Why is the iPhone X’s bangs So ugly? Surely Steve Jobs would not have allowed such a product to be delivered to customers? What should iOS developers know about Apple? What is the general direction of Apple’s future development?

If it weren’t for Apple, I think all of you would be working in a variety of other industries right now, so we can say that we are working in the Apple ecosystem, so personally, as iOS developers, you have to have a deeper and more objective understanding of Apple than anyone else. Based on teacher Zhang Xiaoyu’s “business classic case class”, I want to talk about (seems “summary” is more appropriate, escape. The perceptions you need to build as an iOS developer and the prejudices you need to eliminate

Before we start, there are three key takeaways

1. Apple does not care about pre-emptive time, but makes a product well done, right, and after striking.
  • The first iPod stunned the tech world with its revolutionary new design, which featured a rolling-wheel operation, a large amount of memory and a white headphone cable. But before this, from the big factories like SONY and Samsung to the shanzhai manufacturers in Huaqiangbei, many MP3s have been produced, but the interface is simple and the capacity is often only 128M, 256M and so on
  • In Steve Jobs’ biography about the history of the iPad, the most memorable part is jobs saying, “Let me tell them what a real tablet should look like.”
  • When the iPhone first came out, everyone ridiculed it as a feature phone because Windows, blackBerrys and so on already had stores for downloading apps, but Apple had nothing until the App Store came out in 2008, and the rest is history
  • When Apple Pay launched, wechat and Alipay were already doing a good job, but Apple Pay dispensed with the scanning process and made payments right next to the device
2. Integrate the technology (black technology) into the application scenarios of ordinary consumers, perfect the product, and then lead the change of the whole user behavior and habits

  • By the time Apple introduced gravity sensing, the technology was already relatively mature, and apple had made a lot of refinements of its own. Now you can open up your phone’s photo album, a picture is good, and you want to see it better, so you turn your phone sideways, and suddenly the picture turns sideways. Then you place two fingers on the desired location and make an zoom in motion, and the image is instantly zoomed in. Imagine how amazing this was when it first came out a decade ago. In just two seconds, multi-touch and gravity sensors kick in. At the very least, it’s about applying hacks to the most appropriate user scenarios. At the very most, it’s about leading the entire human race and how it interacts!

  • Of course, there are plenty of examples. The iPhone screen dies when the ear is close to the receiver to prevent face from touching the virtual buttons. AR has been popular for so long that ordinary people still see it as the spring and snow, but Apple has integrated it into mobile phones, and everyone can quickly feel it

  • So the ability to develop black technology is not terrible, terrible is also able to make the most ordinary consumers can enjoy. In fact, this is apple’s core experience.

3. There are revolutionary things in the world that Apple can do and nothing else can do.
  • For example, the overall design of iOS system changed from skeuomorphic to flat. At the beginning everyone thought that flat is too ugly, but now before looking at the skeuomorphism, most people think too vulgar!




Feel for yourself.

  • But think about it, if Google’s Android had done this big overhaul, would it have been possible? It seems not, because only Apple has strong control over its phones, operating systems, downloaded apps, developers, and users. Well, “only one and only” Apple has such control over its ecosystem. (Think of a word: first-class companies do ecology, second-rate companies do standards, third-rate companies do products)

What’s the significance of the iPhone X’s Face ID?

1. Face ID fundamentals:
  • Apple has filled the top of the screen with an array of devices, including infrared cameras, floodlights, ambient light converters and dot matrix projectors.
  • From these devices, the iPhone projects more than 30,000 invisible points of light onto your face and creates a 3D depth map of your face.
  • When it’s time to unlock it, an infrared scan is used to compare it to a stored face image
  • Artificial intelligence plus deep learning uses more than a billion photos to train the neural network on which Face ID relies, so it can’t be fooled by photos or Face grinders




2. What does Face ID mean?
  • Here’s Jonathan Ive, one of Jobs’ most trusted friends, on Apple’s website:




Note the keywords: “I forgot it was there.” In the Original English text, it means “disappeared.” By disappearing, we mean “unconscious design”, where the tool or connection does not deliberately interfere with the user during the whole process of use, so that the user can focus on what they really want to do

  • Now imagine a scenario where you have a book on your desk, upside down. When you want to read a book, just pick it up from your desk and start reading. The process is very natural and smooth, and there is no lag. If the process uses an iPhone, you may also need a fingerprint to unlock it before you can use various features. (I think last year’s iOS10 update the most 👍 is to pick up the phone directly light screen display time)

  • Now, with the iPhone X, that experience is perfectly replicated: the process of picking up the phone automatically scans your face and unlocks it, allowing you to start using the iPhone directly. (Of course, the design of mi Band + Mi phone unlocked is also great)





  • Whenever a new tool has appeared in history, people have tended to focus on how the new tool solves an old problem: for example, when television first came out, people didn’t know how to use it, so television stations hired people to read scripts in front of the screen like radio.

