MacBook Pro 14 menu bar UX | Hacker News Reader

MacBook Pro 14 menu bar UX

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What happens on non-notch macs, if the active app has enough menu items that your menubar is full? What would happen to the iStat app (or any other menu item?) Would it be drawn-over? Perhaps partially so? I honestly have never even come close to this scenario on any desktop/laptop (even when I try my best to make it happen, like launching every menubar app I know of, and setting the display settings to the highest zoom level) so I don’t even know what the behavior is.

It seems to me like the notch is removing something like 10% of your available menubar area, but… that’s not that much. If you’re running into issues where menubar items have to draw into the notch area, it stands to reason you’re running very close to not being able to see them even without the notch, so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Edit: I was able to get my 2016 MBP to have an overflowed menubar, by setting the display settings to “Larger Text” and opening Xcode (which has a lot of menus). It straight-up drops menu items that aren’t able to be rendered… no overflow scrolling or anything. You have to switch to another app (with fewer menus) to see the missing items. I guess the notch makes this 10% or so more likely to happen?

This seems to be the most overly dramatic description of a bug that I have ever seen.

Indeed. And he doesn't even say whether he's using Monterey GA or one of the betas. This is just attention seeking, really.

I mean, this is not an uncommon situation for a MacOS user to be in, so I share Quinn's shock that this made it to release.

If it is common, then why the shock -_-a?

The word "this" does not refer to the bug, it refers to the use case that produces the bug. I.e. it is shocking that a dramatic/obvious UI bug in a common use case was not caught.

I had the same reaction initially.

For anyone else looking -- the poster linked to the second tweet in the thread.

The first tweet [1] shows that menubar items are /hidden behind the notch/ (fully rendered, you can click and interact with them). I took a screenshot [2].

As issues go, that's a pretty dramatic bug, no?

[1]: https://twitter.com/SnazzyQ/status/1453143510111059968

[2]: https://cln.sh/OwM0wgFCTUF6EP5EsJAA

It’s been a LONG time since I worked on menubar stuff in macOS, but is it possible that this is happening because iStat is drawing the icons in a non-standard way?

Can this happen to a menubar with just stock menus - say by reducing the display resolution?

https://twitter.com/bjango/status/1453171506263982087?s=20

iStat replied to this post to say that they're not!

yes, in the demo same thing happens to the macOS battery menu

This was the first thing I wondered when I saw that notch. I figured there would be overflow "more" menus before the notch but uh... nope. Really lazy and weak design tbh.

I guess one man's overly dramatic is another man's laughter at the absurd. Or, perhaps you missed the "laughing so hard I'm crying" emoji?

Anyway - this is exactly what Apple wanted. They knew it would make people talk. They also knew that some faction of Apple worshipers would come along to downplay any and all issues with it.

Apple can do what they want and the zealots can think what they want, but we can enjoy laughing at them when they fall flat on their face too right?

I don’t know. This is a pretty obvious and clumsy bug to ship in your flagship OS. I think it deserves the ridicule. We gotta laugh at something these days and Apple is a guaranteed punch up.

Someone complained about file search on MacOS not defaulting to current folder in a recent thread :)

It’s a setting in finder preferences and that person knew it but hated the default and described it as an ongoing bug in multiple is releases.

I found that entertaining but also a good indicator of the level of frustration caused by small inconveniences.

I really think the MBP notch is not long for this world.

The moment I saw it announced and found out it didn't do facial recognition I knew Apple itself was hesitating on it.

Even the perfect SDK for building out applications cannot solve the issue when you need to fullscreen a window or application.

It really does feel like an absurd design choice. I still don't like how it looks like on my iPhone and I would hate the notch on a laptop.

The key thing to remember is that the screen is larger than it used to be, making this tradeoff understandable: when you use compatibility mode — which is the default — a full screen app will start below the notch, giving it an uninterrupted space which is still taller than the previous version's screen.

https://developer.apple.com/design/human-interface-guideline...

Anyone who needs every last bit of width for their menus can set the NSPrefersDisplaySafeAreaCompatibilityMode flag in their plist, as well.

https://developer.apple.com/documentation/bundleresources/in...

How much bigger is it? I’m trying to buy my first MacBook after using a hackintosh for years. I currently use a 14in laptop and it’s a perfect size, and I love working outside so the high brightness sounds perfect for me. But is this worth $500?

I want 16gb so it’s not a 1k difference vs the 8gb air, making the $2k look less bad, but is the screen real estate that different?

