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Can you help me understand that? I have an iPhone with a notch and I find it’s totally fine. Day to day I don’t notice it. It just kind of blends in to the desi

Can you help me understand that? I have an iPhone with a notch and I find it’s totally fine. Day to day I don’t notice it. It just kind of blends in to the design of the phone. And I assume the situation here will be the same. Most software doesn’t use the whole menu bar anyway. It wont be on top of anything except if you use that space to watch full screen video. I’m not excited about the price, but I’d totally take tiny bezels and an upgraded webcam in exchange for the notch. This looks like an excellent upgrade.

saiya-jin 5y ago
Well if you are also exposed to notch-less experience elsewhere, ie work, it can become quite annoying. If that's your whole world, I can imagine you just learn ignoring it
nbzso 5y ago
I up-voted your comment, you ask reasonable question and I will try to answer it honestly. It is a use case. There are different levels of design craft. The more you, as a designer, train your mind and eyes, the more you see invisible things for regular people. I can spend days in clearing the white space between glyph/kerning of typography and this notch will distract my eyes constantly. Call it OCD or professional deformation, the notch will drive me crazy.:) When designing you want every visual distraction to be absent from your screen, for example I use 50% gray for wallpaper to have middle gray reference etc. You cannot compare iPhone UX with Design process UX. When you use your phone, you have a legitimate reason for compromise. When you use Pro labeled hardware you expect all Pro use cases and Pro UX to be respected. Don't get me wrong, I like the overall design (even the redesign of the shape of the keys), and there is no doubt that this are top-notch monsters. But for my use-case this is no go.
- mrtranscendence 5y ago
  > When you use Pro labeled hardware you expect all Pro use cases and Pro UX to be respected. This can't possibly be the case, though. There are infinite Pro use cases and trying to respect them all would result in a confused and inferior product. I'm not saying that your reasons for disliking the notch are wrong, or that they should have the notch. But they're working within certain constraints -- there's just no way to fit a decent webcam into a laptop screen without making space. As someone who's recently been trying to help his fiancee pick out a laptop, where said fiancee's primary criterion is that the laptop webcam shouldn't suck, I empathize with the decision.
  - nbzso 5y ago
    I disagree, respectfully. The main target audience of MacBook Pro started with designers, writers and musicians (just looking on the shelf towards my old Titanium PowerBook G4). There are not so much professional use cases which will agree on removing screen estate and adding visual distraction. Screen estate is the main difference in professional UX. One of the reasons that I mentioned the Framework laptop is that a small company can get super-close to professional audience when searching pro solutions with common sense. The Mighty Apple with trillions in bank cannot come-up with something "innovative" and chooses the "trade off" approach?
    - ctvo 5y ago
      > There are not so much professional use cases which will agree on removing screen estate and adding visual distraction. Screen estate is the main difference in professional UX. You seem to have a misunderstanding of the new screen? Apple is reducing the bezel around the screen to provide you more screen space. How do you handle front-facing utilities like a webcam when you use up all available space? Their solution is to surround that area with a small boundary (the dreaded notch). You can see that the Framework Laptop you cite has a large bezel around it to provide that top bar. You have less screen area here. From the screenshots, it looks like programs running in full screen mode are pushed down to leave that top area, to give you your distraction free experience: https://www.apple.com/macbook-pro-14-and-16/ https://www.apple.com/macbook-pro-14-and-16/
