you're kidding right? you think the notch has an
aesthetic value, and is not there just for 'technical reasons? you must be new to apple products, which have a long history of balancing form and function (certainly leaning more towards form in the jony ive era).
for example:
the notch
I’m absolutely serious. And your link does absolutely nothing to change my opinion. You think the notch is that prominent just because of the (rather low quality) 1080p webcam? I do not.
Apple will not explicitly reveal their full reasoning behind aspects of product design and giving too much insight in to their design and branding philosophy would be suicidal from a business pov. They will simply state the ‘company line’ about the reasons why a certain decision was made as per that interview.
But I truly believe that branding was part of the descision to introduce the notch to the Macbook line
in addition to the technical reasons. They would never say so and nor should they. We will never get a true glimpse behind the wizards curtain. It simply doesn’t work like that.
Again I should emphasise that I don’t think it’s there
solely for aesthetic reasons. The timing was pretty good with the Macbook line due redesigns, the explosion in working from home and video conferencing due to Covid and the reputation of high-end and expensive MacBooks having low-end webcams. So it was, as you rightfully pointed out, their usual convergence of form and function. ‘Killing two birds with one stone’ as the saying goes.
At some point in the future they will remove the notch but before they do so they will find other ways to make their laptop’s as readily identifiable as possible. The same goes for the iPhone (a pill and a dot). The notch will become obsolete for marketing reasons just as much as for technical ones.*
The iPad, which I have not yet touched on (mostly because obviously it doesn’t have a notch!), is evidently competing in a rather different market and both technically
and for branding reasons it doesn’t require a notch. Much more so than the iPhone it’s the ‘go to’ product in it’s market. The de facto standard really. Far less need to have a distinctive ‘at a glance’ aesthetic. And much more so than phones tablets are used in both portrait and landscape orientations. Where would the notch go?
*Although it will be interesting to witness as at some point sooner rather than later phones and laptops are going to become near enough bezeless with no camera cutouts. How visually distinct can you make your laptop or especially a phone look from your competitors without the luxury of a hugely distinctive and copyrighted ‘silhouette’. Slightly different curvature of the rounded corners between your phone and your competitors that requires more than a quick glance to determine which is which? Surely that won’t cut it.
