What's amusing about the "design purity" is this is basically (from an externals point of view) an upgraded PowerBook G4. Good design isn't limited to "make it look as much like a thin sheet of metal as possible".
What I have trouble getting over is the flipping notch to the top. Just why. The bezel on my 2019 macbook looks the same, if not skinnier.
Do people really not watch fullscreen videos anymore or something?
How many of the videos you watch are taller than 16:10? Are any of them even taller than 16:9?
If there's a program that will literally add black padding until the notch goes away I'd probably use it, at least when watching media.
Apparently Apple still has some design sense after all.
I can't even be frustrated with you. This is so humanity. "I hate what they did! If only they had done this instead!" They did do that. They talk about that a lot. The article talks about that. They solved the problem in a way so obvious that it's what random people on the internet come up with, but of course the same random people on the internet are so convinced of their own superiority and so sure of Apple's inferiority and also unable to read TFA.
I keep a large amount of tools/macros/shortcuts in my status bar, and this will cut through the middle of that.
I'd rather have thin black bars around my 16:10 video then lose that screen real estate for the status bar.
It is a bad compromise for how I use my current macbook.
I'm certainly in the minority, and that's fine, but I'm just trying to argue my side and understand other people's, not scream till I'm red in the face until I get my way.
In fullscreen, it puts a black bar at the top and the display becomes 16:10
I don't see the big deal. I'm looking at my 2019 16-inch MBP right now and it looks about the size of the notch from what I've seen. The camera has to go somewhere, and this solution just pushes up the menu bar to the sides of the camera instead of taking up part of the 16:10 section beneath it.
Everything beneath the notch is the same size as the screen on previous laptops, so the notch allows for extra space beyond the 16x10 that you're used to. This means when not using fullscreen apps, you gain some screen real-estate because the menu bar now has dedicated space for it. However, when you're doing something fullscreen (like watching a video) the screen on either side of the notch is blacked out so you're left with a standard sized screen for viewing your content (with no visible notch). It seems like a win-win.
I much prefer this implementation to what they did on the iPhone with the notch cutting into fullscreen images and videos. The only downside I can see is if you have a light colored menu bar or background and don't like the look of it when not fullscreen, however my menubar is always black anyways so I don't see that being an issue at all.
I get the argument, but if I was really concerned with screen space I'd just get a model with a bigger screen.
For my own workflow, I use almost the whole top bar for tool/automation shortcuts, so this is cutting a chunk of my space for such a tiny amount of space added.
Right now it's hanging past the left side of my webcam.
If it does black out the notch for videos though, then that's a lot better, ty for that info.
Does keeping the top bar black essentially hide the bezel? Or does it just make it not stand out as much?
Yeah I can see how that would be an issue. I think I remember reading that the menu icons would be truncated when there are too many of them, but who knows how that actually works in practice (ie. are they scrollable, or is there an additional menu that you can open).
> Does keeping the top bar black essentially hide the bezel? Or does it just make it not stand out as much?
I'm not entirely sure to be honest. Based on the reviews I've seen when the top is blacked out for a video the notch is basically invisible. So I assume if you have a black menu bar it would be similar to that. That's just based on pictures on the internet though so I'm not actually sure how visible it will be in person.
The problem with the previous Macbook product line was that all products had the same compromises. Design purity, and thinness over everything else. There was no choice for a "pro" machine that had a different set of tradeoffs to achieve pro features.