Can't Get Used to Your MacBook Pro's Notch? These Apps Will Hide It for You

aevan said:
Ok, to everyone hating the notch, what would you prefer? You have these options, based on available technology:

- Have a small camera module and sensor, tucked in a slim bezel. The image quality would be bad. (Example: Dell XPS 2019+)
- Have a camera at the bottom of the screen. This would give you an unflattering angle. (Example: Dell XPS before 2019)
- Have a big bezel at the top. (Example: MBPs before 2021)
- Have a camera bump on the lid (Example: no one, thankfully)
- Have additional area left and right of the camera area (notch) for the menu bar, giving you more usable space in the regular work area (Example: MBP in 2021 and many PCs coming in the following years :)

Before you say "how can the squeeze it in phones" the answer is: width. You can have the camera sensor deeper in the phone, behind the screen and just leave an opening for the lens. On laptop lids, you have the options I wrote above. So, which one is it?
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Your forget the best option. No camera
 
KindJamz said:
What it must be like to have a life of hardships and drama to post about someone’s else’s drama and hardships. Lol.
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Must agree. I don't think any of us have claimed the notch is the "worst thing that's ever happened to us". But as it's a forum for Apple products, it's appropriate for us to post our opinions on what we think they've done well and done not so well. it's a shame some people feel the need to mock that when views are posted that differ from their own.

I'm delighted that Apple have delivered a MacBook Pro with phenomenal performance and all the ports I've loved on my 2014 device. I'm less than delighted about the machine's appearance, specifically the notch and the cheap looking all black keyboard. None of these views represent the best thing or the worst thing ever to happen to me, they're just my views.
 
Kagio said:
No they didn’t.. they’re not using a 1080p camera.. its 720p; which is the low quality everyone has been nagging Apple about for years and it is now more relevant than ever with this videoconferences being an everyday need,
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For years we heard how the Apple 720p camera is enough. Justifying the notch for the 1080p camera is a hard sell, if given the option most would prefer the 720p camera and no notch. Now if the notch came with a FaceID camera then you have a good argument for the notch. If you notice most of the reviews on the new PowerBooks say the the 1080p camera is passable, not great or out of this world. If we had FaceID the notch makes more sense.
 
Black bar covering the notch (while still providing function on the sides) looks good. Especially considering the new mini-LED display, where black is actually black.

Notch on the phone is not an issue for me, but the phone would definitely look more elegant without it. Sooner or later they will be gone from all devices.
 
HobeSoundDarryl said:
Again I appreciate the standardized response. 1080p FaceTime is 1080p FaceTime. If there is one in these MBpros- and there is- and the lid does not get iPad thick, the module doesn't need iPad thick depth to accommodate 1080p FaceTime. Apple has succeeded in fitting 1080p into the thickness of the lid... not needing some kind of iPad deep nipple on the back of the lid because the camera module is just too thick.

Whatever "lot of electronics" to spread out apparently spreads out just fine behind the notchless-bezel of smaller-screened iPad Pro with 1080p FaceTime camera AND Face ID. For now, this is only 1080p FaceTime and Apple has already succeeded in fitting it in this lid.

I can't see how we can so passionately argue that Apple could NOT here when they succeeded in doing it there. Apple CAN do it because they did do it... months ago.

That picture is the BEST argument in support of iPad depth. Since I'm not a hardware engineer, I can't completely refute it. However, it seems the parts that hang down could be spread out left & right instead. iPads happen to have the free space "depth" to use. If they didn't, I bet Apple would engineer the part to simply be wider than it is tall there. In the much larger width behind an iPad-type bezel in these MBpros, there would seemingly be plenty of room for a wider variation of that same part. As someone who believes Apple is incredible at what they do, I certainly believe they could do it... if they had wanted it here.
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This is the iPad Mini 6’s camera modules from the iFixit teardown. As you can see they’re almost as thick as the iPad case in general. I show this in part because I want to emphasize that there’s nothing in the module that can be spread out as you describe.

The issue here is not one of spreading out electronics, it’s good old fashioned optics and physics. To increase the webcam resolution to 1080p without sacrificing quality the sensor needs to be increased in size, and if you increase the sensor in size then the size of the lens assembly also needs to be increased so that it projects a light cone that will cover the sensor. Generally speaking the options are to either make a shorter stack of wider lens elements (called pancake lenses in the case of regular cameras), or a taller stack of narrower lens elements; the latter is what the iPad does with its thicker lens assembly. Apple had to engineer a flatter but wider lens assembly for the MacBook Pros. Wide apertures, needed to gather more light and improve low-light image quality, also require wider lens barrels. Look closely at the pictures and you’ll also note that what you see on the surface as the top layer lens isn’t indicative of the width of the optical assembly below. Nothing in those modules pictured can be spread out because they’re all part of the stacked lens assembly.

Put another way, Apple would not be able to fit even a 1080p webcam into the bezels of the iPad Mini if it were as thin as the lid of a MacBook Pro. Wider lens elements would need to be used, or the sensor size would need to be reduced, which would in turn reduce image quality (see: Dell XPS).
 

