In general, screens are expected to be rectangular. Look at your TV, laptop, phone, tablet, and gaming handheld; even microwaves and smart fridges are likely to have rectangular displays in landscape and portrait orientation, respectively. You can argue a shape that’s longer in one dimension than another is more practical in many contexts: qwerty keyboards, movies, games, photos, and books all work better that way. And a rectangle is more flexible than a square, because it’s really two shapes in one. But regardless of the practicalities, we’ve simply reached a point where our eyes are accustomed to the oblong and find square screens odd.
Until now, Apple has understood and deferred to the pre-eminence of the rectangle. That, after all, is why the iPhone Duo looks the way it does. Again, we get used to these things, but when its design was first leaked the Duo was called “weird,” “so strange,” and “a little shorty!” It needed to be stubbier than most smartphones so that, when it was unfolded, its screen would be rectangular rather than square. Who wants their phone to have a square screen? Nobody.
Apple
Which brings us back to the HomeView, which has exactly that. Unlike with the Duo, no great sacrifices would have been necessary to give it a rectangular screen instead. It could very easily have been given a screen closer to the dimensions of a large iPhone or a small iPad, and with a few alterations to the arm on the tabletop model, this could even have been given the power to rotate through two different orientations. It would have been both more versatile and more familiar.
The fact that Apple didn’t go down this path, after working so hard to ensure that the iPhone Duo has a rectangular screen in both folded and unfolded formats, makes it clear that the company thinks square is best in this specific use case. And on reflection, I think it’s probably right.
On the practicalities front, few of the drawbacks of a square screen apply here. You’re not going to be watching movies or TV shows on the HomeView, or playing games. You’re not going to be reading eBooks or lengthy online articles, browsing your photo collection, or typing out emails or work documents. The screen is just there to let you monitor your home tech and control it with a few taps, chat to people using FaceTime, and look up the odd recipe. It’s a screen that plays far less of a role than that of an iPhone or a Mac. In that sense, it really is more like the screen on an Apple Watch—something to use when your iPhone isn’t in your hand.
Foundry
And on the HomeView, as on the Apple Watch, a square does make sense. A low-interaction screen should ideally be big enough for its information to be visible to the user at a convenient distance, and no bigger. If the HomeView had a wider screen, it would be harder to fit into small spaces in the home. If it had a taller screen, it would be more obtrusive. In terms of its visual footprint, the square is the most efficient shape to choose.
