And they made a new bad decision: a notch.
[0] https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/81FV+91am5L._AC_SL1500_....
I also think that with FaceID my phone is generally unlocked when I pick it up as well.
I am using a $200 Oppo with screen fingerprint reader, never had any issues.
Of course it's not a bad decision. It's idiotic decision. They literally added something to spoil what was needed. They could just fix their previous idiocy but no .. they had to add another one. Even the fact of it presence is annoying enough to avoid buying such model.
It is "uuugly" (with S.Jobs intonation) and that should be enough.
It's also invitation for more SW bugs and unnecessary complications. My Menubar is set to autohide and even that is not working properly because some windows from time to time stuck in a mode when they fail to extend themselves to occupy space where MenuBar was. They stuck in size FullScreenSize.Height-MenuBar.Height and you cannot change it unless you reboot the machine. It's obviously a bug. They cannot fix it for many OS versions already. Imagine adding to this bug another complication with notch ... Goodness.
Let's not forget that other idiots are going to copy it everywhere without too much thinking too.
"Ugly" argument should be enough. But there are more: How about mouse pointer. Should it be stuck once you reach this notch or it should pass through? Both ways it is idiotic. How about full screenshot - it will be with notch now? How about those apps that would fail to hide it? I am pretty sure you'll stuck with this status bar spoiling the whole picture here and there. How about multiple screens and complications with moving windows from one screen to another with keeping their size or complications with screeenshots when multiple screens are connected? What if you have a lot of menu items in your app? Some of them will be after the notch?
And all of this for what? To solve something that was already solved long time ago by "autohiding" MenuBar?
For my taste adding this absolutely useless "notch" is really idiotic decision . The very presence of this ugly notch is spoiling the feeling.
Even knowing that this device was made by people who find this idiotic notch aesthetically pleasing spoils everything because you know it's not the first idiocy and not the last idiocy you'll find there when you dig deeper. At least this is my expectation now. I was correct about ports, I was correct about keyboard, I was correct about idiocy of touch bar, lack of magsafe and I think I am not mistaken here too. They could've ask me, would save them a lot of redundant efforts in production. I use laptop to it's maximum and described my usage in details somewhere in comments. I really use laptop as laptop and I use each and every feature of it.
https://developer.apple.com/design/human-interface-guideline...
You'd complain about that booger, right?
Personally I think everyone will forget the notch in a few weeks. We got over it for phones, which have much less screen real estate to spare. If the extra space enables a permanently visible status bar in OSX, even when full screen with apps, then I personally will be thrilled with this change.
People also stop complaining simply because they've complained enough. It's definitely not always the case that they "get over it". People that need a Mac will certainly rationalize since they have no choice.
But given a choice, people would absolutely not buy a laptop with a turd like this notch front and center.
As usual though - Apple gives you no choice.
Of course if price is the reason, then that makes more sense. Apple seems to be returning to a wider (and more reasonable imho) price and performance gap between the pro and the air. If I was in the market for a laptop, and I’m not because I think laptops are silly in general[0], I’d go for an air. The pro is very much in the “work will buy one for me” price, and it offers performance I don’t really need out of a personal machine.
0 - As I’ve said before, laptops generally compromise too much for my tastes. Like many others I work entirely from a desk, so my personal mac is and always will be a mini. But since work will inevitably give me one of these, I’m thrilled that they’ve made it so much better, even if I wouldn’t buy one myself.
I'd get one but I need it to look premium if I'm dropping 4k and right now it looks like it's from 2008
The point of the MBP is that it’s for professionals. It’s a tool, not a fashion statement. The idea that it’s not worth the money because it looks outdated is utterly baffling to me; it’s worth the money because they’ve stuffed it full of the most performant components apple has ever put into a laptop ever. I want it to be a function over form machine, and worrying about its looks as part of the buying decision genuinely never crossed my mind.
If you want a fashion statement laptop and don’t need the performance, then don’t get a MBP. Again, your money; I don’t get it, but you do you. But the issue here isn’t that the laptop is bad per se, the issue is that that laptop wasn’t made for your use case.
Pffft, as if Apple didn't market every. single. one. of their products as a fashion statement.
Apple clearly has always chosen form over function and being different over function. That's the only reason why the ridiculously useless Dock exists at all - marketing loved it since it embodies both of those traits.
