5 ms·

There's just no pleasing people. "Here's more screen real estate, but it's not contiguous." "No! I hate you! This is an abomination! I will black it out and m

There's just no pleasing people. "Here's more screen real estate, but it's not contiguous." "No! I hate you! This is an abomination! I will black it out and make it useless." If they hadn't made any camera updates people would also be ticked about that. Edit: I thought people were using this to push their menubar down below the level of the notch and creating black dead zones on the left and right of the notch. But I still think it's silly and picayune for people to quibble about the color of the menu bar.

joenathanone 5y ago
I can't help but thinking that there is an option in between those two choices.
- jedberg 5y ago
  What exactly would be between "we put a screen next to the camera" and "we put a bezel next to the camera"?
  - picture 5y ago
    we put a small bezel next to the camera
  - joenathanone 5y ago
    Punch hole cameras are a thing now in smartphones, would be better than a big block. I just feel like this was the wrong compromise. Not that my opinion matters, I bought the Surface Laptop Studio like the MS cuck that I am, which is full of bad compromises itself.
ljm 5y ago
It's just that Apple will have you think that nobody has ever developed a laptop screen with a smaller bezel, and thus the revolutionary and innovative approach is to just obstruct the display. The macbook has basically gone from having a comically huge bezel to something people will consider a nuisance. Dell did similar with the XPS 13 when they put the camera lens on the bottom corner of the screen, and it wasn't too long before they sorted that one out.
- gjsman-1000 5y ago
  Well, nobody has without terrible cameras. On launch day, some people were saying, "Well, Razer did it!" but Razer's webcam quality is absolutely hot garbage by comparison to even the old 720p Apple webcams. It's either notch and good camera, bad webcam and no notch/bezel, no webcam and no notch/bezel, or a thick bezel and good camera. Take your pick.
- alphabettsy 5y ago
  That’s true, but the XPS 13 camera and angle is terrible and that’s certainly not preferable for me in the age of Zoom.
  - seba_dos1 5y ago
    XPS 13 camera has been back on the top for a while already.
    - alphabettsy 5y ago
      Yea. I was responding to the suggestions that below the screen might be an acceptable alternative. The XPS camera is still bad but the angle is fixed at least.
      - pseudalopex 5y ago
        They suggested people considered the bottom camera a nuisance.
- Tagbert 5y ago
  The XPS 13 is also a 720p camera
- Tagbert 5y ago
  Apple’s camera is not just the camera. There is a true tone / ambient light sensor there too. It’s not the most compact component. They may be able to reduce it at some point but not so far.
villasv 5y ago
It doesn't become useless though, the menubar is still there. It just makes the menubar black so the notch is less noticeable.
- chadlavi 5y ago
  oh it's literally just a thing that styles your menu bar? I thought it was people who were pushing their menu bar beneath the notch and creating black no-man lands on either side of the notch.
- codetrotter 5y ago
  When the whole menu bar is made black with these modifications, it’s going to look a little bit weird probably because then you don’t see where the notch that “interrupts” menus is, so there will be a more strange looking gap. I’m still on MacBook Pro M1 2020, so not planning to buy a new machine for a while. But if the notch is there in the model I buy, I’m keeping the notch the way it looks. But in the end it’s all personal preference, so I’m not trying to protest against what other people choose to do on their desktops. That would be silly of me to do.
fishtacos 5y ago
I don't understand it either, but it can and should have been easily fixed by a built-in OS feature instead of having to get a separate app for it. Android allows this, for example in developer settings for applicable phones.
- zozbot234 5y ago
  AIUI, the Android feature does not actually "hide" the notch properly by turning the top bar dark. It just moves the top bar below the notch, which wastes that portion of screen space. Proper notch hiding is available in many custom ROMs however, it works quite nicely there.
zozbot234 5y ago
Huh? The menubar is not "useless", it works the same as it always has. It's just styled differently.
munk-a 5y ago
Personally the thing that really ticks me off is that they "don't allow" you (aka will boot your app if they catch it) to flow content smoothly around the notch. The way it was presented to developers was super obnoxious and, honestly, I don't think anyone would care if their phone was half a centimeter taller. People didn't loathe the iphone back when it had a screen between two bars of utility space.
- Tarragon 5y ago
  > they "don't allow" you (aka will boot your app if they catch it) to flow content smoothly around the notch. I don't understand, details please.
  - munk-a 5y ago
    From the HIG[1] > Don’t mask or call special attention to key display features. Don’t attempt to hide a device’s rounded corners, sensor housing, or indicator for accessing the Home screen by placing black bars at the top and bottom of the screen. Don’t use visual adornments like brackets, bezels, shapes, or instructional text to call special attention to these areas, either. 1. https://developer.apple.com/design/human-interface-guidelines/ios/visual-design/adaptivity-and-layout/ https://developer.apple.com/design/human-interface-guideline...
