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A NOTCH?!

antisomnic

antisomnic

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Jul 6, 2012
342
409
Rochester, NY
The new MacBook Pros look amazing. Not gonna lie. But my first reaction looking through their marketing page is that it has a notch. Personally I don't care. I am happy with my M1 Pro. But I wanted to hear people's thoughts. The biggest complaint I have ever heard about the iPhone since the X is the notch. Now the MacBook has one? bad move I think.
 
The way I look at the notch is that the other option to continue offering the top camera would be a larger gap on top with NO screen there. Why not give us screen with a notch? If we want I’m sure we can likely set up a custom resolution that removes the notch entirely and gives us the same situation as if there was a large screenless gap there. This way we can potentially throw some extra data in the “notch row”. It’s all win from my perspective.

tl;dr Any “problems“ with the notch can instantly be removed by just changing the screen resolution to remove that portion of the screen from the active area. Now you have a 16:10 display just like last generation; no loss of functionality.
 
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I can live with that because it does not even show up in full-screen apps. I hope we could get a config in macOS setting to extend this behavior system-wide so that the menu bar is displayed below the notch.
 
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MK500 said:
The way I look at the notch is that the other option to continue offering the top camera would be a larger gap on top with NO screen there. Why not give us screen with a notch? If we want I’m sure we can likely set up a custom resolution that removes the notch entirely and gives us the same situation as if there was a large screenless gap there. This way we can potentially throw some extra data in the “notch row”. It’s all win from my perspective.

tl;dr Any “problems“ with the notch can instantly be removed by just changing the screen resolution to remove that portion of the screen from the active area. Now you have a 16:10 display just like last generation; no loss of functionality.
Click to expand...
they could blend it in by making the menu bar black also
 
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I've been waiting to buy a new 16 inch MBP for quite some time, years. Once they introduced the M1 chip last year, I decided to continue waiting until they did same or something similar with the 16 inch MBP.

I'm gonna bitch and complain about the notch, buy the thing, and forget that the notch is there.
 
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I was surprised by it too but I'm sure there will be an option to completely hide the notch at the expense of screen real estate, either through macOS itself or a third party app.

It's a bit wasteful since there's no Face ID but clearly that is what Apple is prepping for in the next MacBook Pro release.
 
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I personally use a custom resolution so for me the Notch will be dipping into my apps.
 
bobcomer said:
I wont be buying the new Macbook Pros. I hate the notch.
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You won't even see it in full screen apps. Does not even come in the way of applications in full screen.

Dark mode hides the notch. I will be buying 16" Macbook Pro once I make some bucks.
 
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chumps said:
I was surprised by it too but I'm sure there will be an option to completely hide the notch at the expense of screen real estate, either through macOS itself or a third party app.

It's a bit wasteful since there's no Face ID but clearly that is what Apple is prepping for in the next MacBook Pro release.
Click to expand...
This is the point. In the iPhone there is a very complex system called Face ID which needs multiple cameras and sensors. On the MacBook it should’ve been a punch hole style Point on the screen if they really couldn’t embed it in the bezel which by the way it’s not super thin. Very lazy, Apple is Losing the magic touch about design.
 
childu said:
This is the point. In the iPhone there is a very complex system called Face ID which needs multiple cameras and sensors. On the MacBook it should’ve been a punch hole style Point on the screen if they really couldn’t embed it in the bezel which by the way it’s not super thin. Very lazy, Apple is Losing the magic touch about design.
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Sales will show how accurate you are - or are not.

Personally I think few people outside tech sites like this care about the notch.
 
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TiggrToo said:
Sales will show how accurate you are - or are not.

Personally I think few people outside tech sites like this care about the notch.
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I didn’t say it won’t sale well. But it is ugly and it is ugly for everyone, tech head or not.
 
What I think of a notch on a brand new Mac is... Actually, I don't think of it at all. I could care less. And that includes the iPhone. Lots of other things in the world to get bothered about than something so trivial.
 
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childu said:
I didn’t say it won’t sale well. But it is ugly and it is ugly for everyone, tech head or not.
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That’s your opinion - and that of many many others, to be sure. But it’s not EVERYONE’s opinion.

I personally have zero issues with it and have no emotional feeling regarding it being there.
 
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In light mode it is quite ugly but w/ a blacked out menubar you are simply getting more screen real estate. If you use the autohide menubar option though then you are SOL.
 
Fortunately we have touch ID here. Not only it’s ugly for me on the iPhone where it takes much more percentages of the screen real estate but I also can’t stand the Face ID and the need to align it with your face to unlock the phone.
 
The notch is not as offensive as the butterfly keyboards and touchbar, but it's not great either. I think it is safe to say the almost EVERYONE would prefer it not to be there all things being equal.
 
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I predict you will have the option for a dark menubar regardless of whether you are in light mode. Of course once the notch is barley visible that way, the wider gap between those two menu-bar items will look strange.
 
childu said:
This is the point. In the iPhone there is a very complex system called Face ID which needs multiple cameras and sensors. On the MacBook it should’ve been a punch hole style Point on the screen if they really couldn’t embed it in the bezel which by the way it’s not super thin. Very lazy, Apple is Losing the magic touch about design.
Click to expand...
They’re not lazy at all. The notch right now holds a camera, ambient light sensor, and a microphone. So it couldn’t just be a hole punch. But they’re prepping for future Face ID. Think about it: if they didn’t include a notch and just used a hole punch design, when they add Face ID later on, they’d have to make the “hole punch” bigger to fit Face ID. Doing it this way future proofs the design so they can easily add in Face ID without people throwing a fit in two years.
 
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TiggrToo said:
Sales will show how accurate you are - or are not.

Personally I think few people outside tech sites like this care about the notch.
Click to expand...

Yep, and I think many of those on tech sites like this didn't really care about the notch until they started reading all about it and fixating on it.
 
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Madhatter32 said:
The notch is not as offensive as the butterfly keyboards and touchbar, but it's not great either. I think it is safe to say the almost EVERYONE would prefer it not to be there all things being equal.
Click to expand...

Well, I think it's also safe to say that everyone would prefer the new MPB only weigh 2 lbs. all things being equal, but obviously that's impossible at this time so it's sort of an irrelevant point. I mean, the front-facing camera, etc. has got to go somewhere, and no matter what Apple does, people will complain. Thicker bezels will get complaints, and so does the notch. There's no other options that I know of, though, and since the notch increases screen real-estate, I think it's the most logical option to please the largest number of users, the vast majority of which I'm positive either do not give a hoot at all about--or very little hoot about--the "notch".
 
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Jorbanead said:
They’re not lazy at all. The notch right now holds a camera, ambient light sensor, and a microphone. So it couldn’t just be a hole punch. But they’re prepping for future Face ID. Think about it: if they didn’t include a notch and just used a hole punch design, when they add Face ID later on, they’d have to make the “hole punch” bigger to fit Face ID. Doing it this way future proofs the design so they can easily add in Face ID without people throwing a fit in two years.
Click to expand...
So you are admitting they are leaving a lot of free space just to add a feature in the future, to avoid the redesign. Double lazy
 
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