iPhone 15 Pro Max So.... the dynamic island is basically pointless...

[eropko]

Notch/island is an important part of corporate design and visibility though. You can easily tell iphone from other phones from the front. And you can barely distinguish phones without notch from each other, because it's just screen and bumper most of the time.

So notch/island is akin of putting an apple logo on the front of the phone.

 

[mectojic]

Notch/island is an important part of corporate design and visibility though. You can easily tell iphone from other phones from the front. And you can barely distinguish phones without notch from each other, because it's just screen and bumper most of the time.

So notch/island is akin of putting an apple logo on the front of the phone.

I don't know if phones need that kind of "branding" so to speak anymore.
I mean, the market is so matured, everyone knows what an Apple device is and what an Android device is. The Apple branding is immediately apparent, if not in hardware anymore, then certainly the moment you get to the home screen.

Apple just likes symmetry, otherwise the camera would be hidden on the side, and that would be the end of the discussion.

 

[MrMacintoshIII]

Chalk it up to yet another feature that goes unnoticed in its usefulness yet would be missed if it was suddenly removed. I never want to go back to a regular notch. When the island inevitably disappears, I want the functionality to continue in some way.

 

[MacDevil7334]

Chalk it up to yet another feature that goes unnoticed in its usefulness yet would be missed if it was suddenly removed. I never want to go back to a regular notch. When the island inevitably disappears, I want the functionality to continue in some way.

I have been wondering lately if that will happen. It could be that the Dynamic Island just disappears when not in use and then can appear and display more information than is currently possible (since it would no longer have to work around the punch out area). That would be my preferred solution, as I also find the information useful and don't want to lose that functionality whenever the punch out goes away.

I suspect what happens will depend largely on 3rd party developer adoption of the feature though. If more developers don't start using the functionality than currently do, I suspect the Dynamic Island will go the way of 3D Touch and the Touch Bar whenever Apple no longer has the hardware limitation.

 

[aibloop]

imho it is a gimmicky feature looking for a use-case... And what`s worse, it is only available on a few products so it is in essence causing IOS bloat.

Sounds good and fancy, but it is not a sign of good design discipline to avoid bloat. IF every product needs to have an entirely separate IOS build with functions tied to ultra specific hardware. I worry that bugs will become harder to deal with and the bloat will cause IOS to become even more bug-ridden.

This would be one of those features I think Steve Jobs would never have let into Golden Master.

And another one would be the solidstate "silence" button on Iphone 15 PRO.

Sure, it is an ok idea. BUT implement it across ALL IOS products. As I understand, it is ONLY in the Iphone 15 PRO, not even the regular iPhone 15..


As it is currently, with dynamic island on some iPhones, Solid state silence button on some Iphones, it seems to be a slow slide into a product range that looks like Sonys. With a gajillion range of buttons and doodads and a million different buggy OS versions...

Apple is successful because the OS and product ranges have been streamlined and easily upgradeable. But lately with dynamic island and the solidstate silence button it looks like the future Apple looks more like Sony with a gazillion different products and gimmicky features...

I worry that Apple becomes a rudderless company in the design compartment, being ran by marketing people looking to put in fancy features to catch the eye of what is popular..

Steve Jobs and his design chief, whatshisface, were notoriously strict about what NOT to implement. And these two features show that Apple is in DIRE need of good design leadership.

 

[Macalicious2011]

my interaction with it has been minimal e.g switch off torch, short cut to Spotify or switch of timer.

I am indifferent to it. I don't hate it but don't consider it a reason to upgrade from an older iphone.

 

[ToddH]

It’s not pointless to me. I like it. I believe it’s a great way to use the space. I think if notifications came out of the Dynamic Island all the time instead of where they appear now, we would see a new set of complaints about the notifications possibly showing up to small we would have to touch the island instead of swiping down or expanding the notification list to see what’s there. Otherwise notifications & music would be placed in a different area of the top of the screen and occupy a position of the display & probably occupy with a larger format if the island didn’t exist. Think of it this way: Apple can’t please everyone! People always complain about something they own that has been purchased.

