4 ms·

You should wait until next Fall if you don't really need to replace your M1 Max. Rumors say that Apple's going to redesign the Macbook Pros next year with an OL

You should wait until next Fall if you don't really need to replace your M1 Max. Rumors say that Apple's going to redesign the Macbook Pros next year with an OLED screen.

kossTKR 1y ago
For the love of god remove the notch, that's the only idiotic branding vestige left.
- mort96 1y ago
  And put the web cam where? The notch is bigger than it should be for sure, I would've loved for it to be narrower. But I don't really mind the trade-off it represents. You could add half an inch of screen bezel and make the machine bigger, just to fit the web cam. Or you could remove half an inch of screen , essentially making the "notch" stretch across the whole top of the laptop. Or you could find some compromised place to put the camera, like those Dell laptops which put the camera near the hinge. Or you can let the screen fill the whole lid of the laptop, with a cut-out for the camera, and design the GUI such that the menu bar fills the part of the screen that's interrupted by the notch. I personally don't mind that last option. For my needs, it might very well be the best alternative. If I needed a bigger below-the-notch area, I could get the 16" option instead of the 14" option.
  - hu3 1y ago
    Dell XPS has webcam, no notch and same o bezel as macbooks. Maybe it's a patent thing.
    - mort96 1y ago
      They have the solution with the web cam near the hinge that I mentioned. I had a couple of Dell XPS laptops like that. It's fine if the webcam is really just an afterthought for you, but it does mean the webcam has a very unflattering angle that's looking up your nostrils. I use my webcam enough these days to take part in video meetings that it'd be a pretty big problem for me.
      - gargan 1y ago
        Checkout the Dell XPS 13 9345, webcam is on top but with thinner bezels than a Macbook, it's got a Snapdragon ARM processor for good battery life, OLED screen, upto 64GB RAM, and is smaller and lighter than a Macbook Air Snapdragon X Elite 2 processor will be out next year for the refreshed model
        y1n0 1y ago
        That top bezel is twice the size of my m4 mbp.
        gargan 1y ago
        You're looking at the wrong laptop, the Dell XPS 13 9345 has a ~88.6% screen to body ratio, the Macbook Pro 14 M4 2024 has a ~84.6% screen to body ratio. The weight is the big one for me - only 2.5 lbs vs 3.4 lbs Remember the Dell has an 18 month old processor, X Elite 2 coming out next year. Source for all these stats: https://nanoreview.net/en/laptop-compare/dell-xps-13-9345-2024-vs-apple-macbook-pro-14-m4-2024?m=d%7e2.r%7e64-and-c%7e3516.r%7e64 https://nanoreview.net/en/laptop-compare/dell-xps-13-9345-20...
      - badc0ffee 1y ago
        Also it gives the huge hands effect when you're typing.
      - cyberax 1y ago
        > They have the solution with the web cam near the hinge that I mentioned. Companies tried that. You get very strange-looking up-your-nose pictures.
  - bobthepanda 1y ago
    I wonder how hard it would be to have a camera 'pop up' from the laptop. (i'm not a hardware guy)
    - eastbound 1y ago
      Some laptops literally have the camera behind the screen. As in, behind pixels. It’s possible and classy.
