4 ms·

I think my new arm-based Macbook is pretty awesome in all aspects but the notch is almost as stupid as the old touchbar. I'm a bit surprised it hasn't caused mo

I think my new arm-based Macbook is pretty awesome in all aspects but the notch is almost as stupid as the old touchbar. I'm a bit surprised it hasn't caused more criticism. As a "pro" i don't need a freaking menu bar, i access stuff via hotkeys or look them up. I need that extra space for doing actual pro work, but now i have a big fat line of dead pixels at the top of my screen if i don't wan't permanent menus creating visual noise. If i could somehow use the space for tabs, or for some other actually useful elements..

lalaithion 4y ago
It's literally extra screen real estate. The non-notch screen rectangle is the same size as the pre-notch screen.
- Kwpolska 4y ago
  You’re gaining 24 pt real estate (compared to a notchless screen running the latest macOS versions). Those 24 extra points don’t amount to much (maybe one or two lines of text), but the menu bar real estate is less, and your screen has a pointless gimmick forever embedded into it.
- kossTKR 4y ago
  We want compactness in a laptop, not "bonus" screen space that's only usable for some useless part of the OS when we have to actually carry it around everyday for multiple years and it makes the screen have a huge top border. Also why does it even have to be this wide in the first place?
  - 1123581321 4y ago
    They made the bezels thinner on those. That’s why the notch is there. They basically moved the menu bar into the old bezel area to give you more useful screen space.
  - ladberg 4y ago
    As long as you want a laptop with a camera above the screen, you have the choice of filling extra space around the camera with a screen or a bezel. I'd prefer the screen and in my opinion it's strictly an improvement over a bezel with no downsides. If you don't want a camera above the screen then you can go for something like a 2018 Dell XPS, but I think the consumer market has spoken and voted for cameras above screens.
    - kossTKR 4y ago
      I don't really buy that it's not possible to move the cam up a bit into the notch that's still there, but even if it is an engineering problem why not make it possible to actually customise the menu bar? Right now icons disappears under the notch on the right side, and you need 3. party software to customise the right side, and even then there's problems with icons "disappearing" under the notch, along with the mouse. Why do i have to look at 10+ menus on the left side of the notch forever now after upgrading my macbook, that constantly changes with every app im in - i never use them and they just create visual noise?
- smoldesu 4y ago
  It's a downgrade from my previous 16:10 laptop, and a huge downgrade from 3:2.
  - robertoandred 4y ago
    It’s taller than 16:10. How is that a downgrade?
AYBABTME 4y ago
I'm a "pro" and I really love to have resource usage graphs continuously visible, so I can know at a glance what my computer is doing, why it's taking a while, if something is doing something it shouldn't in the background, or if there's a glaring bug with code I'm writing.
- Joeri 4y ago
  On the fanless macs I find it essential to have some kind of cpu indicator in the menu bar. I’ve had it happen multiple times that some rogue process is using a core or two at full burn and the only way I could tell was the SoC temperature spiking.
- kitsunesoba 4y ago
  As someone who I'd think constitutes as a "pro" I also like the menubar, simply because it's a searchable index of all the functionality an application offers that can't be IKEA'd away by designers bent on functionality-deleting minimalism. In fact one of my biggest frustrations with Windows and Linux is that a global menubar isn't an option and so one has to live with hamburger menus and convoluted paths to certain dialogs whether they like them or not. KDE on Linux is the exception here, but its global menubar is half useless thanks to all of the hamburger menu afflicted Linux apps, as well as apps that don't surface their menu items to dbus.
josephd79 4y ago
I hate that notch also. I use https://topnotch.app/ https://topnotch.app/ to play some eye trickery so i don’t have to stare at that thing.
josephd79 4y ago
I also use https://github.com/dwarvesf/hidden https://github.com/dwarvesf/hidden to try and clean up that menu bar bs.

lalaithion 4y ago

It's literally extra screen real estate. The non-notch screen rectangle is the same size as the pre-notch screen.

Kwpolska 4y ago
You’re gaining 24 pt real estate (compared to a notchless screen running the latest macOS versions). Those 24 extra points don’t amount to much (maybe one or two lines of text), but the menu bar real estate is less, and your screen has a pointless gimmick forever embedded into it.
kossTKR 4y ago
We want compactness in a laptop, not "bonus" screen space that's only usable for some useless part of the OS when we have to actually carry it around everyday for multiple years and it makes the screen have a huge top border. Also why does it even have to be this wide in the first place?
- 1123581321 4y ago
  They made the bezels thinner on those. That’s why the notch is there. They basically moved the menu bar into the old bezel area to give you more useful screen space.
- ladberg 4y ago
  As long as you want a laptop with a camera above the screen, you have the choice of filling extra space around the camera with a screen or a bezel. I'd prefer the screen and in my opinion it's strictly an improvement over a bezel with no downsides. If you don't want a camera above the screen then you can go for something like a 2018 Dell XPS, but I think the consumer market has spoken and voted for cameras above screens.
  - kossTKR 4y ago
    I don't really buy that it's not possible to move the cam up a bit into the notch that's still there, but even if it is an engineering problem why not make it possible to actually customise the menu bar? Right now icons disappears under the notch on the right side, and you need 3. party software to customise the right side, and even then there's problems with icons "disappearing" under the notch, along with the mouse. Why do i have to look at 10+ menus on the left side of the notch forever now after upgrading my macbook, that constantly changes with every app im in - i never use them and they just create visual noise?
smoldesu 4y ago
It's a downgrade from my previous 16:10 laptop, and a huge downgrade from 3:2.
- robertoandred 4y ago
  It’s taller than 16:10. How is that a downgrade?

AYBABTME 4y ago

I'm a "pro" and I really love to have resource usage graphs continuously visible, so I can know at a glance what my computer is doing, why it's taking a while, if something is doing something it shouldn't in the background, or if there's a glaring bug with code I'm writing.

Joeri 4y ago
On the fanless macs I find it essential to have some kind of cpu indicator in the menu bar. I’ve had it happen multiple times that some rogue process is using a core or two at full burn and the only way I could tell was the SoC temperature spiking.
kitsunesoba 4y ago
As someone who I'd think constitutes as a "pro" I also like the menubar, simply because it's a searchable index of all the functionality an application offers that can't be IKEA'd away by designers bent on functionality-deleting minimalism. In fact one of my biggest frustrations with Windows and Linux is that a global menubar isn't an option and so one has to live with hamburger menus and convoluted paths to certain dialogs whether they like them or not. KDE on Linux is the exception here, but its global menubar is half useless thanks to all of the hamburger menu afflicted Linux apps, as well as apps that don't surface their menu items to dbus.

josephd79 4y ago

I hate that notch also. I use https://topnotch.app/ https://topnotch.app/ to play some eye trickery so i don’t have to stare at that thing.

josephd79 4y ago

I also use https://github.com/dwarvesf/hidden https://github.com/dwarvesf/hidden to try and clean up that menu bar bs.