After the release of Apple's new MacBook Pro, there are mixed comments on the changes in its appearance design. ▲ left: powerbook G4, right: MacBook Pro 16 (2021) Some say "dream back to the era of powerbook G4", some say "it's too thick", some say "it's too ugly", and some say "finally understand". Compared with the previous mold, the new MacBook Pro is indeed more round and visually "thick". Beauty and ugliness are more like subjective judgment. ▲ MacBook Pro 16 (2021). Picture from: the verge As for "understanding", it is more like taking functionality as the starting point. Stronger expansibility and more practical keyboard design are indeed more commensurate with Pro. In the previous interview, the development team of macbook pro and M chip also listened to the needs of many professional users, integrated with the products, and kept in mind that "it is not making works of art, but productivity tools". Therefore, a new MacBook Pro for pro users was born. ▲ Tim Miller, apple chip architect and vice president. Picture from: Apple The message conveyed by Apple's internal product team seems to have a hint of compromise from design to "function". Even the M1 Pro / max, which is extremely energy-efficient, has not completely liberated Apple's strong enough design power. It seems that Apple began to favor function and dilute design? Carefully, the shell of the new MacBook Pro omits the straight line and sharp corner of the "old mold" and uses the "curve" to transition two planes, and the edge is not narrowed. Therefore, the thickness of the new MacBook Pro is not different from that of the old model in data, but it is visually distinguished. Perhaps this is the charm of "design". Not only does the new MacBook Pro reduce straight lines and sharp corners, but new products such as homepod, iPad and magic keyboard, or products that are changing their appearance, also have a similar trend. "Curve" is used a lot, and the straight lines and sharp corners brought by hard transition are much less. If you look carefully, you can't see where the straight line ends and where the fillet starts. From the perspective of design language, the change in the appearance of MacBook Pro is more like convergence and unity than compromise to pragmatism. What shape is a square circle? In fact, the word square and circle is similar to the English squircle, which is a combination of square and circle. ▲ the difference between rounded rectangle and square circle. Picture from: Arthur van siclen However, it does not represent the simple tangent superposition of circle and square (this is a typical rounded rectangle), but the curvature of the curve will gradually increase, gradually increase the visible curve, and it has a smoother transition. ▲ the gap between rounded rectangle and square circle pixel level. Picture from: Arthur van siclen Apple first introduced a "square and circular" transition curve on IOS 7, accompanied by a transition to flattening. And from then on, the square and round design concept also began to appear in the ecology of Apple hardware and software. Such a change is actually brought by Jonathan Ive, former chief design officer of apple. When talking about whether it violates the design concept of Steve Jobs, Ive also stressed that the square and circle is only a pixel level modification, and it is still a rounded rectangle in essence. Such a change does not go against jobs' wishes. ▲ Macintosh with 68K processor. Picture from: macgui As early as the development of Macintosh graphical interface, the 68K processor of Macintosh had limited computing power and could not support floating-point operation, so it was impossible to draw ellipses through conventional algorithms. Apple engineer bill Atkinson came up with a smart algorithm to replace complex operations such as multiplication, division and square with addition and subtraction. But this was not praised by jobs, but wanted to draw rounded rectangles through it. ▲ on the right is Bill Atkinson. Picture from Apple Next is the familiar world, with rounded rectangles everywhere, and the Macintosh should be. In the next few months, rounded rectangles appeared in all corners of the user interface. The history of square and circle is longer than that of Macintosh, but it first appeared not in the field of design, but in mathematics. It can be traced back to 1818, which is essentially the study of exponential limit of elliptic equation by scholars. The actual case is the urban planning of Stockholm, Sweden in 1959. ▲ the famous square and circular design of Seger square center in Stockholm, Sweden. Several trunk roads meet together to form a large rectangular space. In order to make more rational use of space and not interfere with traffic, Piet Hein, as a consultant, creatively combined mathematics and art and solved it with a multivariate equation. The solution of this equation is "square circle". It is compatible with traffic smoothness and aesthetics, which is the advantage of square and round products at that time. What are the benefits of square and circular design? After Peter Hein, architect Zaha Hadid also used curves with different curvature in his works. Guangzhou Grand Theater and Beijing Daxing airport are his main works. She was called the "Queen of curves" by the guardian and commented that "she liberated architectural geometry and gave them new expressiveness". Both Apple's products and Hadid's buildings use curved surfaces instead of sharp transitions. It removes the marks of mass-produced industrial products and eliminates the traces of manufacturing. ▲ iPad Pro magic keyboard. Picture from: Arthur van siclen The soft transition surface hardly reminds us of the industrial assembly line, automobile manufacturing, and the standard products coming out of the laboratory. What's more, it evokes the rocks that grind away the edges and corners in the mountain streams, which is more like the product of nature. It is no longer a cold inorganic product, but an organic matter with a certain temperature. In addition to the more ethereal personal feelings, the changing curvature will also bring some more pragmatic optimization. The square and circular square in the center of Stockholm is an example of easing traffic and bringing comfort. In addition, J ü RG nnni, the author of visual perception, once pointed out that the processing speed of human retina for circles is significantly higher than that of corners. Compared with right angles, rounded objects are easier to be recognized by the human eye. On Apple products, it is better to eliminate the hard transition than to eliminate the rounded rectangle. From IOS icons to a series of interactive buttons on IOS and MacOS, they have turned to square and circular, which is easy to identify and focus, while the simple elimination of industrial sense is another consideration. After the iPhone x, the rounded corners of the iPhone outer frame perfectly fit the rounded corners in the system, which is an obvious case of the ecological convergence of Apple's soft and hard design. The appearance of homepod is "square and round" to the extreme. No matter what angle the light is, it will not produce sharp shadows. ▲ homepod and other similar products Eliminating industrial traces and making consumer electronic products with temperature, which is consistent with the design language of software system, is to gradually bias Apple's recent industrial design to "square and round". With so many benefits, how can it only appear on Apple products? Unlike Apple's patent for rounded rectangles, the square and circle with a longer history is not exclusive. Coupled with the current developed industrial system, it is not difficult to reproduce the square and circular transition in products. Just as the weak processor on the Macintosh could not perform floating-point operations in those years, in industrial production, it was not so easy to strictly control the OEM to finished products only with strong industrial design control and sufficient cost budget. The rounded rectangle scraped from IOS 7 has almost become the mainstream presentation form of many systems and interactions. In the hardware, the square and circular transition has not appeared in other brands, and the system and hardware are uniformly designed, which is few. The change of the design language of the new MacBook Pro is a bit like the iPhone x, which opens the design unity of software and hardware. It is also Apple's constantly improving and consistent design language. In this process, Apple also considered enough functional requirements, such as the opinions of professional workflow team and "putting things right" for various interfaces, and no longer pursued extreme lightness. No longer design oriented or function oriented, but weigh the two. On the one hand, it follows the design trend consistent with its own ecology, on the other hand, it will not compromise for the pursuit of unrestrained design. (Xinhua News Agency)