      - bobthepanda 1y ago
        do you have a picture of what that looks like? having a hard time conceptualizing that.
        Tuna-Fish 1y ago
        It's not visible at all. The camera is just placed behind the screen. OLED screens are inherently transparent, there is just a light-emitting layer in them. You put your camera behind the screen, and either make the few pixels on top of the lens go black when it's on, or you use a lot of software to remove the light that comes from the screen and clean up the picture.
      - Lammy 1y ago
        My REDMAGIC Android phone is like this too and I love not having a stupid notch cut out of the screen. I've hated them since the very first time I saw a iPhone X. Can't believe such a ridiculous design defect infected Macbooks too :/
    - XorNot 1y ago
      My Oppo Reno 2z phone does this and honestly its been working great for years. I really like not having a notch. Feels like for a laptop it would be durable enough and also fulfill the "webcam is physically blocked when off".
  - mirekrusin 1y ago
    Two cameras on the top corners or 4 in each corner for better gaussian splatting.
  - joking 1y ago
    I don't have a problem with the notch, I have a problem with the icons not showing in the status bar and there isn't a *** way to show them. It's so difficult to add a overflow button that shows the hidden icons?
- brookst 1y ago
  You want a strip of black plastic across the entire top rather than pixels to the left and right of the cameras?
jltsiren 1y ago
I would rather buy the last refresh of the old design. Waiting for a redesign is risky, as some redesings are just bad (like the touchbar MBP). And Apple is opinionated enough that it often refuses to admit its mistakes and sticks to them for years.
- anigbrowl 1y ago
  I got an old MBP with the touchbar as payment for a favor last year and I quite like it. I don't know why it gets so much hate.
  - no_wizard 1y ago
    I think it’s because of the non optionality of it. If you could have gotten every but sans/includes the touch bar people could have simply made their choices based on preference. In the end they reverted because they were not willing to make it optional. They also never released a touch bar keyboard for desktop, which would have made it more useful perhaps
  - skor 1y ago
    no escape key, that's one reason
    - Mogzol 1y ago
      My 2019 MBP has a touch bar and a physical escape key, so at least some models did have one. I agree not having it would make the touch bar way worse. As it is I don't mind it.
    - anigbrowl 1y ago
      i also found that weird when I got it but I got used to it quickly. It's not my main work machine but I use it for a couple of hours every evening and stopped thinking about it. I do sometimes accidentally bring up Siri when I mean to hit the backspace key.
  - jltsiren 1y ago
    I had one for a few years. The keyboard was bad, and there was no physical escape key. There were lot of accidental clicks with the touchbar, as it had a different logic (touch to use rather than press to use) than the other keys, or the function keys on every other keyboard. And I was using USB-A and HDMI adapters all the time, as the laptop lacked essential ports.

