Are you commenting about the new iMacs? They are gorgeous.
Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
MacBook Air Coming in 2022 Also Rumored to Feature Notch Design
- Thread starter MacRumors
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
Your numbers don't work. They can add tabs without removing pixels from the primary display.
Both screens are 2000px tall (the notch screen is not 2000+74). With a hidden menu bar the app gets all 2000px, but with a persistent 74px menubar, the app does not get all 2000px.
The current MBAir is 2560 x 1600. If the new one was 2000px tall then even if they gave the tabs 200 pixels the new MBAir with tabs would have more space for the app.
Just remember that any illustration on a rumor story was just a sketch done by a journalist and does not represent how an actual product will look in anything but very broad terms. People on here so often get caught up arguing about whether a design look good or not based on one of the speculative mockups. They are not real.
Not if your priority is to remove all bezels as so many have called for. This is the result.
I'm not. I am comparing both to the current-gen air. In both cases, you get more screen so either is better than the existing. It's just with a notch there is more potential for improving the rather stagnant idea of what a display should look like.
If usability is crippled it won't be due to the notch. It will be due to apple failing to invest in their own OS. Remember full screen on multiple monitors? It took them years to fix it. Or desktop widgets... they just gave up.
If usability decreases after the notch is introduced, guess where the blame lies. Unless you think Apple has control over the number of menubar items Adobe uses in their apps.maybe apple should l8 it the number of menubar icons you can have due to the reduce display bar.
Let’s see … a black bezel that does nothing or a notch that takes advantage of that area and shows information but can probably also be „hidden“ when you are running software in full screen. I take the notch.
It’s not like the content, e. g. text on Safari will suddenly disappear and be hidden „behind“ the notch when you scroll. Just like with a bezel, the actual content will start below this „digital“ line with a break
Are you just arguing for the sake of it because you’re making no sense now.
Look at a current MBP and you’ll see the webcam and whatever else is ABOVE the screen. To the left and right of this area is just unused bezel.
On this new MBP, according to these rumours, Apple is extending the screen to utilise the space to the left and right of the camera area as ADDITIONAL screen space beyond the usual 16:10 aspect ratio which would STILL BE UNINTERRUPTED BELOW.
So everything you usually do will be below the new additional area, as it would be at the moment on any 16:10 Mac. The additional space will likely house menu icons like battery/time.
Hopefully that makes sense.
Except the notch isn't giving you a larger screen than the notch-free version would, just smaller bezels.
Ok.. so how is that a bad thing?
Depends how you look at it though; your usual work area isn’t getting any bigger but the overall screen technically is. You’re getting new additional space above, likely for status icons etc, which will then free up space on the usual 16:10 screen area.
Whether small bezels is good or bad, depends on the compromises needed to get them; it’s subjective. I like small bezels, I liked them on my TiBook but that didn’t have any menu bar compromises.
If that area becomes interactive then menu bar usability suffers. So you can only have a few, non-clickable icons.
Last edited:
People keep complaining about how much they hate bezels. What does "a device this large" have to do with anything? There's really only 2 places to put the camera array: center screen bottom, center screen top. Center screen bottom has people looking up your nose. So the camera always has been (and almost certainly will be this time again) at the center screen top. Apple tends not to do things be halves. If they're going to minimize the bezels, they're going to minimize them everywhere. If they can make a bezel smaller than what's needed for the camera, then they'll consider a bezel. You can say that, weighing one thing against another, you'd prefer the bezel to a notch, but "I... cannot fathom" is too much.
Glad I picked up a current MBA. I'd rather have a large bezel at the top instead of a narrow bezel + notch.
Yes let’s have the size of a 15” laptop but only an 11” screen so I can be really focused when working on it!
Personally I’m hoping for bezels as slim as on Dell‘s XPS line (5mm I think) so it’ll be a viable choice for me for a laptop that’s compact for commuting/travelling with. Laptops are meant to be portable and bezel size plays a huge part in reducing their overall footprint.
That doesn't make sense. The screen is a certain size. Small bezels give you a computer footprint size that's minimal compared to the screen. So if a notch enables smaller bezels, it's potentially giving you something very concrete: a smaller computer for a given screen size. Or a bigger screen for a given footprint. One way or the other, a notch gives something tangible. Engineering and design is and has always been about tradeoffs.
And on the topic of tradeoffs... although I'm not a big fan of the notch on my iPhone, I'm sitting here typing on my Mac and it occurs to me that the center of the top of my screen is empty. There's nothing in the center of my menu bar on this 15" MBP. I'm sure I've got some apps with more menus and I'm not sure how they'll react. But people are complaining about and judging a thing before they've seen its implementation (or its reality).
I don’t get what you mean by menu bar compromises? The height of the screen is going to be bigger than usual so I struggle to see what the compromise is here. Nothing we had has been lost.
I like thin bezels too, and will be ordering an xps 15 tomorrow unless the new MBP finally looks nice and modern and isn’t overly expensive.
Smh. NOBODY wants a ****ing notch on our laptops. We didn't want it on our phones and we sure as hell don't want it here.
I would agree with you if it wasn't only for the myriad of companies/manufacturers putting out laptops with decent cameras on the "top-center" with minimal bezels.
As a matter of fact I do complain about bezel size often, but in this case this has little to do with the camera and more with the Face ID components (like the dot projector, infrared, flood illuminator, and any other sensor they use).