Comment by hbarka

Hm, my folding phone doesnt have this aspect ratio and I can still do that.

This would matter for bigger versions of the same thing. For side-by-side, the aspect ratio is unimportant since you naturally unfold to have two of them.

this isn't great design, it's tautology. of course the phone open is twice the size of it closed. it would be hard to make it otherwise.

But apps can just rejigger into widths that fit. It would be more of an issue back when mobile sites were first becoming responsive and we pragmatically chose 2 or 3 media query widths to serve different layouts and then applied the same thinking to mobile apps. Of course the initial mobile apps, particularly on iPhone, stuck to just one and later just a few sizes themselves. As there was a wider range we did things more responsively on a continuum.

I still think the broader point of there being design reasons to hit these ratios stands and is great. I just think the idea that it needed to be precisely twice the width so apps can fit full-sized doesn't hold too much because there isn't really a "full size" notion. Or if there is, the full-size is probably the double width one. If it wasn't exactly twice the width, most apps are already built to fit into varying iPhone/mobile screen widths.

Apps already work on Apple devices with many different aspect ratios.

The algebra proving why "halving long side H and flipping maintains aspect ratio" implies a ratio of 1:sqrt(2):

    H/W = W/(H/2)       (halving long side H and flipping maintains aspect ratio)
        = 2W/H          (multiply numerator and denominator by 2)
    H²  = 2W²           (multiply both sides by HW)
    H   = √2·W ≈ 1.41 W (take the positive square root; H, W > 0)

Must be an Anglosphere thing. Every non-English computer and office software I've ever used correctly defaulted to A4.

Every windows install I've ever done (in Australia) I picked "English (Australia)" when possible, and "English (UK)" before Microsoft provided that localisation option. I've never seen US letter as a default.

That's funny because (living in the US) I've noticed that many printers default to A4. Maybe 20 years ago, one printer at work would think A4 paper was loaded in it after every power-failure and we'd have to go through the menu and change it, or it would require you to clear a warning before it would print anything sized for US letter.

Like most of your standards. No-one knows why, but it's obviously advantageous to defend it religiously as "better than everyone else"

That Wikipedia article was lacking citations so I dug some up with ChatGPT: https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/GPO-CPUB-101spub9/pdf/GP...

On page 52 (57 of the PDF), there’s a letter dated December 18th 1978 (Carter administration, not Reagan) from the Congressional Joint Committee on Printing adopting 8.5”x11”, effective January 1st 1980 so departments & agencies could use up their 8.5”x10.5” stock.

I also found this article from Time from January 15th 1979 that this was actually slightly cheaper despite using more paper: https://content.time.com/time/subscriber/article/0%2C33009%2...

The government adopted 8.5”x10.5” to save money back in 1921 vs what was already the industry standard of 8.5”x11”, but this ended up backfiring and a General Services Administration report in 1972 recommended switching to 8.5”x11” would reduce by 5% the amount of times a secretary would need a second page. The Joint Committee of Printing estimated this change would save several million dollars.

> On hearing the news, one straight-faced bureaucrat in the Government Printing Office said of his colleagues' reaction to the news: "Some people think that this issue has been inadequately studied."

Apparently the American Forest & Paper Association is under the impression that it was the Reagan administration’s proclamation:

> Oddly enough, the United States used two different sizes - the 8" x 10.5" and the 8.5" x 11". Separate committees came up with separate standards, the 8" x 10.5" for the government and the 8.5" x 11" for the rest of us. Once these committees found out about each other a couple years later, they agreed to disagree until the early 1980's when Reagan finally proclaimed that the 8.5" x 11" was the official standard sized paper.

https://web.archive.org/web/20120220192919/http://www.afandp...

Or "legal".

I imagine that would be to account for the bezel. The outer display is slightly less than half the size of the inner display, so to get the same aspect ratio they would have to adjust it slightly.

That doesn't require a special aspect ratio.

I mean that's true for side-by-side foldables in general isn't it? It doesn't require what Apple is saying about the aspect ratio here.

You mean unlike all of the marketing photos?

I just put a passport in my pocket, and it did fit. It's a lot thinner, and bends a bit... but yeah, maybe it will. Interesting.

I think the parent comment meant: "What's the point with respect to a phone's screen". As far as I can tell this is irrelevant for a technical screen size and app ratios? As far as I can tell the toothpaste is already out of the tube when it comes to reducing the aspect ratio testing burden for developers but maybe I'm just way too far away from the mobile development space to be aware of the pain points this is solving.

But why paper's ratio is important?

Size is even more important for UI design. If you don't think you need to re-design the layout of your app when the screen doubles in size, you shouldn't be doing UI design.

Moreover, app developers for iOS have to support fewer aspect ratios than developers of Android apps. In theory, this allows for more attention to be given to the UI design for each aspect ratio - rather than having to use a spring-style stretch layout.

If I were to guess, this does look like a new ratio to support, but at least it's just 1 instead of 2.

There is no doubt this is why Apple did this.

> "is it better in day to day life"

Speak to a carpenter or construction worker from any country with the metric system. Measure anything by simple powers of ten and simple decimal shifts makes life so much easier. Quick, what is half of a yard-length beam less 12 1/16"?

Not sure how Celsius is worse? Its unit is the same of Kelvin, just shifted by 273. 0C is freezing, 100C is boiling. Some people say Fahrenheit is more representative of how people feel, but that is very subjective and biased towards the West and Northern hemisphere.

Only Americans feel this way about Celsius. The only downside is that Celsius requires 3 digit precision to really accurately characterize what temperature a room feels. I would be willing to bet humans are woefully inadequate at knowing the temperature of the room they are in anyways

As an American, I find Fahrenheit much better for ambient temperature and body temperature, but I hate seeing it for things like melting points of materials and the like. I'm always thrown off by statements like 800-degree pizza ovens, because once you get above 500°F it is out of the realm of everyday measurements, and I have trouble mentally separating the values for metals melting in °C and "gee whiz" temperatures in °F.

All scientific and engineering use should probably eschew the customary measurements, even in the news. For example, in aviation, they use °C now unless your airplane is very old. Unfortunately, in the US we still use inches of mercury for pressure, both knots and MPH but never km/h or m/s, etc.

Celsius is not really related to the metric system. It's just a temperature scale the entire world (minus the US) agreed to use.

Why do you think Celsius is worse in day to day life?

Apple design is the polar opposite of the MX-5. The MX-5 is a masterpiece of mechanical design and function. Apple makes minimalist purely electronic fashion gadgets that are highly form over function and remove user agency.

I imagine it would be held together with glue and tiny screws.

There's already Ferrari Luce

Stickshift option instantly gone, with a recall to swap existing manuals to automatic