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Comment by crazygringo | Hacker News Reader

Don't think of notches as something stupid that takes away from screen area.

Think of them as something that allows the overall screen area to increase, as bevels shrink.

And then when the corners of the screen are so close to the corner of the laptop, and the corner of the laptop is rounded, it looks weird if the corner of the screen isn't rounded. Like a square peg in a round hole.

Fortunately, it's all context-dependent. So when you watch a video that is inherently rectangular on a Mac, that takes precedence. It's only shown below the notch, and the rounded corners on the bottom disappear.

So it's kind of the best of all worlds. Bigger screen with round corners for actual work (the notch is not particularly objectionable in the menu bar), slightly smaller screen with rectangular corners for video (and games too I assume?).

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Is bevel size really so important when it's already measured in mm? Personally I like a bit of bevel because I don't want the screen going to the edge of the device. The edge of the device is for holding, not interaction.

No, screen size is important. For the same size laptop, less bevel means more screen.

And I don't about you but I don't hold the screen half of my laptop. Not unless the laptop is closed. So I don't see how that's a concern.

But a cell phone, maybe. For a laptop, we are talking about a couple of millimetres on each side max, it is not a big deal.

...and then the same "more space!!!111" people run apps which fill their screen with useless whitespace.

I mean… I would be very happy to whip designers in public but I think that's illegal.

For the love of $DEITY, it’s bezel! :-)

https://www.howtogeek.com/762611/what-is-a-bezel/

I've often wondered about that, because I often see them used interchangeably (and not just here). But you're absolutely right. Here's a random site I found that explains it: https://www.difference.wiki/bevel-vs-bezel/

Is the similarity of the word the only reason they often get mixed up? I think another factor is that flat surfaces surrounded by an angled bevel are fairly common. For example. I just noticed that the bezel of one of my monitors is also beveled.

The bezel on my monitor has a bevel.

TIL. Thank you! Suddenly realizing I've had the words confused my whole life :S

My point was at some point maximising screen size is less important than other usability factors. For phone definitely I do not want screen near the edge because fingers are there. For laptop, true, it's less of an issue. Although while opening my macbook my finger is about 1mm from touching the screen.

And the other comment about wasting screen space is funny. Yeah we need 1mm of extra phone screen space when 60% of most webpages are covered with ads (separate problem but still amusing in combination).

Hi, laptop repair tech here.

You want more bezel. Screens with less bezel have less overall edge protection and will break easier due to opening or closing forces or impacts.

Bezel-less screens are fragile pieces of junk.

Tell me about it. I've replaced 2 screens on a MBP. One was from cleaning the edge of the screen. I applied just a little too much pressure and it destroyed the whole screen.

Another was when my kitten bit the edge of the screen. It didn't even leave a mark but it was just enough concentrated pressure at the edge of the screen that it killed it.

Now I'm a lot more careful, but thank goodness for Applecare.

> then when the corners of the screen are so close to the corner of the laptop, and the corner of the laptop is rounded, it looks weird if the corner of the screen isn't rounded.

The rounded laptop corners is a similar design decision. And also it doesn't look weird to me at all compared to rounded corners for windows, especially when they introduce visible desktop garbage in those now-not-perfectly-covering-rectangles corner areas

Rounded corners are not simply an aesthetic design choice, they make the device more durable as there's less of a pinch point when you drop, snag or mishandle the device.

First of all, you can not argue anyone out of thinking it looks stupid or ugly. That is a visceral subjective experience and the extra space or whatever does nothing to make up for it.

Now for the bezels, mind that an equidistant circle (or squircle) radius converges to zero. So to avoid having a large inner radius, avoid a large outer radius. The Macbook is not a tablet, you do not hold its corners in your hand.

However, at some point Apple must have decided that the squircle is its entire visual identity and that hard corners on the XY plane are bad. That creates design problems it would not otherwise have.

The fact that developers are led into the trap of not pixel matching to the display however just shows a lack of attention to detail.

The bottom corners of a MacBook screen are not rounded. The top corners are because the corners of the case are rounded. The corners of the case are rounded because you need to be able to do things like slide it into a laptop bag.

> The bottom corners of a MacBook screen are not rounded.

They are on my M4 MBA. They're software-rounded rather than in the hardware. You can move the pointer over the lower rounded corners; you can't over the upper ones.

> Fortunately, it's all context-dependent. So when you watch a video that is inherently rectangular on a Mac, that takes precedence. It's only shown below the notch, and the rounded corners on the bottom disappear.

Also, it's worth noting that notches are a hardware-specific. I haven't tried any of the MBAs with notches, but the MBPs have good-enough black levels that the notch just kind of vanishes into the black background when using full-screen apps.

The notch reduces the space available in the top menu bar. And since Apple is still incapable of creating a built-in Bartender-like functionality you end up with less space on screen.

It's an actual objective fact of life.

You don't get a larger 15"/16"/17" inch screen. You get a screen that size minus the notch because of a psychotic obsession with thinness. And then they struggle to compensate for that with barely working workarounds in software that don't cover even half of cases.

I don't understand your logic unless you're implicitly saying the camera needs to go away, but then you should say so (so that I can properly disagree with you).

The notch makes for a smaller menu bar but without the notch there would be no menu bar there, it would take the space underneath instead.