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EdT said:
<snip> but considering all the vitriol aimed at iPhones because of it this ‘controversy’ was easily foreseeable. My personal solution if I was Apple would be to announce a “notch less” version to be available in 4-6 months that costs X amount more... </snip>
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But did the notch hurt iPhone sales? No.

Will this hurt MacBook sales? Probably not... I've not even noticed or cared about it in the last day that I've had my new MBP... It's not even an eighth of an inch short of 16". Still more real estate than the 15", for $300 less than the price points would have been with the Intel processor.

The problem with chasing niches and notches is that no matter what you do you're going to make someone unhappy. I learned that in 15-20 years of writing film criticism. Apple failed miserably when it tried to be all things to all people, and this is an absurdly silly debate.
 
Apple needs to give us an option to move the menu bar back down and just black out the notch. It totally borks things - especially if you use istat menus.
 
VictorTango777 said:
In System Preferences, change the desktop background to a solid light color. Then in General preferences, change between light and dark modes. Notice that while the dock changes color, the menu bar remains light even when set to "dark" mode. While in dark mode, click on any menu and notice the light colored menu bar with dark menus. The proper solution should be for Apple to make the menu bar color consistent with the light/dark mode setting like the menus and dock, not telling people they are using the "wrong" desktop background.
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In Fullscreen mode the menubar goes black, and with the new mini-LED screen that's almost completely black, it just blends right into the border cleanly and unobtrusively. I like it. Honestly, the menubar has a lot of wasted space most of the time, anyway. It works really well as a way for them to get the menubar "out of the way" of your workspace, without sacrificing as much real estate as having the camera element waste the entire width of the lid edge.
 
aevan said:
iPads are a lot thicker than MBP's lid.





There is a lot of electronics in that camera that is spread out in the notch on the MBP and is behind the screen on iPads, so - no, they couldn't do what they did on the iPad on the MBP.

If you look at the iPad camera:

View attachment 1880713

You can see a part of it in the bezel, but the rest is below the bezel and behind the LCD (this is possible because of iPad's thickness - but not doable on the thin MBP lid)



No great mystery - this space is used for the camera. That's it.
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Apple bought a cheaper, larger camera module to save money. That's not the right approach for a "premium" laptop.
 
oldtime said:
Only thing worse than people complaining about the notch is the people defending it like it's their first born. Get a grip, folks.
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Complaining leads to "defending". If you think it's worse to point out when a person literally doesn't understand what they're criticizing or pointing out how ridiculous their complaint is, you really aren't paying enough attention to what's going on here. We've got people in this very thread claiming that Apple's competition is already doing all of this, and better than Apple, which is flat out wrong and misinformation.
 
My problem with the notch is that its for a webcam, but I never use the webcam, and having a nice 1080p webcam doesn’t matter to me at all. In fact, I generally use my iPhone if I ever use a webcam. In other words, for me the notch is a completely unnecessary element that takes away from having a complete large screen.

I believe the notch will be seen as the Touch Bar in a couple of years. It was a change that didn’t need to happen and that few really like. Sure, with your brand new expensive laptop you don’t mind it at the moment. But over time I think many will come to really dislike this terrible design decision.
 
I went to an Apple store to try out the 16" MBP 2021. With a browser opened, I felt there were two notches. The addition one came from the place where we enter the URL on Safari. Even the store somehow made the upper portion in dark color, I would easily see the color in the middle was different.
 
nutjob said:
Apple bought a cheaper, larger camera module to save money. That's not the right approach for a "premium" laptop.
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Of course that's not the right approach, and Apple didn't take it...you seem to forget that you're running on assumption piled on assumption then drawing a conclusion.

Your entire argument here is like a house of cards floating on water. A larger sensor is not cheaper, it's more expensive. A larger camera model is not cheaper, it's more expensive. These two little points bring the whole thing down. You'd be hard pressed to find any laptop manufacturer that spends more on the webcam than Apple does - they're obviously an afterthought more than not. And many manufacturers will just go with no webcam at all rather than face a design decision.
 
Orange Bat said:
My problem with the notch is that its for a webcam, but I never use the webcam, and having a nice 1080p webcam doesn’t matter to me at all. In fact, I generally use my iPhone if I ever use a webcam. In other words, for me the notch is a completely unnecessary element that takes away from having a complete large screen.

I believe the notch will be seen as the Touch Bar in a couple of years. It was a change that didn’t need to happen and that few really like. Sure, with your brand new expensive laptop you don’t mind it at the moment. But over time I think many will come to really dislike this terrible design decision.
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Apple made the screen taller by the size of the notch. You have a complete large screen. Without the notch and the screen added there, you would have an aspect ratio that is on literally no other laptop. I think this piece of information is lost on the people that hate the notch because I keep reading the same complaints like yours. The laptop is taller than the "full screen".
 
Iconoclysm said:
Apple made the screen taller by the size of the notch. You have a complete large screen. Without the notch and the screen added there, you would have an aspect ratio that is on literally no other laptop. I think this piece of information is lost on the people that hate the notch because I keep reading the same complaints like yours. The laptop is taller than the "full screen".
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Yes. It’s like talking to a wall trying to explain this.
 
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