The lock screen on your iPhone is the first thing you see when you pick up your phone. This is also the face you present to the world and those who can look at the phone in your hand, its screen temporarily illuminates from your touch.
Screen lock is the thing you interact with more than anything else on your phone – it’s the most personalized part of the phone, and yet with iOS 16 Apple offers fundamental changes to the iconic screen; Craig Federigi, Apple’s senior vice president of engineering, described it to TechRadar this week as a “huge step forward.”
The roughly two-year journey from the early efforts to customize the home screen in iOS 14 to the rich and surprisingly expressive tools in iOS 16 is somewhat obvious: a collaborative effort between engineering and design to offer customization without blurring what people they also know the love of the iOS interface. But it is also a story full of surprises and, yes, innovations.
Following the termination of Apple’s WWDC 2022, Federico and Apple’s vice president of design, Alan Dy, sat in on a video conference with us to guide us through the development, solutions and deep technologies that led to the all-new iPhone lock feature.
Your locked screen is now a destination for help (access to camera and flashlight), information (all those notifications that can clutter the screen) and some light personalization (your partner’s or cat’s photo).
But the customization changes that Apple made to the iPhone’s home screen two years ago in iOS 14 (custom widgets that share the screen with app icons) mark the beginning of major changes to the lock screen.
“We knew it was a multi-act play and we knew our next place would be the lock screen,” Federigi said.
“We saw a real opportunity to take this area, which has really developed slowly over time, but has never seen this kind of massive step forward, and do something really big – but something very Apple and very personal. So this year is an act of love, “he added.
We saw a real opportunity to do something really big – but something very Apple and very personal. This is an act of love.
Craig Federico
Federico, who is something of a WWDC meme (opens in a new section) and is well known for his admirable passion for Apple for everything and precise attention to detail, can be forgiven for some hyperbole, but it fits in with the idea that Apple accepts this problem is more serious than many other phone manufacturers.
Redefining the face of your iPhone requires a lot of gambling – users should feel as if they are not forced to change because of this, which means that what is offered must be both personal and maintain brand awareness that Apple is known for.
“Our goal,” Dai told us, “was to make the iPhone even more personal – and definitely more useful – but also to keep intact those key elements that make the iPhone, the iPhone.”
More than once, Dai has said that the lock screen is a key part of the iPhone icon.
It is time
Apple’s iOS 16 lock screen has a whole new look and feel, but how did that happen? (Image credit: Apple)
If you need to choose an item that really speaks “iPhone”, it could be the watch. You can look back on the iPhone’s 15-year history and instantly identify the device by this large, centered, upper third of screen time.
This will not change with the new lock screen – although Apple has considered it, it was decided to keep the iconic element.
Instead, Dai described how his team designed a bold, customized version of the font in San Francisco and, for the first time, allowed iPhone users to choose different font styles and colors for the watch.
“Typography is such a huge passion of ours, the design teams,” and we have a number of other Apple design fonts, even some non-Latin fonts. So for the first time, we’re allowing consumers to choose their favorite, “Dai said.
Obviously, personalization doesn’t stop with adjustments to the way you see time.
iOS 16 enhances all the basic features of the lock screen (information, customization and usefulness), while creating something much more visually striking than ever on the iPhone.
“From the design team’s point of view, our goal was to create something that looks almost more editorial, and to give the user the ability to create a lock screen that really … ultimately looks like a great magazine or movie poster cover. but it does it in a way that we hope is really easy to create, a lot of fun and even a lot of automation, ”said Dai.
This “magazine look” is achieved through a collection of new controls and customizations that combine updated time, widgets, photos and deep technology that identifies good images on the lock screen and can combine them with elements in new ways.
Instead of a screen that you can update with a favorite photo, but you can’t change otherwise, iOS 16 will allow you to dig into the lock screen by pressing your finger on it for a long time. This will open a gallery of lock screen options and the ability to customize each lock screen to your liking.
At the heart of all this customization and the new look of the lock screen is the photo you choose – or not.
iOS 16 will have many pre-built screen lock options to help push you to the look and feel that you think will look best on your smartphone without removing the ability for users to make the changes they want .
The theme is photos
There is a lot of AI behind the placement of her hair over time, while not completely changing what makes this interface so unique to Apple. (Image credit: Apple)
Starting with the iPhone X and its introduction to portrait photography, Apple is on a journey to understand photos, evolving into machine learning that is now able to figure out what makes a good photo on a lock screen.
“[There are] in fact, about a dozen neural networks that judge a photo based on whether it’s a desired object, whether there are people there, how they are framed and cut in the picture, their expressions. “All these things that allow us to automatically come up with really great, captivating options for people and then portray them on screen in a way that makes them feel almost completely new,” Federico said.
Choosing and offering photos suitable for a lock screen is one thing, but with iOS 16 Apple makes images – or rather the object – an integral part of the interface.
About a dozen neural networks judge a photo based on whether it is a desired object
Craig Federico
“The look of the magazine,” Dye mentioned, is more than the overall composition of the elements on the locked screen. This is that fluff of dog hair or a bump from loose hair that intersects with the element of time and instead of sitting behind the numbers, is layered on it. This is an arresting – and professional – appearance that is created automatically. Apple calls it “segmentation.”
Creating this look is something Dye and his design team have been dreaming of for years.
“We wanted to achieve that kind, but the segmentation has become so good that we really feel comfortable putting it [in there]. Unless segmentation is just absurdly good, it shatters the illusion. “
Breakthrough
Dragging and dropping an object from the image involves segmentation. (Image credit: Apple)
Segmentation in iOS 16 actually exceeds the lock screen. During a keynote address by WWDC, Federigi showed how an iPhone user can touch and hold a photo of a bulldog on the beach and drag only the bulldog into, say, Messages.
It’s not a big jump to see the connection between segmenting in the lock screen and dragging and dropping perfectly selected photo items into another app.
You’re right that you connect these two things, and we’ve developed some new neural networks – using a technique called “attention” that allows us this new level of precision in object identification and segmentation – which we’ve been able to apply to this and other cases. .
“In the context of what you’ve seen with us lifting and allowing interactive photo uploading, what’s also really amazing is that using Apple’s neural engine, we’re able to do that in about 100 milliseconds,” Federigi said. .
This speed is evident in the segmentation of the lock screen, which makes the hair layering instant.
The intelligence that comes with the device and the Apple Neural Engine on the A15 Bionic CPU allows Apple, as Federigi explained, “to take a picture we’ve never seen before, and to understand the object, and to segment it and allow it.” interact so fast that we can do it the moment your finger hits the glass. “
This segmentation, which reminds us of what Google Pixel can do with its magic tire, seems like a technological leap.
“It is certainly an area where we work, the space of depth and segmentation, but you are right that this year we had some breakthroughs that we managed to apply to this problem,” Federigi added.
Apple’s understanding of your photos is expanding to help you make filter adjustments that will complement the elements of the image, although calling them filters is a misrepresentation of the styles that iOS 16 allows you to apply to photos on the lock screen.
Instead of a set of filters that you can apply to images, Apple uses this knowledge of segmentation to offer a custom set of looks.
“These styles are much more than filters,” Dai said. “In fact, we use segmentation, tonal values, our entire understanding of the scene, to help us really determine how we can intelligently offer different treatments for each photo. Which is also really great, because it’s very Apple at its best. Design and engineering work together to offer something, really, I think, quite beautiful. ”
Instead of eight or a dozen preset filters, you may only be offered two photo styles, and they are unlikely to be the same two if you select a different photo on a lock screen.
Dai told us that if the system doesn’t think the photo will look great, it won’t …
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