The notch gives us smaller bezels / more screen real-estate. It _kind of_ makes sense.
Not really, no. The Dell XPS for instance has just as small bezels but without a notch.
I bought an XPS for my fiancée a few weeks ago. I’d heard the XPS camera wasn’t great, but it turned out far worse than I could have feared. They couldn’t have made a worse camera if they tried. She needs a decent webcam for doing teletherapy, so we had to send it back.
Unfortunately, I’ve not been able to find a laptop that has a good webcam. We’ll probably just get her a MacBook Air, which is at least serviceable in that regard. (I’d get her a 14 inch MBP but she won’t let me spend that much on a laptop.)
Sure it looks odd but I can see it working very well due to macOS's menubar UI design. On Windows it wouldn't work nearly as well. Interestingly it would work very well on GNOME (with the clock moved to the right hand side) as well!
Sidenote: I think Apple could make a killing selling a $200 4k webcam. The market doesn't have many good options now, and I'm sure many Mac users would buy one.