Tag: mock-up

Categories
apple

Apple Watch, “Round Edition”?

Round Apple Watch concept
Round Apple Watch concept

I took a bit of time this morning to play with the concept of a round Apple Watch. Some notes:

  • Converting watchOS to work with a round display would be a massive design effort. Everything would need to be rebuilt from the ground up, since most of the platform’s UI elements are rectangular. My proposal solves… almost none of these challenges. It’s literally the easiest screen to mock up.
  • I’ve moved the side button to the other side of the display, mainly for symmetry’s sake. This creates some problems, though, since I use the buttonless side of the Watch to brace against when I’m pressing the button or the crown. On the other hand, this change would make the “hold both buttons” gesture far easier.
  • The bezels here are the same size as on the current watch. A bezel-less round design would look sick, though—better than on the rectangular watch, since you wouldn’t have to deal with fitting square elements into the case’s rounded corners. ■

Image credits

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Categories
apple tech

Handling the notch

Apple-watchers agree that iPhone Pro’s screen will feature a hardware “notch”—a cutout in its otherwise bezelless design for the camera, earpiece, and other sensors. But there’s less agreement on how the notch will be handled in software. The current status bar doesn’t seem to fit. Where will the omnipresent, centered clock go—if it remains onscreen at all?

One potential approach, which I’ve hacked together and included above, is to adopt a “two-row” status bar. This would take advantage of the vertical screen space to the notch’s left and right. Here, I’ve center-aligned the various indicators, since the rounded top-left and top-right corners made left- and right-alignment look odd. The clock gets pride of place at top left.

Thanks to Evan Blass for the iPhone Pro render and to Olivier Charavel for the notch mock-up. ■

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