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Comment by benihana | Hacker News Reader

Minor thing: The iPhone on the site with the app shown on the screen - the low battery percentage, the alarm icon, the odd time and the AT&T icon are all kind of distracting to me. I know it has nothing to do with the actual app, but 11:53 is not a pretty number to look at, nor is 23%. The battery icon is over 3/4 empty which instantly causes me a little bit of anxiety - I'm worried that my phone is dying, not looking at the pretty app interface.

Everything else seems really polished, but those were the first things I noticed, and they distracted me enough to post something here.

Other than that, the app and the features look great.

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It's funny how things like this that has nothing to do with the actual app has an effect on your overall impression of the app.

Absolutely. My favourite is still watch ads - when I realised the watch hands are always (99% of the time) at 10 and 2 - it looks smiley - seeing a watch ad with hands in a different position was very jarring. Odd, isn't it?

Serious question..do those factors affect your buying decision?

Have you ever noticed when you buy a new analog clock or are walking down an aisle that sells clocks, that the hands point to 10 and 2? It's because the clock is smiling at you.

Yes, this affects a lot of people.

Most clocks I've seen anywhere just show the current time.

In fact it's very disturbing to come to an aisle of clocks and not have them all showing exactly the same [current] time. It feels wrong.

And who'd buy a stopped clock anyway? Even though you know it just needs batteries, it feels somehow dead/broken. Your subconscious tells you not to buy.

The clocks hands are at 10 and 2 because it "frames" the manufacturer logo, which is just below the 12 on analog clocks.

I like 25th frame theories as any other geek, but this is absurd.

The hands are at 10 and 2 because it looks aesthetically pleasing and visually balances the clock face. Calling it a smile is a heck of a stretch. It's more of an OK/checkmark then that a smile (and this is also a stretch).

In all of Apple's iPhone promotional images the time is always set to around 9:40 (sometimes I've seen 9:41/42). I'm not sure the reason behind it, but obviously in this case it doesn't look like it's smiling. Does anyone know the explanation for this?

The explanation I've heard is that they were trying to hit the time the iPhone was introduced on the Keynote screenshots. Not sure if they still do that or if it's mostly tradition now.

Thanks, that's right. I did a bit of searching a found an explanation from Scott Forstall.

Why the iPhone is 9:42:

"We design the (product launch) keynotes so that the big reveal of the product happens around 40 minutes into the presentation. When the big image of the product appears on screen, we want the time shown to be close to the actual time on the audience’s watches. But we know we won’t hit 40 minutes exactly."

And the iPad is 9:41:

Yeah! And for the iPhone, we made it 42 minutes. It turned out we were pretty accurate with that estimate, so for the iPad, we made it 41 minutes. And there you are – the secret of the magic time.

Source: http://cydiahelp.com/heres-why-apples-iphone-ads-always-show...

Actually, it's because it shows the logo effectively.

http://www.snopes.com/business/market/clockhands.asp

It is more of a sub conscious thing, over a large sample it might well cost you a few sales.

Something that rubs me the wrong way as a language perfectionist ... "Work out" should be two words to match the others ("Post", "Drink", etc.).

Love the handwriting font, calendar view, and streak badges!

I felt the same way. I still bought the app because I've really wanted something like this. But, weirdly enough, I did look at the iPhone stats first and felt the same way. Other than that, great app!

Serious answer: Yes. These factors indicate a lack of attention to detail in the very first thing a potential buyer sees.

And I thought I was the only one, regarding the battery percentage. It gave me a slight panic feeling. Better change that to 100% for that nice fuzzy warm feeling that this application doesn't suck your battery reserves dry.

The status bar is literally 4.16% of these screenshots. Ignore it and give this fellow dev some relevant feedback.

I would count this is as relevant feedback. sgt provides one reason why.

To me, seeing something like this gives me the impression that the screenshot is not polished, that this detail was not paid attention to, and makes me wonder what else might have been missed.

I thought the same thing. I even had to turn off the percentage showing on mine so I would stop obsessing over it.

With a jailbroken phone, you can make the status bar look exactly like those of the iPhones on Apple's website.

Probably easier with photoshop

As a broad observation about everyone on this thread, I'd say* a small percentage of the population (me included) naturally notices and thinks through details like these. Most other people (users and developers) don't give a crap and function just fine in their lives.

*no scientific evidence

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