Apple’s Craig Federighi and Alan Dye on the Dynamic Island

Apple’s SVP of software engineering Craig Federighi and VP of human interface design Alan Dye say in a new interview that the Dynamic Island’s creation came from, naturally enough, thinking about a notch-less TrueDepth camera array for the iPhone 14 Pro.

Apple's morphing 'Dynamic Island' iPhone 14 Pro 'pill' is genius
Apple’s morphing ‘Dynamic Island’ featured on iPhone 14 Pro and iPhone 14 Pro Max

AXIS:

Craig Fedeligi, who oversees software development, summarizes this function as follows.

“It’s probably the first major operation change in five years since the iPhone X came out. Five years ago, we lost the home button with iPhnoe X. This has fundamentally reviewed various iPhone operation methods such as how to unlock the lock screen, return to the home screen, and how to switch apps. This new feature has also changed the appearance of the iPhone, and it made me think again about how to run multiple apps, notifications, and how to manage the ongoing behavior in the background. It was a very exciting challenge for us to consolidate what is happening on our iPhone into this small interactive place.”

Alan Dai, who designed the interface, adds, ” For one purpose, our hardware and software partners will come together in the same studio to solve the problem together. This new feature also made it possible to display alerts, notifications, and ongoing operations in real time without seeing the boundary between hardware and software. I think it’s a good example of Apple-like development.”

How was this function created in the first place?

Dai says, ” At Apple, it’s very difficult to trace the source of ideas. Because our work is based on a huge discussion with different groups of people. However, one of those discussions was that if the sensor area on the screen could be made smaller, what could be done with the surplus space. It’s not an argument that has come out in the past year or so, but it’s one of the topics that has been discussed for many years.”

MacDailyNews Take: The Dynamic Island is quintessential Apple: Taking a negative and transforming it into a positive. It took longer than it should have, but it’s finally here.

As we wrote back in early September:

Jobs would have been presented the notch, arched an eyebrow, and said: go back to the drawing board. They’d’ve worked at it until they arrived at the “Dynamic Island.” Without Jobs, Apple shipped notch for 5 yrs.

The Steve Jobs difference in a nutshell.

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4 Comments

  1. LOL – where was Steve Jobs when they presented the original iMac mouse to him? Arguably one of the worst mouse designs ever. His batting average was exceptional but as much as I adored the man, he was far from perfect.

  2. “Apple’s SVP of software engineering Craig Federighi and VP of human interface design Alan Dye say in a new interview that the Dynamic Island’s creation came from, naturally enough, thinking about a notch-less TrueDepth camera array for the iPhone 14 Pro.”

    Well, if these two clowns were thinking elegant interface design from the very beginning, instead of taking easy shortcuts, we would have been notch FREE from the beginning and yes, Steve would have sent them back to the drawing board in a heart beat…

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