For example:
If any of you folks were salespeople and had a product that you were super proud of, knew that it worked well for you, and had a great sales pitch, you’d find plenty of people that like it and buy your product. You will also find plenty of people that would buy it, yet find areas of it pointless but perhaps use it anyway. All of us have many things we’ve purchased but aren’t totally satisfied with.

 

[ggCloud]

It has it's uses but I think Apple may introduce new features later on or improve on it when they move FaceID under display

 

[robertosh]

I always though that dynamic island was more like "let's try to find an use case for this design limitation" and it is predestined to die at some point. Once they figure out how to get a under the screen quality camera, it will go away.

 

[NT1440]

I always though that dynamic island was more like "let's try to find a use case for this design limitation" and it is predestined to die at some point. Once they figure out how to get an under the screen quality camera, it will go away.

I don’t think it will. It’s a very useful bit of UI. It may get relocated elsewhere in the screen once FaceID is under the screen, but you can tell from the UX design that Apple genuinely feels the Dynamic Island give a bit of “warmth” to their UI.

It’s a friend when you need it (quick scores on your game, departure status when your in line for coffee at the airport, you delivery will be here in X minutes) and it will disappear when you don’t. That will be the future of the Dynamic Island UX.

 

[karen999]

For sports fans, sports alert alone is worth it.

 

[janeauburn]

I'm noticing that other than some basic OS features, there are very few apps that utilize the dynamic island. I was kinda excited for it when upgrading to the 15pm. I feel as though Apple should have integrated the whole notification system into it. That was the impression I got when I saw the 14 pro launch. How hard is it to let notifications pop out of the dynamic island? Just seems like a gimmick and uses up even more space than the notch.

I think it's worse than pointless; it's intrusive.

 

[janeauburn]

It's just polishing the turd that is the huge faceID camera cutout

Agree.

 

[janeauburn]

And the crazy thing is this: Aren't we talking here about a multi trillion dollar company that has a bigger budget than many countries? And a company like Samsung can figure out how to do away with a notch altogether, but Apple cannot?

WTF?

 

[apparatchik]

And the crazy thing is this: Aren't we talking here about a multi trillion dollar company that has a bigger budget than many countries? And a company like Samsung can figure out how to do away with a notch altogether, but Apple cannot?

WTF?

It's a deliberated design decision, not an incapability, Apple has access to the best R&D in tech, patents and develops a number of prototypes of varied number of technologies.

Alas, they haven't released a folding phone yet because they have decided against it thus far.

Perhaps they feel the under-display front cameras are a compromise, etc...

 

[one more]

Apple just likes symmetry, otherwise the camera would be hidden on the side, and that would be the end of the discussion.

It is not just one camera, though, but also the proximity sensor and FaceID TrueDepth camera, so three elements.

 

[one more]

It's a deliberated design decision, not an incapability, Apple has access to the best R&D in tech, patents and develops a number of prototypes of varied number of technologies.

Alas, they haven't released a folding phone yet because they have decided against it thus far.

Perhaps they feel the under-display front cameras are a compromise, etc...

Not sure about this.

What do Apple gain by not releasing a folding iPhone, except time to find a good tech solution for foldable screen-creasing or seamless joining of two separate screens?

Same goes for the under-display front cameras - the tech part is just not mature enough yet to work as well as the existing on-display solutions.

Once these tech challenges are overcome, Apple will do it, elegantly. 😉

 

[Wanted797]

Well yes. It has rounded corners.

 

[ReliableSource]

This is another one of those give-in-to-the-way-we-intend-it-to-be-used things that makes total sense to me, and is why I like Apple products so much.

I would love it if they figure out how to hide all these things below the display so that the island can completely go away if you’re watching video or whatever, but I also hope they keep it around, because I use it constantly to control audio, both on my device and via airplay. It’s nice to be able to control my TV’s volume with my phone’s volume buttons, and the Dynamic Island gives quick access to that.

