Well, this age extremely bad.... I can't believe they did it, but aesthetically doesn't look as bad as I thought.
It seems the notch will be Apple's way of differentiating their products for icons / pictograms.
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New MacBook Pro Could Have a Notch, Says Sketchy Last-Minute Rumor
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Well, this age extremely bad.... I can't believe they did it, but aesthetically doesn't look as bad as I thought.
It seems the notch will be Apple's way of differentiating their products for icons / pictograms.
Having a notch in a laptop display is a colossally stupid idea. With a phone, there is a reason to maximize screen real estate. Completely unnecessary with a laptop display.
Frankly, I also don't understand why we still have "camera bumps". Phones aren't as thin as they used to be (bendgate anyone?), so why does there need to be a camera bump?
Frankly, I also don't understand why we still have "camera bumps". Phones aren't as thin as they used to be (bendgate anyone?), so why does there need to be a camera bump?
I know right? Have you seen the new Samsung 22? Bump city. It has like 6 camera bumps. #Bumpgate
Why is it unnecessary? More useable content without increasing the device size is always good. And why is it a “stupid idea”? What’s the drawback, really? Been using my 16“ for a while now, I don’t even notice the notch.
Both are mobile. Both benefit from maximizing device real-estate. The alternative is just having a thicker black bezel at the top. Why wouldn’t you want more screen real-estate in the same package?
This. Don’t think of it’s as a missing piece in the middle, think of it as two extra pieces on the sides that you can choose to take advantage of, or not. And this interpretation is closer to the truth - minus the top “notched” section, the screen is 16:10.
One person‘s notch is another person’s ears… Hmm.
It’s not so much a deal-breaker - it’s just an unnecessary complication (in at least two senses of the word: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Complication_(horology)?wprov=sfti1) that depends on software support (for full screen apps) and introduces all sorts of assumptions about how many menu items you have on the left, how many icons on the right, what size text you have in the menu bar (looks messy if the menu bar is a different height than the notch) what colour screen background you like in full screen etc. In return, you get a very marginal increase in screen space that only works in some circumstance. It’s not like it’s enabled the addition of a FaceID sensor, either. It’s a departure from Apple’s usual minimalistic elegance.
Plus, if it is only ever going to appear in MacBook Pros, it might not see a lot of imaginative third party app support. (See also: touchbar).
Some people have some pretty extreme opinions when you get on the internet. When I see the new Macbooks Pro in person you can see the advantage of the notch much as you say. It doesn't get in the way because basically what it's doing is shifting the menu bar into a space that used to be a bezel. The result is more real estate for your actual content.
Unlike the TouchBar, which was a separate interactive input-device, it's a non-interactive, non-display part of the menubar so what kind of imaginative support do you think it could get that wouldn't also work on notch-less screens.
My screen doesn't have a notch, so I can't be bothered to think of any
But, seriously, "glass half full" is that it's not a notch cut out of your screen but two 'ears' tacked on in addition to a 16:10 screen. At least in fullscreen mode (when the menu bar is hidden anyway) it's supposed to be available to compatible apps. It could be used for a status display, or for the score in a game. A music/video editing program could put the timecode on one side, and the master volume control on the other.
...but that means new widgets designed to fit in the 'ears' - they are not going to show up on Airs, entry-level MBPs, iMacs or Apple's external screens, it's less likely that software designers will bother.
What it's *not* so good for is holding the menu bar - which was never designed to fit into ears (the clue is in 'menu bar' singular) and has an 'auto hide' option (default in full-screen mode) if you wanted the space back... and part of the point of full-screen mode is hiding everything not relevant to the current application (like the right-hand part of the menu bar).
I don't think of it as ears, its just a small dead zone in the middle of the menu bar of a screen with slightly more vertical desktop space. None of my app menus or menu bar icons display anything there, I already use Bartender to reduce the number of menubar icons, so it doesn't affect me negatively.My screen doesn't have a notch, so I can't be bothered to think of any
But, seriously, "glass half full" is that it's not a notch cut out of your screen but two 'ears' tacked on in addition to a 16:10 screen. At least in fullscreen mode (when the menu bar is hidden anyway) it's supposed to be available to compatible apps. It could be used for a status display, or for the score in a game. A music/video editing program could put the timecode on one side, and the master volume control on the other.
...but that means new widgets designed to fit in the 'ears' - they are not going to show up on Airs, entry-level MBPs, iMacs or Apple's external screens, it's less likely that software designers will bother.
What it's *not* so good for is holding the menu bar - which was never designed to fit into ears (the clue is in 'menu bar' singular) and has an 'auto hide' option (default in full-screen mode) if you wanted the space back... and part of the point of full-screen mode is hiding everything not relevant to the current application (like the right-hand part of the menu bar).
Your example of a status display or timecode display would work on every screen because hiding the menu bar in fullscreen is the same on the NotchBooks as with non-notch screens. The notch doesn't make full screen behave differently; the menu is still up there and appears when you push the pointer to the top of the screen.