      - nbzso 5y ago
        Yes, I clearly see in the first frame a wallpaper with black background that hides the notch.:) So they give me a real estate by removing the bezel and remove the vertical display space to hide the notch. Nice solution, but as I sad, not for my use-case.
        foldr 5y ago
        Why does it not work for your use case? When the areas either side of the notch are unused (as in full screen mode) you just have a regular 16:10 screen with a top bezel. If previous MacBook screens worked for you then this one will too.
- ctvo 5y ago
  Idea: Write a utility to add in a software bezel for folks like this. We can call it distraction free mode. We'll take the extra space back and replace it with a black bezel. The webcam and front facing utilities are now within that space. You can toggle it on and off. > I can spend days in clearing the white space between glyph/kerning of typography and this notch will distract my eyes constantly. Call it OCD or professional deformation, the notch will drive me crazy.:) As an aside, most designers I know use external monitors. Do you find yourself doing this type of work on your laptop display?
  - nbzso 5y ago
    > As an aside, most designers I know use external monitors. Do you find yourself doing this type of work on your laptop display? Guilty as charged (Two Eizos), but I work outside the office regularly, or in the weekends when "inspiration" strikes. What is the point of Pro laptop when I cannot perform my work at a maximum UX comfort. Another use-case is that I develop my photos on the go, so on, so on.:) I am still partially in the Apple Ecosystem (mainly due to C1) so by the looks of it I will have to transition to something different. > Idea: Write a utility to add in a software bezel for folks like this. We can call it distraction free mode. We'll take the extra space back and replace it with a black bezel. The webcam and front facing utilities are now within that space. You can toggle it on and off. My first reaction was this idea also. I am sure that as we speak someone is firing up Xcode and it will be available if Apple approves it:)
  - VectorLock 5y ago
    >Idea: Write a utility to add in a software bezel for folks like this. I'd be surprised if this isn't an OS level option.
    - ctvo 5y ago
      How I would bet anything I own that there isn't, and won't ever be one, knowing Apple. This would admit there's a problem and some users may not like the new innovation allowing for more screen space.
    - luke2m 5y ago
- tshaddox 5y ago
  If it's about deliberately training your mind and eyes in order to use tools efficiently as a professional designer, then surely one could apply that training to focus on relevant parts of the screen and not the notch. Sure, if all else is equal between a laptop with a notch and one without, choose the one without the notch, but it's odd for the presence of a notch to be a dealbreaker for a computer that one otherwise would have chosen.
kps 5y ago
What happens when you try to move the pointer ‘into’ the notch? I can think of several ways to handle this, none of them good.
- enjoy-your-stay 5y ago
  Or if your menu bar has so many items it can't all fit to the left of the notch? Would probably have to straddle the notch, but would still look pretty weird.
  - dbbk 5y ago
    There’s a screenshot that shows this happening
- mthoms 5y ago
  And what happens in split screen mode (hidden menu)?
yellowapple 5y ago