 

[NT1440]

And the crazy thing is this: Aren't we talking here about a multi trillion dollar company that has a bigger budget than many countries? And a company like Samsung can figure out how to do away with a notch altogether, but Apple cannot?

WTF?

Samsung isn’t using VCEL dot projection for face mapping. They’re simply using a camera.

It’s not the same thing. One has been engineered for security for day one, the other is a cheap imitation of the unlocking feature without the accurate depth mapping of a face.

Think LIDAR in a “self driving” car vs trying to get depth mapping from 2D trickery of a regular camera.

 

[MacNut]

It's just polishing the turd that is the huge faceID camera cutout

Basically yes, that's the only reason it exists.

 

[St. Germain]

I'm noticing that other than some basic OS features, there are very few apps that utilize the dynamic island. I was kinda excited for it when upgrading to the 15pm. I feel as though Apple should have integrated the whole notification system into it. That was the impression I got when I saw the 14 pro launch. How hard is it to let notifications pop out of the dynamic island? Just seems like a gimmick and uses up even more space than the notch.

SportsAlerts is pretty great for tracking scores. That's the best use I've found for it so far.

 

[Timpetus]

It’s not pointless to me. I like it. I believe it’s a great way to use the space. I think if notifications came out of the Dynamic Island all the time instead of where they appear now, we would see a new set of complaints about the notifications possibly showing up to small we would have to touch the island instead of swiping down or expanding the notification list to see what’s there. Otherwise notifications & music would be placed in a different area of the top of the screen and occupy a position of the display & probably occupy with a larger format if the island didn’t exist. Think of it this way: Apple can’t please everyone! People always complain about something they own that has been purchased.

For example:
If any of you folks were salespeople and had a product that you were super proud of, knew that it worked well for you, and had a great sales pitch, you’d find plenty of people that like it and buy your product. You will also find plenty of people that would buy it, yet find areas of it pointless but perhaps use it anyway. All of us have many things we’ve purchased but aren’t totally satisfied with.

I would love it if Apple had implemented notifications automatically converting themselves to utilize the dynamic island when it's available. That would avoid the twin issues of iOS bloat (additional code that devs need to use in order to take advantage of DI) and developers failing to adopt the DI.

 

[Barbareren]

imho it is a gimmicky feature looking for a use-case... And what`s worse, it is only available on a few products so it is in essence causing IOS bloat.

Sounds good and fancy, but it is not a sign of good design discipline to avoid bloat. IF every product needs to have an entirely separate IOS build with functions tied to ultra specific hardware. I worry that bugs will become harder to deal with and the bloat will cause IOS to become even more bug-ridden.

This would be one of those features I think Steve Jobs would never have let into Golden Master.

And another one would be the solidstate "silence" button on Iphone 15 PRO.

Sure, it is an ok idea. BUT implement it across ALL IOS products. As I understand, it is ONLY in the Iphone 15 PRO, not even the regular iPhone 15..


As it is currently, with dynamic island on some iPhones, Solid state silence button on some Iphones, it seems to be a slow slide into a product range that looks like Sonys. With a gajillion range of buttons and doodads and a million different buggy OS versions...

Apple is successful because the OS and product ranges have been streamlined and easily upgradeable. But lately with dynamic island and the solidstate silence button it looks like the future Apple looks more like Sony with a gazillion different products and gimmicky features...

I worry that Apple becomes a rudderless company in the design compartment, being ran by marketing people looking to put in fancy features to catch the eye of what is popular..

Steve Jobs and his design chief, whatshisface, were notoriously strict about what NOT to implement. And these two features show that Apple is in DIRE need of good design leadership.

No, it's on all the iPhone 15 models, not just the Pro/Pro Max.

 

[MrMacintoshIII]

No, it's on all the iPhone 15 models, not just the Pro/Pro Max.

Dynamic Island is on all the 15’s, but not the new function button. That’s Pro-line only.