arcticbull 5y ago
I strongly encourage folks to think about the the notch not as "space taken away from a 14in display" but rather that a smaller display was expanded to fill all usable space. macOS UI paradigms lend themselves very well to a notch in the top, as top area can be split into two regions, one for menus and one for status widgets as we have long been doing anyways. Just like iOS utilizes the left region for time and the right region for status. I think with a couple of usability tweaks, and giving folks a little while to get used to it, they'll get over it. And probably really like it. Kvetching will continue until boredom ensues. [edit] Sent from my M1 Pro 14" MacBook Pro... ExtraPro. Did I mention it's for Pros?
- zozbot234 5y ago
  > but rather that a smaller display was expanded to fill all usable space. We used to call it a "New Second Display" back in the day. But that assumes that you're properly hiding the notch by using a dark background for that area.
- pseudalopex 5y ago
  > top area can be split into two regions, one for menus and one for status widgets as we have long been doing anyways Some people use lower resolutions or apps with more menus than you apparently.
  - arcticbull 5y ago
    There's definitely going to be edge cases, although if I were still a macOS software developer, I would update my app immediately to nest my menus more when operating with a notch. I think there's more that Apple - and also third-party developers - can do to make this a well-crafted experience. This is definitely a V1 but I see paths to it getting better! Never could say the same for the Touch Bar haha. I'm certainly not going to say you're holding it wrong. I sympathize with the frustration of this breaking your use case. Apple's never been one to avoid scrambling a few eggs.
    - pseudalopex 5y ago
jonny_eh 5y ago
> I will black it out and make it useless I'm so confused, do you think this app disables the camera or something?
- chadlavi 5y ago
  no I thought people were using this to push their menubar down below the notch and making the space on the left and right of the notch unused. Which was incorrect!
smoldesu 5y ago
With all of Apple's liquid cash I was kinda hoping they'd find a way to have their cake and eat it too.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
happytoexplain 5y ago
There are plenty of people who disagree with the tradeoff who aren't raving lunatics. Any tradeoff will please some people and displease others - it's irrational to assume the displeased are always same people, and are therefore un-pleasable hypocrites. Don't cast aspersions with so little regard.
- gjsman-1000 5y ago
  Maybe Apple knew those who disagreed with the tradeoff would almost certainly get a third-party app like this, and so worrying about them is unimportant because then there are options for both - it's just that that anti-notch group might not like the default. More options are better than fewer.
  - pseudalopex 5y ago
    This app is for people who don't like the look. It doesn't address the functional problems at all.
yumraj 5y ago
> Edit: I thought people were using this to push their menubar down below the level of the notch and creating black dead zones on the left and right of the notch. But I still think it's silly and picayune for people to quibble about the color of the menu bar. So, basically the original comment was posted before you'd seen the post. Got it. Though, I did learn a new word today, picayune, so thank you for that.
- chadlavi 5y ago
  I had seen someone on twitter doing what I assumed this was, and it was the only hack related to the notch I had seen on the net. Sorry pal. (though the meat of my comment still applies here: people will find reasons to complain about everything, they're just doing a different thing about the thing they don't like)
  - yumraj 5y ago
    No worries, I've been guilty of that in the past :) And, as I said, I learned a new word - had to look up the meaning, so I'm happy. I do agree about people finding things to complain about - like I'm still peeved about the price of the RAM upgrade and guess I'll remain peeved till I buy the damn thing and move on.
wk_end 5y ago
I think "there's just no pleasing people" comes off as really harsh, here. Some people prefer the extra real estate (for wallpaper), others might find the non-uniformity of the notch awkward or visually distracting. It's just a preference. ...or to put it another way, indeed, there's no pleasing people, because "people" is not a homogenous unit but instead hundreds of millions of individuals. This is why customizable software - or even open-source software - is such a boon. Let people compute how they choose. (OTOH: offer lots of knobs and people will complain that it's hard to understand, that time would be better spent making one version work well instead of a million combinations. Open-source it and there'll be whining about fragmentation, devs not fixing the right things, and on and on. Maybe there really is no pleasing people.)
finnthehuman 5y ago
>I still think it's silly and picayune for people to quibble about the color of the menu bar. I get you, but quibbling about minutia has been the bread and butter of software UI differentiation for so long that I don't really think it's incongruous for this kind of thing to show up as a 3rd party UI modification.

