a 7x revenue potential vs. Android's store, why would a developer abandon that just because of a new phone's form factor? There have been many new form factors in iOS devices over the last years, and that hasn't swayed anyone.

I don't think "beg the question" means what you think it means. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Begging_the_question

Here is another explanation http://www.quickanddirtytips.com/education/grammar/begs-the-...

Not only does it (descriptively by usage, whatever pedants might prefer) mean exactly what it was used upthread to mean, that usage is structurally distinct from an impossible to confuse with the usage pedants prefer (and helps the pedant-preferred version make sense.)

That's the TL;DR version, the full rant is available at: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13708712

It's even on the linked wikipedia entry: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Begging_the_question#Modern_us...

All that post says is that it is common to use it incorrectly, which it is, but we should not encourage bad habits.

> All that post says is that it is common to use it incorrectly

I'm not sure if “that post” refers to the grandparent or the one linked from it, but in either case you are incorrect. There are several other things addressed beyond frequency of usage.

OK if that's as much sense as an anti-pedant can make, I'm gonna side with the pedants.

Laziness

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