You should wait until next Fall if you don't really need to replace your M1 Max. Rumors say that Apple's going to redesign the Macbook Pros next year with an OLED screen.

kossTKR 1y ago

For the love of god remove the notch, that's the only idiotic branding vestige left.

mort96 1y ago
And put the web cam where? The notch is bigger than it should be for sure, I would've loved for it to be narrower. But I don't really mind the trade-off it represents. You could add half an inch of screen bezel and make the machine bigger, just to fit the web cam. Or you could remove half an inch of screen , essentially making the "notch" stretch across the whole top of the laptop. Or you could find some compromised place to put the camera, like those Dell laptops which put the camera near the hinge. Or you can let the screen fill the whole lid of the laptop, with a cut-out for the camera, and design the GUI such that the menu bar fills the part of the screen that's interrupted by the notch. I personally don't mind that last option. For my needs, it might very well be the best alternative. If I needed a bigger below-the-notch area, I could get the 16" option instead of the 14" option.
- hu3 1y ago
  Dell XPS has webcam, no notch and same o bezel as macbooks. Maybe it's a patent thing.
  - mort96 1y ago
    They have the solution with the web cam near the hinge that I mentioned. I had a couple of Dell XPS laptops like that. It's fine if the webcam is really just an afterthought for you, but it does mean the webcam has a very unflattering angle that's looking up your nostrils. I use my webcam enough these days to take part in video meetings that it'd be a pretty big problem for me.
    - gargan 1y ago
      Checkout the Dell XPS 13 9345, webcam is on top but with thinner bezels than a Macbook, it's got a Snapdragon ARM processor for good battery life, OLED screen, upto 64GB RAM, and is smaller and lighter than a Macbook Air Snapdragon X Elite 2 processor will be out next year for the refreshed model
      - y1n0 1y ago
        That top bezel is twice the size of my m4 mbp.
        gargan 1y ago
        You're looking at the wrong laptop, the Dell XPS 13 9345 has a ~88.6% screen to body ratio, the Macbook Pro 14 M4 2024 has a ~84.6% screen to body ratio. The weight is the big one for me - only 2.5 lbs vs 3.4 lbs Remember the Dell has an 18 month old processor, X Elite 2 coming out next year. Source for all these stats: https://nanoreview.net/en/laptop-compare/dell-xps-13-9345-2024-vs-apple-macbook-pro-14-m4-2024?m=d%7e2.r%7e64-and-c%7e3516.r%7e64 https://nanoreview.net/en/laptop-compare/dell-xps-13-9345-20...
    - badc0ffee 1y ago
      Also it gives the huge hands effect when you're typing.
    - cyberax 1y ago
      > They have the solution with the web cam near the hinge that I mentioned. Companies tried that. You get very strange-looking up-your-nose pictures.
- bobthepanda 1y ago
  I wonder how hard it would be to have a camera 'pop up' from the laptop. (i'm not a hardware guy)
  - eastbound 1y ago
    Some laptops literally have the camera behind the screen. As in, behind pixels. It’s possible and classy.
    - bobthepanda 1y ago
      do you have a picture of what that looks like? having a hard time conceptualizing that.
      - Tuna-Fish 1y ago
        It's not visible at all. The camera is just placed behind the screen. OLED screens are inherently transparent, there is just a light-emitting layer in them. You put your camera behind the screen, and either make the few pixels on top of the lens go black when it's on, or you use a lot of software to remove the light that comes from the screen and clean up the picture.
    - Lammy 1y ago
      My REDMAGIC Android phone is like this too and I love not having a stupid notch cut out of the screen. I've hated them since the very first time I saw a iPhone X. Can't believe such a ridiculous design defect infected Macbooks too :/
  - XorNot 1y ago
    My Oppo Reno 2z phone does this and honestly its been working great for years. I really like not having a notch. Feels like for a laptop it would be durable enough and also fulfill the "webcam is physically blocked when off".
- mirekrusin 1y ago
  Two cameras on the top corners or 4 in each corner for better gaussian splatting.
- joking 1y ago
  I don't have a problem with the notch, I have a problem with the icons not showing in the status bar and there isn't a *** way to show them. It's so difficult to add a overflow button that shows the hidden icons?
brookst 1y ago
You want a strip of black plastic across the entire top rather than pixels to the left and right of the cameras?

jltsiren 1y ago

I would rather buy the last refresh of the old design. Waiting for a redesign is risky, as some redesings are just bad (like the touchbar MBP). And Apple is opinionated enough that it often refuses to admit its mistakes and sticks to them for years.

anigbrowl 1y ago
I got an old MBP with the touchbar as payment for a favor last year and I quite like it. I don't know why it gets so much hate.
- no_wizard 1y ago
  I think it’s because of the non optionality of it. If you could have gotten every but sans/includes the touch bar people could have simply made their choices based on preference. In the end they reverted because they were not willing to make it optional. They also never released a touch bar keyboard for desktop, which would have made it more useful perhaps
- skor 1y ago
  no escape key, that's one reason
  - Mogzol 1y ago
    My 2019 MBP has a touch bar and a physical escape key, so at least some models did have one. I agree not having it would make the touch bar way worse. As it is I don't mind it.
  - anigbrowl 1y ago
    i also found that weird when I got it but I got used to it quickly. It's not my main work machine but I use it for a couple of hours every evening and stopped thinking about it. I do sometimes accidentally bring up Siri when I mean to hit the backspace key.
- jltsiren 1y ago
  I had one for a few years. The keyboard was bad, and there was no physical escape key. There were lot of accidental clicks with the touchbar, as it had a different logic (touch to use rather than press to use) than the other keys, or the function keys on every other keyboard. And I was using USB-A and HDMI adapters all the time, as the laptop lacked essential ports.