> I have an iPhone with a notch and I find it’s totally fine. I have a Motorola with a notch and I find it's mildly noticeable and annoying. It's tolerable because it's a phone and I don't necessarily care about screen real estate maximization for a media consumption device (and because this phone is a temporary daily driver while I wait for my Astro Slide to finally ship), so I'm slightly more forgiving of e.g. the constraints on visible notification icons or the fact that Android's network traffic indicator is dead-smack in the middle and therefore "under" the notch (i.e. entirely useless unless the phone's in landscape mode). For a laptop, it's different; judging by my workflow at my previous job (wherein I used a Mac), that'll almost certainly do funky things with either long lists of menu bar options or long lists of status bar widgets, and will almost certainly do funky things with full-screen apps that have buttons at the top of the screen. It's telling that all of Apple's full-screen productivity app screenshots on that page are on the 16-inch, which doesn't have the notch (EDIT: or maybe it does; hard to tell from the renderings); all the renderings of the 14-inch either have stuff like Zoom or show the apps as windowed. The one rendering of the 14-inch running Photoshop demonstrates pretty plainly that PS' menu bar items are right up to the notch; if a program uses more than that, what's the behavior? All items get squished? Items at the end go to the other side of the notch? Items get hidden entirely "under" the notch and become inaccessible? GP's right, on all counts. The fact that said GP got downvoted into oblivion for daring to express a totally reasonable and legitimate opinion is disappointing, to say the least. And meanwhile, I've been overwhelmingly happy with my Framework, which doesn't resort to such gimmicks like notches and even boasts a superior 3:2 aspect ratio for yet more effective screen real estate. The M1 in these Macbooks is interesting and tempting, but a Mac Mini would readily scratch that itch just fine at a fraction of the price - especially if I'd have to use an external monitor anyway to prevent any interference with applications by that notch.
egypturnash 5y ago
> Most software doesn’t use the whole menu bar anyway. No, but all those little things you've installed that put up a menu bar item on the right add up - I'm sitting at a cafe on my laptop right now, and the menu widgets come to pretty much the center. If I unhide the less-frequently-used ones that I hide with Bartender then they're covering 5/6 of the width of the screen. I am an artist and spend a lot of time with Illustrator in fullscreen mode, with no visible menus. It'll be pretty annoying to have this thing jamming into the middle of my work area. Especially given that I think I could probably count on one hand the number of times I've used the cameras hiding in the frame of my previous Macs. Anyone playing games will be annoyed by it too. Hopefully they will not make this same move in the next round of Airs, as that's what my next computer's probably going to be.
- mbreese 5y ago
  > spend a lot of time with Illustrator in fullscreen mode, with no visible menus My guess is that for these situations and for full screen games, you’ll see the screen size reduced by the notch height. And if not, I’m sure there will be an extension that makes the menubar a black rectangle. Not optimal, but there are ways around the notch, if it bothers you too much.
  - banana_giraffe 5y ago
    Yep: They hinted at this with some of the screen shots they showed: https://imgur.com/a/McNBTHY https://imgur.com/a/McNBTHY I don't know enough about MacOS GUI development, but I'm guessing if an app requests a full screen display, it gets told the resolution is the resolution minus the top, and that's just blacked out.
    - egypturnash 5y ago
      I guess sometime next year I'll get to find out if Illustrator actually requests Full Screen Display or if it just throws up a window with no chrome that covers the menu bar! I am pretty sure it does the latter.
srvmshr 5y ago
One of the things I dread is using two program windows side-by-side when doing code reviews. Most of the arguments are in the full screen hiding the notch with a black title bar. What if you don't use it FS all the time? The notch would be right where two windows overlap, unless you manually resize both windows every time. Every day for 8 hours+ for everytime you open a code editor Extra screen real estate is great, but I am sure they didn't have to go all the way to top. The point is getting moot because now the chins are unusable space as well all the time.