  • The invention of new tools will certainly improve the efficiency of solving old problems, but simply using new tools in this way is a failure. New tools like Face ID, the front-facing infrared camera, and the dot-matrix projector are not simply an alternative to “fingerprint unlocking,” but, more importantly, they open the door to a new one: Augmented reality, aka AR👇👇👇 (which is what the iPhone X slogan “Hello, the future” really means: The future of Apple, is the biggest AR company)

Apple’s future: the biggest AR company

1. The full screen




Narrow bezel that blends in with reality (also unconscious design that “disappears”)

  • With the development of technology, the top, bottom, left and right border distance will be smaller, coupled with increasingly powerful computing power and diversified application scenarios, AR effect is better. From this perspective, the full-screen design of iPhone X is far more than a marketing gimmick or a simple design language with aesthetic significance. It embodies Apple’s ambition in AR
2. Shooting function




The new Portrait Lighting feature uses sophisticated algorithms to work out how your features are affected by light and then uses that data to create stunning lighting effects.

  • Starting with the iPhone X, the phone’s camera is no longer a low-end alternative to an SLR.

  • It used to be that if your phone could do it, your camera would do it better. Now, what your phone can do, your camera can’t: Portrait Lighting. Its purpose is to give your subjects the impression of being professionally lit in a studio

  • Why doesn’t the iPhone X work when previous phones didn’t? Because previous phones didn’t know how deep your eyes were and how high your nose was, but the iPhone X knows how to build a 3D model of your face as you take a picture, and then instantly come up with the optimal lighting scheme and process it directly onto the picture.

  • AR stands for Augmented Reality, or Augmented Reality. Isn’t this kind of photography technology AR? And what will happen when this technology migrates from photography to other areas? Use your imagination. For example, when repairing a car, you can see which parts need to be repaired directly

3. Between AR and VR or even MR, why does Apple choose AR?

  • The main reason is that Apple has always been humanistic. VR directly constructs a world that does not exist and controls people’s vision, hearing, touch, maybe including smell and taste in the future, so that people can be immersed in it for various activities. However, such high immersion feeling is likely to be addictive in fact, and actually blocks the communication between people. AR, on the other hand, uses technology to superimpose on the real world to enhance the reality, so as to produce a better experience. We can see the same picture and information. Jobs always believed that good tools should liberate and develop humanity

  • So apple became an AR company, helping people communicate better with each other, create more works, and explore their relationship with the environment, which is exactly the inheritance of the humanistic spirit. And that’s one of the things that’s really great about Apple

4. The organizational structure of Apple

1. Functional organizational structure of Apple Inc
  • The overall structure of Apple is organized around specific functions rather than products (for example, the organization structure of product departments is divided into iPhone and iPad, while SONY has different departments fighting for themselves).
  • For now, apple’s overall structure looks like this:
    • The CEO is Tim Cook, who runs the company
    • Jonathan Ive, Sir. The design section
    • Jeff Williams does cook’s old job — operations, supply chain, etc., and COO.
    • Phil Schiller is in charge of marketing
    • Eddy Cue is responsible for parts of web services like Apple Music and Apple Pay, as well as technology for hardware and software, among other things
    • With the exception of Cook, they are all senior vice presidents. (Details of these executives are available on Apple’s website, with links at the end of this article.)
2. Advantages and disadvantages of functional departments:

  • Advantages:

    • Relatively reduce the interest disputes of departments, so that we can better cooperation
    • The collaboration between the different products is so smooth, such as Airdrop for file transfer and iCloud for syncing, that a user can read a story halfway through on an iPhone and continue reading it on a Mac
    • In today’s way, Jonathan Everbright’s product and design team takes a holistic approach to any product design, without the need to involve cross-departmental coordination of resources or the involvement of corporate politics