It is 74px of additional vertical space. This change moves the permanent menu bar out of application space into a new menu bar space. you are getting somewhere around 50-60px additional in application space.

It also improved the user experience for full screen mode. Previously in full screen, the menu bar is hidden. If you move the mouse to near that area, the menu bar appears and jumps down. It’s janky and sometimes you can trigger that by accident just trying to click on something near the top of the app.

for full screen now, the menu bar location is fixed and outside of the app space. It can be visible or hidden by a black bar, but it doesn’t jump around and it’s harder to accidentally trigger it.

Yeah I was just thinking the other day how much I wish I had an extra 60px of space. I was also thinking how happy I am to have saved 1mm of thickness on my phone by getting rid of the headphone jack. And, oh man, I wish my iPhone SE also had a notch. All that screen real estate between the rounded corners and the notch would make my experience so much better. Really jelly of the iPhones that have that.

Think about it this way: you get a better camera and all it cost you was gaining screen real estate.

The way I see it, it doesn't matter how much bigger the screen is since ages ago MacOS switched to the default behaviour of full screening an app when hitting the green maximize window control.

That default behaviour in combo with the notch feels like a total design misalignment and markedly not Apple.

Edit: I do see what you mean by their design guidelines, but their solution is to fullscreen by not actually using the fullscreen. Again I'm happy with this compromise on the iPhone where the device is physically small but on a full professional device you are essentially telling me that there is an area of a high quality display I cannot use how I want.

Again, the question I would ask you to consider: you previously had a smaller screen with a larger bezel. Your fullscreen “safe area” app will have more pixels displayed than it did before but instead of a solid bezel you'll have a strip of pure black with a black camera notch in the middle.

Everything which supports the notch (i.e. the system menu, apps which choose the custom display path to display things on either side) can use that extra space to display whatever makes sense (e.g. on many pro apps there'd be no reason not to extend side panels since they're going to be less than half the display width anyway).

In all cases, you have more pixels visible than you did before — it's just a question of how much more — and the primary drawback is that you have an almost imperceptible difference between the black of the camera assembly and the black of a micro-LED display with very high dynamic range. This just doesn't seem like a huge problem to me.

> you previously had a smaller screen with a larger bezel

Just on that topic though, why do I have to compromise to have something close to 3:2 aspect ration on MBP when there are other laptops that do 3:2 with decent webcams and face recognition. Or no facial recognition and super thin bezels.

I'm willing to forgo face recognition for thin bezels. I guess what I was really hoping for was for a 14" version of the XPS15 with an M1 and a close to 3:2 aspect ratio. It feels like we got really close to something great but then compromised at the 5 yard line.

It’s definitely here to stay. Next up is adding more sensors to it such as Face ID. It just makes sense as they continue to merge iOS and macOS together.

FaceID on Mac makes no sense. First, the sensor is too thick.

But the main one - iPhone wakes when the accelerometer detects movement. So to wake the mac you either need to press a key or touch the trackpad. At that point, why not just use the touchid button?

Then explain it on the iPad Pro. The sensor being thick might not be a problem in a year or two anyways.

FaceID on a workstation enables concepts like Continuous Authorization, proactively lock the workstation if user does not have the correct face.

FaceID can also unlock the device by the time you finish opening the laptop and placing it on your desk for the day.

If you're not concerned with being forced to unlock your device by looking at it, FaceID is really quite nice.

Menu always overwrites status icons if not enough space for both. Nothing new other than slightly less menu space causing this old behavior to occur on wider screen than it did before with apps having lots of menus.

Status icons being able to go under the notch would be bug they should flow around notch just like menu items.

They do overflow. They weren't using the documented API - the whole collection of icons was rendered as a single block.

That's probably why they made it so big! This way when they introduce Face ID in upcoming devices it isn't going to introduce a new set of bugs. Less stress to the ecosystem but still silly.

I'm guessing that Apple will eventually need to release an update that will render Bartender obsolete. I like the product but always seemed like a feature that should be built into the OS.

sorry, i linked the second tweet

here's the link to the beginning of the thread: https://twitter.com/SnazzyQ/status/1453143510111059968

still the behaviour is ridiculous and is something i wouldn't expect from Apple

So what happens if there's actually space on the left side of the notch to put something? In this video, the app menu is already bumped up against the notch, so I'm not sure what they expected.

Then the item overflows to the left. This applet just renders the whole set of icons as a single block instead of individually.

What size is bezel in new MBP?

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