The glaring design fail in the new iPhone Safari logo is proof that Apple's lost its direction

There's not long to go until the anticipated release of Apple's iOS 27 into the wild in mid-September, but the new iPhone operating system is already causing controversy. Alongside new 'Apple Intelligence' generative AI features and a rebuilt Siri AI, there are also inevitable design tweaks on the way, and some people think one of them is proof that Apple's lost its north.

I am, of course, talking about the great Safari logo controversy. Beta testers of iOS 27 have noted that the new app icon for Apple's browser now features a central pin and, confusingly, what looks like two needles overlapping as if they move independently like the hands on a watch.

The initial comment in the X thread above doesn't quite hit on the real problem with the design. Compasses do have a central pin. What they don't have are separate needles, which is what the Safari icon now seems to show because of that overlap of the red over the white. Add a second hand, and the icon would be more watch than compass.

"Whoever designed this doesn't understand how a compass works. They don't know it's just a single pin," one person affirms in the comments. "If it would be like iOS 6 and just a flat line in the middle of the pin it would be fine. Hope it gets fixed before the release," someone else points out, optimistically.

"Someone drew that, and somebody approved it. Details like that give a good idea of what direction things are going. Abandon ship before it's too late. With this compass, this ship ain't sailing the right direction anyway," another person writes, fearing navigational calamities to come.

Some have gone to the trouble of drawing up possible solutions to 'fix' the glaring design error.

You might say people are making a mountain out of a 2D compass pin head, and you'd be right. But let's remember that Apple is a company that's always been about perfect aesthetics and precise attention to detail (apart from when it comes to designing mice, butterfly keyboards or AI).

Since the decline of skeuomorphism, we've come to expect a certain gap between reality and an app icon. But for some, the iOS 27 Safari icon is a new low in what's been a long decline beginning with iOS 7, right after the definitive design that was the iOS 6 iteration.

I'm surprised that nobody's said it yet, so I'll say it myself: Jony Ive wouldn't have allowed this. Jony knows navigation. He designed a sailing lantern before turning his hand to the Ferrari Luce. He would know that compasses don't have two needles.

Perhaps Apple knows something we don’t about the future of geomagnetism, one person suggests. Or of imminent changes in the infrastructure of space time. Or maybe it needs to rethink this design. And then it can tackle the issue of the "transparent metal" in the Settings icon too.