What Apple is missing from every new Mac (yes, M1 included) and how to -almost- fix it
There’s one thing in the Apple range that every iOS devices has, but no one Mac has it, and I think it’s fundamental for the pleasure of use: the rounded corners of the display.
Before continue I just want to make a little background of why rounded shapes are important in the design and how our brain percepits them. There’re a lot of studies citing the rounded shapes in design and I don’t want to annoying anyone with all of them, but just two or three articles I think are worth a quick read, for example this one from the Smithsonian Magazine: Do Our Brains Find Certain Shapes More Attractive Than Others?
A new exhibition in Washington, D.C., claims that humans have an affinity for curves — and there is scientific data to prove it.
“Shallow convex surface curvature is characteristic of living organisms, because it is naturally produced by the fluid pressure of healthy tissue (e.g. muscle) against outer membranes (e.g. skin). The brain may have evolved to process information about such smoothly rounded shapes in order to guide survival behaviors like eating, mating and predator evasion. In contrast, the brain may devote less processing to high curvature, jagged forms, which tend to be inorganic (e.g. rocks) and thus less important.”
Brain scans taken while these participants were evaluating the interior designs showed that rounded decor prompted significantly more brain activity, much like what the Johns Hopkins group discovered
And this article from Design Modo: Rounded Corners and Why They Are Here to Stay
It takes less cognitive load to see rounded rectangles than it does to see sharp-cornered ones. Professor Jürg Nänni, authority on visual cognition, states that:
Edges involve additional neuronal image tools. The process is therefore slowed down.
The year was 1981, and Macintosh was still in early development. Resident graphics master Bill Atkinson had just managed to get its OS to draw circles and ellipses, and he was proud of it. However, Steve Jobs, The Father of the Macintosh, had another more pressing request: rounded rectangles.
To Jobs, rounded rectangles were friendly, and he insisted that rounded corners were already everywhere. Jobs took Atkinson for walk to show that his request was not mere aesthetic whim. A few rounded objects and a “No Parking” sign later, Atkinson was convinced.
Atkinson managed to develop the necessary code to render rounded rectangles at lightning-fast speeds. Buttons and windows became rounded. These helped define the “safe” interface of the Macintosh. To customers, Mac had a softer, more welcoming appeal, which sat in contrast to the intimidating aura of both IBM and Microsoft’s products
And there’s a great article of Brad Ellis about the design of the iPhone X and how much important have put Apple on the corners: No Cutting Corners on the iPhone X
So I’m not the only one who prefer the rounded shapes, and I’m probably not the only one who miss this shape from Mac displays, in fact Many Tricks software house has build a patch to these sharper corner, with the app: Displaperture that is available for free at Mac App Store.
It simply rounded the edge of your display, obviously is a “software hack” by putting a black image on the corners of display, but I haven’t noticed light leak from these little triangles, it works great and my eyes finally no longer bleed =) See the differences:
It’s a beaufitul simply app to have in your login items and forgot about it. I know that build big LCD screens with rounded corners is a trouble and I think this is why Apple doesn’t do it, also the expensive Display XDR hasn’t got rounded corners, I have hope for the redesigned iMac but I don’t think this will happen soon…