joenathanone 5y ago

I can't help but thinking that there is an option in between those two choices.

jedberg 5y ago
What exactly would be between "we put a screen next to the camera" and "we put a bezel next to the camera"?
- picture 5y ago
  we put a small bezel next to the camera
- joenathanone 5y ago
  Punch hole cameras are a thing now in smartphones, would be better than a big block. I just feel like this was the wrong compromise. Not that my opinion matters, I bought the Surface Laptop Studio like the MS cuck that I am, which is full of bad compromises itself.

ljm 5y ago

It's just that Apple will have you think that nobody has ever developed a laptop screen with a smaller bezel, and thus the revolutionary and innovative approach is to just obstruct the display. The macbook has basically gone from having a comically huge bezel to something people will consider a nuisance. Dell did similar with the XPS 13 when they put the camera lens on the bottom corner of the screen, and it wasn't too long before they sorted that one out.

gjsman-1000 5y ago
Well, nobody has without terrible cameras. On launch day, some people were saying, "Well, Razer did it!" but Razer's webcam quality is absolutely hot garbage by comparison to even the old 720p Apple webcams. It's either notch and good camera, bad webcam and no notch/bezel, no webcam and no notch/bezel, or a thick bezel and good camera. Take your pick.
alphabettsy 5y ago
That’s true, but the XPS 13 camera and angle is terrible and that’s certainly not preferable for me in the age of Zoom.
- seba_dos1 5y ago
  XPS 13 camera has been back on the top for a while already.
  - alphabettsy 5y ago
    Yea. I was responding to the suggestions that below the screen might be an acceptable alternative. The XPS camera is still bad but the angle is fixed at least.
    - pseudalopex 5y ago
      They suggested people considered the bottom camera a nuisance.
Tagbert 5y ago
The XPS 13 is also a 720p camera
Tagbert 5y ago
Apple’s camera is not just the camera. There is a true tone / ambient light sensor there too. It’s not the most compact component. They may be able to reduce it at some point but not so far.

villasv 5y ago

It doesn't become useless though, the menubar is still there. It just makes the menubar black so the notch is less noticeable.

chadlavi 5y ago
oh it's literally just a thing that styles your menu bar? I thought it was people who were pushing their menu bar beneath the notch and creating black no-man lands on either side of the notch.
codetrotter 5y ago
When the whole menu bar is made black with these modifications, it’s going to look a little bit weird probably because then you don’t see where the notch that “interrupts” menus is, so there will be a more strange looking gap. I’m still on MacBook Pro M1 2020, so not planning to buy a new machine for a while. But if the notch is there in the model I buy, I’m keeping the notch the way it looks. But in the end it’s all personal preference, so I’m not trying to protest against what other people choose to do on their desktops. That would be silly of me to do.

fishtacos 5y ago

I don't understand it either, but it can and should have been easily fixed by a built-in OS feature instead of having to get a separate app for it. Android allows this, for example in developer settings for applicable phones.

zozbot234 5y ago
AIUI, the Android feature does not actually "hide" the notch properly by turning the top bar dark. It just moves the top bar below the notch, which wastes that portion of screen space. Proper notch hiding is available in many custom ROMs however, it works quite nicely there.

zozbot234 5y ago

Huh? The menubar is not "useless", it works the same as it always has. It's just styled differently.

munk-a 5y ago

Personally the thing that really ticks me off is that they "don't allow" you (aka will boot your app if they catch it) to flow content smoothly around the notch. The way it was presented to developers was super obnoxious and, honestly, I don't think anyone would care if their phone was half a centimeter taller. People didn't loathe the iphone back when it had a screen between two bars of utility space.