Nonsense. The Mac Pro is clearly marketed as a professional took for professional use, always has been. Ditto with their high end displays. I don’t even think they had these objects in the last Apple Store I went into, actually.
Furthermore, every single ad I’ve ever seen for the MBP has been about artists, creatives, and programmers using it to make things. They have always presented it as the professional’s tool for creating stuff, even if at times that’s been a bit of a farce.
Now compare how they presented the MacBook, a laptop that they sold in gold color. That is a laptop they presented as a fashion choice, and interestingly it’s also the laptop they abandoned first.
> Apple clearly has always chosen form over function and being different over function
It’s only “always” been this way if you’re relatively young. In fact Apple’s turn towards form over function sometime after Job’s death caused quite a bit of angst here, both in terms of their hardware and software design. I’m old enough to remember when the MBP was unquestionably the best laptop a developer could buy, and I was very sad to watch it slowly lose ground to other laptops as Apple pursued thinness over user experience, hardware specs, upgradability, or durability.
If anything else, what I’m seeing today seems like a return to Apple from earlier in my career, when they made professional grade laptops that lead the pack. There are still some changes I’d love to see, such as more upgrade ability, but an Apple that’s willing to make its devices thicker if it improves user experience is very much a “function over form” move.
I personally find notches to be very distracting visually, and I just don't like them from a design standpoint.
I think Apple recognizes this even. Looking at their marketing material. You have to scroll pretty far down to ever be shown the notch, as it seems they're intentionally hiding it with apps in full screen mode.
I think apple made the right trade-off. Thin bezels and a good camera at the top of the display. Sadly you cannot have both in a laptop without a notched design.
https://www.dell.com/community/XPS/XPS13-9300-2020-version-w...
The Apple camera solution here, while it doesn't make you happy, may make others happy.
My guess - looking good on a zoom call for your work or your soririty or your dating videos is going to matter a TON more to folks than whether or not something is integrated into a fat bezel, or is in a notch.
This debate has already occured BTW with the phones, and despite various claims that the notch would destroy iphone sales it did not.
That said, I build my own PCs (talk about driver issues long term) and do purchasing of Lenovo and Dell for business (and a dell "server" costs a mint even though what is inside is also not THAT amazing) and don't use a mac personally, but my family does, and so I'm not totally blind to the value offering they have.
It's not like Apple can't do the same as Dell.
I would, if only along the bottom!
tl;dr: a thicker bottom bezel allows the necessary space for a better keyboard layout without shrinking the touchpad, and makes the laptop more usable when your eyes are at heights closer to that of the screen rather than looking down on it from above
Because I have poor eyesight but I like to keep a lot of text on my screen, I often work partially or fully reclined with my laptop lying on my chest or my stomach. When I do this, the height of my fingers as they rest on the keyboard tends to obscure the bottom part of the screen on 'modern' laptops with super-thin bezels all around, so I have to reduce the height of my full-screen terminal.
On older laptops, where the bottom bezel may be a full inch or more tall, I don't need this. Additionally, I prefer a full, standard, IBM style keyboard layout: a dedicated row of F keys, spaced out in the standard way, and with full-sized arrow keys. One problem with such keyboards is that they compromise the size of the trackpad, because of th space they take up on the bottom of the laptop. On keyboards without trackpoints, or with designs centered on large, excellent trackpads like MacBooks, this cannot work well.
So for me, an ideal hardware setup for input on a laptop might well be something like a MBP, but with a 3:2 display and a bottom bezel 1-2 inches tall, which would allow for a full-size keyboard alongside a spacious, Mac-like trackpad.
So yeah. They could have a thin bezel. They deliberately chose not to, even if it eats into the precious little space of the top menu bar.
I believe they could've quite easily reduced the bezel width.
I would rather take a bezel and reduce the amount of e-waste this custom garbage has on the world. Add to that this will most likely make screen replacements significantly harder and more expensive.
Can you explain why you like a larger bezel? It seems like a hands-down negative to me.
Is it though? I was able to replace a broken Macbook screen a couple of generations ago. It was hard and took a while, but I managed. I'm very sure I would not be able to do this given this kind of screen.
I guess we'll see when the first tear-down comes out. I wouldn't be surprised to find out that the only way to fix the screen is to replace it together with the webcam.
Add a few apps that add ions to the menu bar, and suddenly you already have no space even without the notch.