Apple didn’t just announce some new electronics this year—they also unveiled a new fabric. Will it revolutionize the gadget landscape forever? Perhaps not. But it does feel pretty nice, and we thought it merited a closer look. A lot closer.
To make that happen, we’re adding a new tool to our workbench: a very fancy digital microscope, courtesy of Evident Scientific. It’s the perfect tool to take a closer look at this new-fangled FineWoven material. Join us as we zoom and enhance the new iPhone FineWoven case!
Here’s an iPhone 15 Pro case with FineWoven fabric:
Here’s what that FineWoven fabric looks like under 52x magnification:
…and under 490x magnification:
The fabric lives up to its name—those individual fibers are fine! They measure about 6 microns thick—that’s about 1/12 the width of a human hair (the pictured hair strand is 72 microns wide). Groups of these fibers make up threads that are approximately 150 microns thick. Most of us don’t have an intuitive feel of tight-knit fabric density, so for comparison: sheets made out of FineWoven fabric would have a 340 thread count, or 170 threads per inch per direction. But, that’s not really the right comparison, since each thread is made of many fibers rather than a single strand.
Apple noted that FineWoven is a microtwill. Twill is a weave that creates a pretty, diagonal pattern. We scampered around our office stealing outerwear from our team and put all the fabric we could find under the microscope in search of something similar to FineWoven. Success! The Arc’teryx Atom LT jacket and Patagonia TechFace jacket (which happens to also use recycled materials) both have similar construction.
Testing the fabric
The FineWoven fabric looks great—as long as you don’t touch it. But, what if you do? What if you scratched the fabric with a key or fingernail?
Because the weave is so tight, the FineWoven fabric should be pretty durable and tear-resistant. However, since its threads are so fine, it’s also very easy to mar the pristine weave. When we scratched the surface, the jostled threads didn’t actually break, nor was the dye damaged. Rather, the scratch-jostled fibers reflect light irregularly compared to the untouched bunches, creating a lasting visual mark. The thread itself is relatively soft, so most pocket items will leave an impression.
Will it stain, or will it be Fine?
But how do these super
