Apple Shipped Original iPhone App Icons at 57 Pixels Square
Ken Kocienda · Inside the Apple Factory: Software Design in the Age of Steve Jobs · Feb 24, 2019 · at 1:23:18
Ken Kocienda, former principal software engineer at Apple, explains how Springboard engineer Scott Herz determined the touch target dimensions for the original iPhone's home screen app icons.
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“The we determined that if you made a rectangle that was 57 pixels square, that pretty much everybody could tap it a hundred percent of the time. No matter where it was, again, since you were going quickly, you could tap it comfortably. And that, Number, he just, then, since he was working on Springboard, and it was his game, it was his app, he put that number into the app, he made the pixels, 57 pixels square, and since that was a good number, we never changed it, and so that's what wound up shipping on the, ah, on the iPhone.”
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