  • Disadvantages:

    • A leader must have a very strong grasp of the product, otherwise everyone in a company will not focus on a certain product. If there is no one who is very familiar with and strong in the product, the product will be a complete mess, and the whole company will be in a mess
    • There should not be too many products, because people’s concentration and creativity are limited (therefore, the organization structure of product department is more suitable for diversified businesses).
    • The whole company is uniformly responsible for profit and loss, and it is difficult to set department KPI. But it also has the advantage that companies can spend more money and resources to cultivate businesses that may not make money in the short term but may have long-term benefits

  • Therefore, there is no perfect thing in the world, only suitable and not suitable.

1. 3. Smart trashes
  • When Jobs returned to Apple eleven years after his ouster, the company’s business lines were in a terrible state because there were so many products, most of which had been developed either to meet the boss’s demands or to meet the odd demands of some important distributor. There were a dozen versions of the Macintosh alone, and Jobs finally had to ask: What would I recommend to buy a computer for my friend? Turns out no one can answer it clearly. At that time Apple was selling printers and servers.
  • And then Jobs drew a 2 by 2 square at a product presentation, and he wrote desktop and portable horizontally, and consumer and Professional vertically, one by one, and he said,We're a great company with 10,000 people, but we can't make great products if we spread ourselves too thin.Apple’s job is to make these four great products, one in each box. There was complete silence
  • After cutting 90% of the business, the stock price increased more than eightfold between Jobs’ return and his official role as CEO
  • One of the things Jobs did, in addition to revamping the product line, was to transform the company from a product-centric, equal-size structure to a function-centric one. Two decades later, Apple, and more consumers, are still reaping the benefits of his wisdom.




This arrogant, rude, disrespectful man has given his all to Apple and its products

5. Jobs’ real creation is Apple

If Steve Jobs were alive, he wouldn’t have put up with bangs on the iPhone X

As for the above question, I think there are two problems

1. Authenticity cannot be verified

  • Steve Jobs is not a god, and not everything he does is right. Here are a few examples:

    • The iPhone 4 also had an antennae gate, which gave users a poor signal when holding the metal frame with two hands

    • Steve Jobs once said that the best screen size for a phone is 3.5 inches, which is why Apple came out with a larger screen much later than Samsung and Huawei. Would you still want the iPhone 4 screen?

    • Steve Jobs once joked that Microsoft’s tablet would come with a stylus. “As long as it has a stylus, it’s dead.” But now the iPad Pro, which also comes with a stylus, has brought a lot of convenience to designers and art lovers

  • So I definitely think Apple is a great company and Steve Jobs is a great CEO, but what’s the point of mythologizing them

  • From Apple’s point of view, employees and designers at The company would love to have a full screen without bangs. But we need to ask ourselves why they’re willing to risk a lot of criticism with the bangs on the iPhone X, and whether they’re willing to sacrifice something to achieve a larger goal.

  • From the perspective of consumers, if the product is good enough, users are willing to overlook many of your imperfections. So every year, some people talk bad about Apple, but apple’s market value is still hitting new highs, and this time the iPhone X is the same. Despite many people’s jokes, it is still sure to be snapped up. Because this really is the future.

  • People always like to give a person a verdict of 20, 80, 30, 70, in fact, was the best way, or the optimal solution under the environment at that time. With unverifiable things, we just write more talk to enhance friendship, rise to the extreme point of view is to see the problem is too simple

2. It simplifies Jobs’ achievements
  • This underlines Mr Jobs’s focus on user experience and almost exacting attention to detail. Although Jobs ripped off the mask when he was dying and asked for a different one because it was so ugly, that’s not a great product plus for a CEO to talk about again and again
  • Steve Jobs’s real creation is not the iPhone or iPad, but Apple itself. The spirit of Steve Jobs, the organizational structure he built, and the work methods he led his colleagues to develop, are actually the “product” he developed
  • So if you really think Steve jobs is great, it’s more rational to believe that he’s built an organization, one of the most valuable companies in the world, that can still make good products and lead humanity into a new era.
  • In this context, whether a specific phone screen has a specific “bangs” may actually be less important.

This article is based on the summary of zhang’s column. The picture is quoted from Apple’s official website