We use iPhones, iPads and iPod Touches in our daily lives and interact with hundreds or even thousands of applications annually, but have you ever wondered why the icons of those applications are square and have round corners ?
If this question has ever crossed your mind, well, one of the company's first employees Apple Lossless Audio CODEC (ALAC),, Andy Hertzfield, explained for an American publication how it came to the implementation of square icons with round corners in the iOS operating system.
The stubbornness of Steve Jobs
It all started in the 80s, when Steve Jobs he was very involved in the development of the Lisa computer, forcing one of Apple's famous engineers, Bill atkinson, to modify the software of Macs to be able to renders rectangles with rounded corners.
At the time, the software created for the Lisa was capable of rendering circles and oval shapes, but Steve Jobs wanted rectangles with rounded corners and with a lot of persuasion he managed to get Atkinson to substantially modify the software for the Lisa to render such forms.
But something was bothering Steve Jobs. "Well, circles and ovals are good, but how about drawing rectangles with rounded corners? Can we do that now, too?" "No, there's no way to do that. In fact it would be really hard to do, and I don't think we really need it". I think Bill was a little miffed that Steve wasn't raving about the fast ovals and still wanted more.
Steve Jobs' power of persuasion was so great that he took the Apple engineer on a walk around the Apple campus in Cupertino so that the former CEO could prove his claims, and in the end everything he explained was transposed in reality.
From the software for the Lisa, the rectangles with rounded corners later reached the Macintosh, and over time they turned into squares with rounded corners and we find them in almost the entire interface of the OS X operating system.
Steve suddenly got more intense. "Rectangles with rounded corners are everywhere! Just look around this room!". And sure enough, there were lots of them, like the whiteboard and some of the desks and tables. Then he pointed out the window. "And look outside, there's even more, practically everywhere you look!". He even persuaded Bill to take a quick walk around the block with him, pointing out every rectangle with rounded corners that he could find.
The launch of iOS would bring back to light this obsession of Jobs with rounded corners, the launch of the iPhone could not be done without the application icons being square with rounded corners, the CEO of those from Cupertino being extremely determined to have something in the smartphone Apple.
The scientific explanation
Leaving aside the stubbornness of Steve Jobs, the use of round corners instead of square ones also has a scientific explanation, because the human brain can distinguish these shapes much more easily than those with square corners.
According to a specialized design publication, viewing shapes that have square corners involves more cognitive brain activity than viewing round corners, and Steve Jobs certainly knew this and wanted to make iOS as simple as possible for everyone.
Sharp corners interrupt thought. To visualize a sharp-cornered shape, the brain processes point A to point B, pauses for a bit and then goes from point B to C, and so forth until it completes the circuit. In the case of a rectangle, it takes your brain 4 computations to recognize it. With rounded corners, the abrupt pause never happens, and your brain only does one single computation as your eyes smoothly scan its edges.
So, what do you think about the choice made by Steve Jobs since the 80s?