What's funny is that I tried TopNotch, an app which blacks out the menubar, and the screen already looks weird to me with a thicker top bezel. I like the tiny top bezel and the notch, which doesn't bother me, gives me the tiny top bezel.
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The notch is more than fine, it's actually a great way to maximize screen space, and visually it's a non-issue if using a suitable wallpaper. This has been said before. The issue however is the half-assed way in which software handles it.
Two examples.
1. If you take a screen shot with an app in full screen mode (cmd+shift+3), you get a picture with a black bar at the top. I guess they were trying to mitigate the problem of opening the picture with Preview and then fitting it in the same position as the original when full screen. But that's surely not the best way to approach this problem (maybe flag it as a screen shot and just do the right thing).
2. Conversely if you take a screen shot in desktop mode (not full screen), you get the full menu bar at the top, which is great, but if you then take the picture full screen, it will never draw that menu bar back where it belongs (alongside the notch). It will just scale it down and move it down to fit in the "safe space". This might indicate I'm wrong about their reasons for #1 too, and they just did both randomly.
These are of course small issues or non-issues to most people, but I doubt I'm the only one who uses and cares about screen shots. And regardless, it is just not fitting for Apple to neglect details in this way. They hold themselves to a very high standard, and I expect that standard too.
It's like the SW team found out at the last minute they were going to have a notch, and didn't have time to handle it properly.
Two examples.
1. If you take a screen shot with an app in full screen mode (cmd+shift+3), you get a picture with a black bar at the top. I guess they were trying to mitigate the problem of opening the picture with Preview and then fitting it in the same position as the original when full screen. But that's surely not the best way to approach this problem (maybe flag it as a screen shot and just do the right thing).
2. Conversely if you take a screen shot in desktop mode (not full screen), you get the full menu bar at the top, which is great, but if you then take the picture full screen, it will never draw that menu bar back where it belongs (alongside the notch). It will just scale it down and move it down to fit in the "safe space". This might indicate I'm wrong about their reasons for #1 too, and they just did both randomly.
These are of course small issues or non-issues to most people, but I doubt I'm the only one who uses and cares about screen shots. And regardless, it is just not fitting for Apple to neglect details in this way. They hold themselves to a very high standard, and I expect that standard too.
It's like the SW team found out at the last minute they were going to have a notch, and didn't have time to handle it properly.
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Perhaps I am misunderstanding you, but I'm using a slightly dark wallpaper on my 16" M1BP which means that the menubar bas the dark blurred background, not solid black. When I use CMD+SHIFT+3 or CMD+SHIFT+4 for screenshots, the menu bar is captured exactly how the screen displays it. No black bar, no notch, and no rounded corners at the top.
Yes, my writing was a bit ambiguous, I meant taking a screen shot (cmd+shift+3) of a full screen app, when the menu bar is not visible, but a completely black bar is instead. I edited #1 for more clarity.
Yeah. I guess it would be preferable for the screenshot to be cropped to 16:10?
I'm not sure how you would avoid this. Full-screen is 16:10; desktop is something closer to 16:11. Thus, if you want to fit all that in full screen, you need to scale the entire picture down.
I'm no SW architect/designer, but I would probably set a "screen shot" flag in the meta-data of the picture. Then, when taking it full screen, make it look as it did when the shot was taken. There would be some amount of weirdness when taking a shot from case #2 into full screen mode, and then wanting to access the actual live menu bar of the Preview app, and having it come down on top of the picture. But this would be the same as the behavior we had before notches, right?
For case #1, I agree with 16:10 crop, and just use the same flag to make it look right (shift it down as if it had a black bar on top) when used in full screen Preview.
You want the screenshot to show the menu bar in full-screen mode where the regular menu bar exists? I don't think that's a good idea. It's confusing for the user to suddenly show something on the screen where normally, the area is forbidden.
It's also complicated. Each image viewer would need to support this special case.
Maybe they need another key sequence, sort of in between cmd-shift-3 and cmd-shift-4, that means, "screenshot the main 16:10 area". Or a checkbox in preferences somewhere that says, "if this option is selected, and the top 74px menubar is not in use, define 'full-screen screenshot' as only the lower 16:10 area". Although, something like cmd-opt-shift-3 ("altered full screen") or cmd-opt-shift-4 ("selected region 16:10") is more likely.
Could also make the existing toggle for cmd-shift-4, that goes between selected-region and current-window, instead cycle through 3 choices, where the third is "16:10 area", though that might throw more people off (my muscle memory says if I end up in the "wrong" one just hit the spacebar one more time to get to the right one - now it'd be cycling through three choices).
The black bar is visible because its part of the full screen; if the Menu items are visible in full-screen mode then they are screen-grabbed as well. Hiding the menu bar only hides the white Menu items, not the black bar itself.
Another option is to use the Snapshot application and use 'Capture Selected Screen' mode which will capture the full screen app without the Menu Bar.
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