Tarragon 5y ago
> they "don't allow" you (aka will boot your app if they catch it) to flow content smoothly around the notch. I don't understand, details please.
- munk-a 5y ago
  From the HIG[1] > Don’t mask or call special attention to key display features. Don’t attempt to hide a device’s rounded corners, sensor housing, or indicator for accessing the Home screen by placing black bars at the top and bottom of the screen. Don’t use visual adornments like brackets, bezels, shapes, or instructional text to call special attention to these areas, either. 1. https://developer.apple.com/design/human-interface-guidelines/ios/visual-design/adaptivity-and-layout/ https://developer.apple.com/design/human-interface-guideline...

arcticbull 5y ago

I strongly encourage folks to think about the the notch not as "space taken away from a 14in display" but rather that a smaller display was expanded to fill all usable space. macOS UI paradigms lend themselves very well to a notch in the top, as top area can be split into two regions, one for menus and one for status widgets as we have long been doing anyways. Just like iOS utilizes the left region for time and the right region for status. I think with a couple of usability tweaks, and giving folks a little while to get used to it, they'll get over it. And probably really like it. Kvetching will continue until boredom ensues. [edit] Sent from my M1 Pro 14" MacBook Pro... ExtraPro. Did I mention it's for Pros?

zozbot234 5y ago
> but rather that a smaller display was expanded to fill all usable space. We used to call it a "New Second Display" back in the day. But that assumes that you're properly hiding the notch by using a dark background for that area.
pseudalopex 5y ago
> top area can be split into two regions, one for menus and one for status widgets as we have long been doing anyways Some people use lower resolutions or apps with more menus than you apparently.
- arcticbull 5y ago
  There's definitely going to be edge cases, although if I were still a macOS software developer, I would update my app immediately to nest my menus more when operating with a notch. I think there's more that Apple - and also third-party developers - can do to make this a well-crafted experience. This is definitely a V1 but I see paths to it getting better! Never could say the same for the Touch Bar haha. I'm certainly not going to say you're holding it wrong. I sympathize with the frustration of this breaking your use case. Apple's never been one to avoid scrambling a few eggs.
  - pseudalopex 5y ago

jonny_eh 5y ago

> I will black it out and make it useless I'm so confused, do you think this app disables the camera or something?

chadlavi 5y ago
no I thought people were using this to push their menubar down below the notch and making the space on the left and right of the notch unused. Which was incorrect!

smoldesu 5y ago

With all of Apple's liquid cash I was kinda hoping they'd find a way to have their cake and eat it too.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

happytoexplain 5y ago

There are plenty of people who disagree with the tradeoff who aren't raving lunatics. Any tradeoff will please some people and displease others - it's irrational to assume the displeased are always same people, and are therefore un-pleasable hypocrites. Don't cast aspersions with so little regard.

gjsman-1000 5y ago
Maybe Apple knew those who disagreed with the tradeoff would almost certainly get a third-party app like this, and so worrying about them is unimportant because then there are options for both - it's just that that anti-notch group might not like the default. More options are better than fewer.
- pseudalopex 5y ago
  This app is for people who don't like the look. It doesn't address the functional problems at all.

yumraj 5y ago

> Edit: I thought people were using this to push their menubar down below the level of the notch and creating black dead zones on the left and right of the notch. But I still think it's silly and picayune for people to quibble about the color of the menu bar. So, basically the original comment was posted before you'd seen the post. Got it. Though, I did learn a new word today, picayune, so thank you for that.

chadlavi 5y ago
I had seen someone on twitter doing what I assumed this was, and it was the only hack related to the notch I had seen on the net. Sorry pal. (though the meat of my comment still applies here: people will find reasons to complain about everything, they're just doing a different thing about the thing they don't like)
- yumraj 5y ago
  No worries, I've been guilty of that in the past :) And, as I said, I learned a new word - had to look up the meaning, so I'm happy. I do agree about people finding things to complain about - like I'm still peeved about the price of the RAM upgrade and guess I'll remain peeved till I buy the damn thing and move on.

wk_end 5y ago

I think "there's just no pleasing people" comes off as really harsh, here. Some people prefer the extra real estate (for wallpaper), others might find the non-uniformity of the notch awkward or visually distracting. It's just a preference. ...or to put it another way, indeed, there's no pleasing people, because "people" is not a homogenous unit but instead hundreds of millions of individuals. This is why customizable software - or even open-source software - is such a boon. Let people compute how they choose. (OTOH: offer lots of knobs and people will complain that it's hard to understand, that time would be better spent making one version work well instead of a million combinations. Open-source it and there'll be whining about fragmentation, devs not fixing the right things, and on and on. Maybe there really is no pleasing people.)

finnthehuman 5y ago

>I still think it's silly and picayune for people to quibble about the color of the menu bar. I get you, but quibbling about minutia has been the bread and butter of software UI differentiation for so long that I don't really think it's incongruous for this kind of thing to show up as a 3rd party UI modification.