saiya-jin 5y ago

Well if you are also exposed to notch-less experience elsewhere, ie work, it can become quite annoying. If that's your whole world, I can imagine you just learn ignoring it

nbzso 5y ago

I up-voted your comment, you ask reasonable question and I will try to answer it honestly. It is a use case. There are different levels of design craft. The more you, as a designer, train your mind and eyes, the more you see invisible things for regular people. I can spend days in clearing the white space between glyph/kerning of typography and this notch will distract my eyes constantly. Call it OCD or professional deformation, the notch will drive me crazy.:) When designing you want every visual distraction to be absent from your screen, for example I use 50% gray for wallpaper to have middle gray reference etc. You cannot compare iPhone UX with Design process UX. When you use your phone, you have a legitimate reason for compromise. When you use Pro labeled hardware you expect all Pro use cases and Pro UX to be respected. Don't get me wrong, I like the overall design (even the redesign of the shape of the keys), and there is no doubt that this are top-notch monsters. But for my use-case this is no go.

mrtranscendence 5y ago
> When you use Pro labeled hardware you expect all Pro use cases and Pro UX to be respected. This can't possibly be the case, though. There are infinite Pro use cases and trying to respect them all would result in a confused and inferior product. I'm not saying that your reasons for disliking the notch are wrong, or that they should have the notch. But they're working within certain constraints -- there's just no way to fit a decent webcam into a laptop screen without making space. As someone who's recently been trying to help his fiancee pick out a laptop, where said fiancee's primary criterion is that the laptop webcam shouldn't suck, I empathize with the decision.
- nbzso 5y ago
  I disagree, respectfully. The main target audience of MacBook Pro started with designers, writers and musicians (just looking on the shelf towards my old Titanium PowerBook G4). There are not so much professional use cases which will agree on removing screen estate and adding visual distraction. Screen estate is the main difference in professional UX. One of the reasons that I mentioned the Framework laptop is that a small company can get super-close to professional audience when searching pro solutions with common sense. The Mighty Apple with trillions in bank cannot come-up with something "innovative" and chooses the "trade off" approach?
  - ctvo 5y ago
    > There are not so much professional use cases which will agree on removing screen estate and adding visual distraction. Screen estate is the main difference in professional UX. You seem to have a misunderstanding of the new screen? Apple is reducing the bezel around the screen to provide you more screen space. How do you handle front-facing utilities like a webcam when you use up all available space? Their solution is to surround that area with a small boundary (the dreaded notch). You can see that the Framework Laptop you cite has a large bezel around it to provide that top bar. You have less screen area here. From the screenshots, it looks like programs running in full screen mode are pushed down to leave that top area, to give you your distraction free experience: https://www.apple.com/macbook-pro-14-and-16/ https://www.apple.com/macbook-pro-14-and-16/
    - nbzso 5y ago
      Yes, I clearly see in the first frame a wallpaper with black background that hides the notch.:) So they give me a real estate by removing the bezel and remove the vertical display space to hide the notch. Nice solution, but as I sad, not for my use-case.
      - foldr 5y ago
        Why does it not work for your use case? When the areas either side of the notch are unused (as in full screen mode) you just have a regular 16:10 screen with a top bezel. If previous MacBook screens worked for you then this one will too.
ctvo 5y ago
Idea: Write a utility to add in a software bezel for folks like this. We can call it distraction free mode. We'll take the extra space back and replace it with a black bezel. The webcam and front facing utilities are now within that space. You can toggle it on and off. > I can spend days in clearing the white space between glyph/kerning of typography and this notch will distract my eyes constantly. Call it OCD or professional deformation, the notch will drive me crazy.:) As an aside, most designers I know use external monitors. Do you find yourself doing this type of work on your laptop display?
- nbzso 5y ago
  > As an aside, most designers I know use external monitors. Do you find yourself doing this type of work on your laptop display? Guilty as charged (Two Eizos), but I work outside the office regularly, or in the weekends when "inspiration" strikes. What is the point of Pro laptop when I cannot perform my work at a maximum UX comfort. Another use-case is that I develop my photos on the go, so on, so on.:) I am still partially in the Apple Ecosystem (mainly due to C1) so by the looks of it I will have to transition to something different. > Idea: Write a utility to add in a software bezel for folks like this. We can call it distraction free mode. We'll take the extra space back and replace it with a black bezel. The webcam and front facing utilities are now within that space. You can toggle it on and off. My first reaction was this idea also. I am sure that as we speak someone is firing up Xcode and it will be available if Apple approves it:)
- VectorLock 5y ago
  >Idea: Write a utility to add in a software bezel for folks like this. I'd be surprised if this isn't an OS level option.
  - ctvo 5y ago
    How I would bet anything I own that there isn't, and won't ever be one, knowing Apple. This would admit there's a problem and some users may not like the new innovation allowing for more screen space.
  - luke2m 5y ago
tshaddox 5y ago
If it's about deliberately training your mind and eyes in order to use tools efficiently as a professional designer, then surely one could apply that training to focus on relevant parts of the screen and not the notch. Sure, if all else is equal between a laptop with a notch and one without, choose the one without the notch, but it's odd for the presence of a notch to be a dealbreaker for a computer that one otherwise would have chosen.

kps 5y ago

What happens when you try to move the pointer ‘into’ the notch? I can think of several ways to handle this, none of them good.

enjoy-your-stay 5y ago
Or if your menu bar has so many items it can't all fit to the left of the notch? Would probably have to straddle the notch, but would still look pretty weird.
- dbbk 5y ago
  There’s a screenshot that shows this happening
mthoms 5y ago
And what happens in split screen mode (hidden menu)?