> I don't understand your logic unless you're implicitly saying the camera needs to go away

Yup. We never had camera before the notch.

> The notch makes for a smaller menu bar but without the notch there would be no menu bar there

Yup. Before the notch we neither had a menu bar that could comfortably fit most menu items even in professional apps, nor did we have a camera.

BTW, you literally are saying "The notch makes for a smaller menu bar". Imagine if I wrote that as the first sentence in my comment, then there would be no misunderstanding

The screen is a 16:10 screen with some extra pixels added next to the notch. By default, the system uses a resolution of 1512x982 (14"), which you can change to 1512x945 (16:10) to move the menu bar below the notch and end up with black pixels next to the notch.

"If you go make weird contortions and workarounds you might just find a semi-working non-solution to a problem that didn't exist until Apple introduced it".

Also my response here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44909996

What MacBook doesn't have a camera?

They are being sarcastic because the parent post put forward a false dichotomy between a notch and a camera or no notch but no camera.

I didn't think this would be so hard to understand. It's not a false dichotomy, without the notch the screen would have to be smaller to have the camera there. You didn't lose any pixels.

If the notch was replaced with a 1cm bezel, then the entire top menu bar would move down by roughly 1cm, and I'd have less screen space for actual content. In some ways, a bezel could be considered to be a "notch" that takes the entire width of the screen.

Personally, I've never run out of space in my menu bar, So the notch gives me 1cm of extra screen space.

It's nothing to do with thinness. It's about packing the largest possible display into the laptop's width/height. Sure, you could argue to just make the laptop 1cm higher for that bezel, but then why not add a notch and get 2cm of extra screen height?

> If the notch was replaced with a 1cm bezel, then the entire top menu bar would move down by roughly 1cm, and I'd have less screen space for actual content.

That perceived 1cm is largely meaningless for content. And you get less space in the top menu bar.

> Personally, I've never run out of space in my menu bar

I have 27 icons in my menu bar. Not because I collect them, but because quite a few apps add their icons there and I use a few of them.

On the laptop screen it manages to show 10.

IntelliJ idea has 12 top-level menus (I swear they had more). On a laptop the top menu bar manages to show 10 items on the left of the notch, and has to move two more to the right. This both splits the menu for no reason, and reduces the space for icons even further.

The notch has been around for 4 years now, and Apple still hasn't provided a solution for the problem they introduced.

And, of course, when you want to truly take advantage of "more content" you can't because the "safe screen space" without the notch is still squarely below the notch, and apps have to to be very careful to actually use that, or the notch will get in the way.

> It's nothing to do with thinness.

Yes, it does. In this case with thinness of bezels.

> Sure, you could argue to just make the laptop 1cm higher for that bezel

Yes, you could do that if you didn't have an institutional psychosis about thinness everywhere.

To be honest, I wouldn't be surprised if it is requested and/or greenlit by Apple managers who only use their Macs for Safari or Mail. There can't be another way, because the menu splitting and icon disappearance is pretty infuriating.

Luckily I have mostly used Macs on external screens the last few years. But it ticks me off every time I actually use a MacBook as a laptop.

If the notch bothers you so much, then why not disable it?

It's actually optional, the functionality is built into Mac OS (just check "show all resolutions" in display setting and pick the notchless resolution). You get that bezel you want, along with the full menu bar.

> Yes, it does. In this case with thinness of bezels.

Device thickness is not the same thing as bezel thinness. If you make a phone/laptop thinner, all you get is less battery life. If you make bezels thiner, you get more display area.

> The notch has been around for 4 years now, and Apple still hasn't provided a solution for the problem they introduced.

As a lot of people told you, you can just disable it. I've been doing that for 4 years, just set your resolution to a 16:10 ratio and you're good to go. The resolution is exactly the same as it was before they introduced the notch

Personally I like the fact that Apple gives us the choice. I dislike the notch and prefer my menu bar below because I use apps like intellij. My wife likes the notch and keeps it. So, both of us can have what we want.

Maybe Apple could have made it slightly easier to disable it by having an option instead of choosing a 16:10 resolution but, to be honest, most of the people who dislike it tend to be power users who can figure it out.

What I'm learning from this entire line of discussion is that there is a subset of personalities who will find any reason to hate $COMPANY, in this case Apple. No amount of logical explanation will change their mind, there just isn't anything that $COMPANY can do right, no design decision sensible enough.

The screen size advertised by Apple measures the "full screen" area, the undisturbed 16:10 rectangle of pixels. I just took measures on both a 14 and a 16 inch Macbook Pro. The screen we get is indeed slighly larger.

If you want to avoid the extra space, it's as easy as using a 16:10 resolution size. The menubar will drop down to the 16:10 space.

I just tried to do this and Apple has obfuscated that there’s even a 16:10 option. You have to click deep into the Displays customization presets menu. They don’t even label the presets with a display ratio and have them labeled with some obscure Apple design lingo (Apple XDR (P3-1600 nits)).

To change it you have to first display the hidden list by enabling a “display resolutions list” toggle.

That is not something a “I love Apple because it just works” person can figure out.

Those presets aren't display ratios, those presets have to do with color profiles, HDR support, etc.

Exactly my point. The setting you’re likely looking for is hidden and a similar one of even more advanced color profile technical options is front and center.

my menu icons are hiding behind the notch lol

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