81–90 of 94 posts
I can finally put some words on this. Tangentially (no pun intended) in CSS, the poor rendering you get out of an ambitiously border-radius'ed button has been driving me mad for years; time to get down the rabbit hole to see how to replicate that look on the web.
More on smoothness of the curves https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jvPPXbo87ds As seen on HN this month.
She covers the insightful "reflection test" around the 28:05 mark: https://youtu.be/jvPPXbo87ds?t=1685 and actual "curvature combs" at 32:26.
Finally, she covers the continuity of curvature combs that B-Splines exhibit around the 54:00 mark: https://youtu.be/jvPPXbo87ds?t=3240
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Apple has beautiful squircle curves the rest of us can't have unless we want expensive CAD tools and extra JS files, but they also have plenty of sharp transitions. Look at their cables, that have no strain relief, being a bad influence on every other cable for a decade. It's basically just Bauhaus design but with a few nice soft features, it's gonna be a bit uncomfortable, it's gonna be expensive, it might compromis…
What are you talking about, every Apple USB and Lightning cable I've ever had has had strain relief on both ends. There's the main plug in a plastic housing, and then there's an extra-thick rubber part about a centimeter long which is the strain relief wrapped around the cable, and then the rest of the cable itself. Clearly visible in any product photograph close-up.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
What are you talking about, every Apple USB and Lightning cable I've ever had has had strain relief on both ends. There's the main plug in a plastic housing, and then there's an extra-thick rubber part about a centimeter long which is the strain relief wrapped around the cable, and then the rest of the cable itself. Clearly visible in any product photograph close-up.
Yes & it doesn’t work very well. Or at least it didn‘t, Apple has been notorious for sacrificing good strain relief on their cables in pursuit of aesthetics for years. Possibly things have improved now that Ive has left, but there was a period a few years ago when everyone I knew with a Macbook had wrapped the power cable in electrical tape because the cable housing had failed just above the (useless) strain relief s…
This is standard knowledge in product design. Most people doing font design also have a keen understanding of this. Even if often more intuitively that through maths. That said, in 2D you can get away with tangent continuity (C1) and stuff looks good. I.e. while people may be able to tell the difference between a square with corners that have been rounded using quadratic arcs and one that uses cubic arcs or is a supe…
The curvature is not unique to apple though. This is widely used in car manufacturing for example. Turns out not having a hard transition between no curvature (straight surface) and some kind of radius (so a curvature of 1/r) looks like shit on very reflective surfaces, because a perfect flat mirror suddenly transitions into a stretched or squashed one. So you can go and make those transitions flawless by making sure…
Ok, we've taken uniqueness out of the title above. (Submitted title was "Apple's Unique Device Curvature". I assume that rewrite was intended to replace the linkbaitiness of the article title, which is in keeping with the site guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html )
In-depth explanation of curve continuity without the fanboying: https://youtu.be/jvPPXbo87ds
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Apple has beautiful squircle curves the rest of us can't have unless we want expensive CAD tools and extra JS files, but they also have plenty of sharp transitions. Look at their cables, that have no strain relief, being a bad influence on every other cable for a decade. It's basically just Bauhaus design but with a few nice soft features, it's gonna be a bit uncomfortable, it's gonna be expensive, it might compromis…
What are you talking about, every Apple USB and Lightning cable I've ever had has had strain relief on both ends. There's the main plug in a plastic housing, and then there's an extra-thick rubber part about a centimeter long which is the strain relief wrapped around the cable, and then the rest of the cable itself. Clearly visible in any product photograph close-up.
Over time their strain relief has gotten shorter or longer https://cdn0.tnwcdn.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/1/files/2012/03...
So a lot of people's memories about Apple's strain relief may come from one of their darker periods when they were super short, stiff and useless.
In my personal experience their previous laptop MagSafe had absolutely useless strain relief and mine would always start going bad within 6-12 months. https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/13878908/2...
The current braided MagSafe cables actually have zero visible strain relief but seem like they're simply stronger, mine has held up well so far.
