It’s not very often—if ever—that a software app is made in response to a mass distaste for a particular hardware feature. And as Apple’s design team has learned time and time again, you can’t please everybody all the time.
The most recent example comes from the “notch” in the physical body of the new iPhone X—a necessary feature that houses the phone’s new face-scanning camera and allows for the rest of the screen to bleed to the outermost edges of the device. Truth be told, having an irregular bump in your line of sight can be a bit distracting. Now, even Apple themselves are acknowledging this.
The company recently approved a new app called Notch Remover—a simple low-tech app that places a black bar across the top of the screen to remove the irregular form and return the screen back to a traditional rectangle.
Created by developer Axiem Systems, the lo-fi utility presents an interesting case study in our increasingly digital world: can software be used to control our perception of industrial design at this scale?
What do you think? Leave the “Notch” as-is, or bring on a future of “modifiable” industrial design via software?
