So if I’m parsing this properly, this whole thing is just an illogical overreaction of perception and not reality?
If you're a driver, you're familiar with this; photos of cars clearly show these obstructing pillars left and right of the windshield, but in practice when driving, you get so used to working around them that you don't take conscious note of them anymore. That's why Apple said about the iPhone notch "trust us, you won't care", and sure enough, their users mostly don't care.
(Yes, it's still a good idea to reduce the blind spot of pillars, since lots of drivers don't bother looking around them to see if there's a person there. But the good drivers that do look around them still don't notice the pillars – they just move their head and look around them without taking much conscious notice of the pillar or the workaround.)
I could imagine this is because we need to be able to pay attention through a forest, and so whether or not there's a tree blocking one arc-degree of your field of view is ultimately irrelevant to paying attention in a forest, and that car pillars (and cracked windshields, and dangling objects hanging from rearview mirrors) fall into the same general bucket.
Edit: Even zooming in on the video doesn’t hide UI elements only whatever portion of the video overlaps the notch.
The corner of the closed caption button is covered, and it's partially overlapping the radio signal indictators. There seems to be only a very small portion of the bottom edge of the button that responds to taps. It's very hard to tap successfully.
The overflow button is not obscured by the notch, but is partially overlapping the battery indicator. Like the closed caption button, there seems to be only a small portion of the bottom edge of it that will respond to taps.
It's so frustrating.
Here's a screenshot showing it, except for the notch which Apple doesn't include in screenshots: https://i.imgur.com/0KDIWEB.jpg
The notch covers the top half of the Chromecast button, and just touches the top-left corner of the closed caption button (the notch is curving back up, at that point).
Still trying to it figure out myself. According to some articles like the Mac Rumors one it’s no big deal. If you read some of the Verge stuff hell is freezing over.
Personally I have an M1 Air and trying to figure out if a 14” M1 Max is worth it. The M1 Air is only slightly slower than a 2017 mid spec 15” I have encoding in handbrake. I’ve been doing some Final Cut Pro work for family/personal videos that could benefit.