yellowapple 5y ago

> I have an iPhone with a notch and I find it’s totally fine. I have a Motorola with a notch and I find it's mildly noticeable and annoying. It's tolerable because it's a phone and I don't necessarily care about screen real estate maximization for a media consumption device (and because this phone is a temporary daily driver while I wait for my Astro Slide to finally ship), so I'm slightly more forgiving of e.g. the constraints on visible notification icons or the fact that Android's network traffic indicator is dead-smack in the middle and therefore "under" the notch (i.e. entirely useless unless the phone's in landscape mode). For a laptop, it's different; judging by my workflow at my previous job (wherein I used a Mac), that'll almost certainly do funky things with either long lists of menu bar options or long lists of status bar widgets, and will almost certainly do funky things with full-screen apps that have buttons at the top of the screen. It's telling that all of Apple's full-screen productivity app screenshots on that page are on the 16-inch, which doesn't have the notch (EDIT: or maybe it does; hard to tell from the renderings); all the renderings of the 14-inch either have stuff like Zoom or show the apps as windowed. The one rendering of the 14-inch running Photoshop demonstrates pretty plainly that PS' menu bar items are right up to the notch; if a program uses more than that, what's the behavior? All items get squished? Items at the end go to the other side of the notch? Items get hidden entirely "under" the notch and become inaccessible? GP's right, on all counts. The fact that said GP got downvoted into oblivion for daring to express a totally reasonable and legitimate opinion is disappointing, to say the least. And meanwhile, I've been overwhelmingly happy with my Framework, which doesn't resort to such gimmicks like notches and even boasts a superior 3:2 aspect ratio for yet more effective screen real estate. The M1 in these Macbooks is interesting and tempting, but a Mac Mini would readily scratch that itch just fine at a fraction of the price - especially if I'd have to use an external monitor anyway to prevent any interference with applications by that notch.

egypturnash 5y ago

> Most software doesn’t use the whole menu bar anyway. No, but all those little things you've installed that put up a menu bar item on the right add up - I'm sitting at a cafe on my laptop right now, and the menu widgets come to pretty much the center. If I unhide the less-frequently-used ones that I hide with Bartender then they're covering 5/6 of the width of the screen. I am an artist and spend a lot of time with Illustrator in fullscreen mode, with no visible menus. It'll be pretty annoying to have this thing jamming into the middle of my work area. Especially given that I think I could probably count on one hand the number of times I've used the cameras hiding in the frame of my previous Macs. Anyone playing games will be annoyed by it too. Hopefully they will not make this same move in the next round of Airs, as that's what my next computer's probably going to be.

mbreese 5y ago
> spend a lot of time with Illustrator in fullscreen mode, with no visible menus My guess is that for these situations and for full screen games, you’ll see the screen size reduced by the notch height. And if not, I’m sure there will be an extension that makes the menubar a black rectangle. Not optimal, but there are ways around the notch, if it bothers you too much.
- banana_giraffe 5y ago
  Yep: They hinted at this with some of the screen shots they showed: https://imgur.com/a/McNBTHY https://imgur.com/a/McNBTHY I don't know enough about MacOS GUI development, but I'm guessing if an app requests a full screen display, it gets told the resolution is the resolution minus the top, and that's just blacked out.
  - egypturnash 5y ago
    I guess sometime next year I'll get to find out if Illustrator actually requests Full Screen Display or if it just throws up a window with no chrome that covers the menu bar! I am pretty sure it does the latter.

srvmshr 5y ago

One of the things I dread is using two program windows side-by-side when doing code reviews. Most of the arguments are in the full screen hiding the notch with a black title bar. What if you don't use it FS all the time? The notch would be right where two windows overlap, unless you manually resize both windows every time. Every day for 8 hours+ for everytime you open a code editor Extra screen real estate is great, but I am sure they didn't have to go all the way to top. The point is getting moot because now the chins are unusable space as well all the time.