As ridiculous as it sounds, one of the most remarkable things about Apple devices is their corners — and it's far more complicated than you might think.
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There is something strikingly symmetrical about the appearance of Apple devices placed side by side.
Look at a Mac, MacBook, iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch, and AirPods together, and you get the feeling you're looking at a family portrait — and you're not wrong.
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Rounded corners began as a design obsession of Steve Jobs, one that has given designers and engineers no small headache from that day to this.
The choice of rounded corners stems from the fact that our brains tend to respond to them positively and calmly, compared to sharp angles, which stimulate areas of the brain associated with stress and anxiety.
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Developers who tried to fit their app designs to the iPhone X screen encountered an inexplicable difficulty achieving a precise match.
The reason: the corner curvature is not uniform — it gradually softens as it approaches the straight edge of the device.
This design is more pleasing to the eye because the corner blends smoothly into the straight edges, but it also presents a significant challenge for developers.
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Many Apple products feature rounded corners that match one another perfectly, as can be seen in the video.
This consistency across different devices causes us to subconsciously associate them with one another and perceive them as a single family of products.
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And that's not all.
There is a design philosophy that holds that the closer an object is to us, the more rounded it should be.
Apple applies this philosophy consistently.
The Apple Watch and AirPods are the most rounded of all, because we wear them — and contact with rounded objects feels more comfortable.
The iPhone is less curved, because we don't wear it but merely hold it in our hands.
The iPad, MacBook, and Mac become progressively less rounded, because the distance between us and them during use increases accordingly, and squarer edges are more practical in terms of space utilization.
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What makes this example so compelling is that Apple believes in the human spirit and in our capacity to appreciate perfect symmetry and beauty — even without knowing it's there.
Apple's insistence on investing enormous effort in aspects that appear insignificant, or even commercially unnecessary, stems from a belief that we as consumers are sensitive enough to feel the results even without understanding them.
With a company valuation approaching $3 trillion, that belief appears to be well founded.