An interesting tidbit regarding the new Series 7 devices was mentioned by Marco Armet on a podcast this week, he is the developer of Overcast a popular Podcast client that has a good Apple Watch app he is working on updating for the Series 7.
As mentioned in the keynote the Series 7 has a bigger screen right? The problem is the curved and thicker glass causes distortion along the edges (they also mentioned this as a “positive” in the keynote) that makes that part of the screen appear to bend downward even though the entire screen is actually flat. This is where it gets interesting to me… Apple interface guidelines for developing apps for the Series 7 introduce the concept of a buffer area along the edges where you aren’t supposed to put text, lines, etc. to prevent distortion and not have readability issues. They say the area should only be used for the edges of button bubbles etc. To me this inability to push out lines or text to the real edge of the screen likely means in practical purpose the screen won’t feel or actually BE larger for most watch faces except for photo faces and Apple’s own speciality face that they are using to promo the watch. The “normal” faces like infograph etc. will still have a healthy artificial border around text to deal with the distortion issues.
Now I’m not saying the screen isn’t bigger. I’m sure it will in some circustances clearly be visibiliy larger, but I’m not too certain in *most* scenarios and with most faces you will really notice. I still believe earlier this year the true flat design (that would have had no curved glass and allowed this same screen panel to show text to the edges) with a new CPU and bigger battery ran into issues and the Series 7 we have now is a backup solution until they solve issues. I’ll be buying it because, well, I buy one every year but everything about this year’s launch screams to me there is some dramatic story we will get to hear in 10 years in some VP’s biography of their time at Apple.
As mentioned in the keynote the Series 7 has a bigger screen right? The problem is the curved and thicker glass causes distortion along the edges (they also mentioned this as a “positive” in the keynote) that makes that part of the screen appear to bend downward even though the entire screen is actually flat. This is where it gets interesting to me… Apple interface guidelines for developing apps for the Series 7 introduce the concept of a buffer area along the edges where you aren’t supposed to put text, lines, etc. to prevent distortion and not have readability issues. They say the area should only be used for the edges of button bubbles etc. To me this inability to push out lines or text to the real edge of the screen likely means in practical purpose the screen won’t feel or actually BE larger for most watch faces except for photo faces and Apple’s own speciality face that they are using to promo the watch. The “normal” faces like infograph etc. will still have a healthy artificial border around text to deal with the distortion issues.
Now I’m not saying the screen isn’t bigger. I’m sure it will in some circustances clearly be visibiliy larger, but I’m not too certain in *most* scenarios and with most faces you will really notice. I still believe earlier this year the true flat design (that would have had no curved glass and allowed this same screen panel to show text to the edges) with a new CPU and bigger battery ran into issues and the Series 7 we have now is a backup solution until they solve issues. I’ll be buying it because, well, I buy one every year but everything about this year’s launch screams to me there is some dramatic story we will get to hear in 10 years in some VP’s biography of their time at Apple.
