They didn’t want to tell devs about it in advance because they didn’t want it getting out that they were putting a notch in. If it had been leaked earlier, or people noticed the info in that hack, then a **** storm would have brewed and given a lot of negative press for a long time.
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Videos Show Menu Bar Behavior in Apps Not Updated for MacBook Pro Notch
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Apple doing this instead of having the developer do it could be disastrous. As a dev, I want control of how my menu bar adapts to the notch, I don't want UI elements going wherever just because Apple implemented something.
This is also literally a non-issue. A quick update and the notch can easily be accounted for. Devs need to adapt to hardware changes, it's part of the job.
As does the 14 inch and the 13 inch relative to the 16 inch. It’s an arbitrary, limited space.
Also, when is the Touch Bar a great idea, even for people who hate it? When it’s been around forever at the top of the screen.
I’ve used the new machine for about two hours last night, the notch is not an issue: you forget about it. I love the instant render of the top bar instead of the old slide in. Apps/App Developers who were affected will step in quickly, not worried - if they don’t then maybe your using software no one is maintaining, take a hint and find an alternative.
Apple could have implemented an option for the menu bar to become double-decked and made that known long ago.
Surely most developers and users would have ignored it, likely derided it as taking even more screen area. But with the extended screen height and notch now implemented, it would have come into its own. Letting users stick to the space that is available on the standard menu bar with notch - or double-deck and not take any more of the main part of the screen than a standard menu bar on a non-notch device. Obviously, should be switchable by app.
Surely most developers and users would have ignored it, likely derided it as taking even more screen area. But with the extended screen height and notch now implemented, it would have come into its own. Letting users stick to the space that is available on the standard menu bar with notch - or double-deck and not take any more of the main part of the screen than a standard menu bar on a non-notch device. Obviously, should be switchable by app.
UI overflow is one of those weirdly difficult problems (do you make it scrollable? Do you add a chevron at the end with a menu? do you make each individual item smaller, e.g. Safari tabs? do you add additional rows?), and a second row is… not necessarily a great solution, especially for the menu bar, because it negates one of the reasons the menu bar exists in the first place: it's very easy to hit from wherever you are; just move to the very top (doesn't matter how much you overshoot) and click. A second row makes hitting either the first or second row very hard. And, even harder, in fact: once you've clicked a menu of the first row but actually meant to go to the second, switching between those is finicky, too.
He could have raised this as a concern without acting like such a dweeb.
I disagree with the last part when it comes to UI. It's different when you don't optimize for new chips/performance. It still works, albeit slower. But this actually breaks something and is it not easier to do it from one side than from 10,000s? This is highly unrealistic, no one can expect that. Not even Apple.
What's worse, because Apple actually endorses and embraces their notch, a fix is highly unlikely, which leaves all devs out in the dry trying to figure out stuff on their own.
It *is* handled at the system level. It looks like iStat uses some sort of a hack that circumvents system behaviour. (Possibly the whole collection of iStat widgets is viewed as one giant menu item by the system? How else should it behave then?)
That's simply not true.
The only thing this breaks is that, in very extreme cases, status items become partially obscured behind the notch. Menu items aren't affected; they simply continue drawing to the right of the notch. Apps that do their own drawing may be affected; for those, users can click the checkbox in Finder.
It does seem that macOS has a bug where status items (but not menus) will partially draw inside the notch. If only there were a more constructive way to report this than, and I quote, "WTF HAHAHAHA HOW IS THIS SHIPPABLE? WHAT IS THIS?! WHO DESIGNED THIS?! ?". Some kind of app where you can report feedback. A Feedback Reporting App, maybe.
But suppose Apple fixes that… Quinn won't actually be happy with the fix, will he? Because Apple's fix will be to remove such status items altogether, until all menu items (but not status items) fit.
If you really want that many status items, use something like Bartender or Vanilla. I think macOS should provide a first-party way to manage status item overflow better than it currently does, but that's not really related to this whole notch thing at all.
You rightly question how this sort of thing can and should be done. Yes, difficult to get absolutely right.
But scrolling or similar means you can't see what might be available. One of the things I appreciated in early GUI implementations was greying out. You could see where the item exists even when not available. The tendency towards changing menu items based on context is understandable but can making learning and memorising more difficult.
Apple Says Notch is a 'Smart Way' to Give Users More Space for Content on New MacBook Pros
I don't know what this mean then, if such comments arent a form of endorsement and justification.
Yeah, I miss the old apple, like the one that released an iPhone that loses its signal when held, I miss Ping and the Cube and the Lisa. Good times.
(To expand on this, for others
This one scrolls. Ehhhhhhh. Very finicky to click the right thing (did you mean to hit a tab, or a scroll arrow?), and impossible to ever see all tabs that exist.
This shows additional items (well, all items) in a menu. Better for discoverability, but now those additional items suddenly behave very differently.
Here, we add a second row. Oh boy. Bette for discoverability, but very easy to accidentally click the wrong row. (With tabs, this is particularly funny. Does clicking a different row bring that row to the front? That's nicer to look at, but now you're changing the order of tabs!)
And then, of course, there's "just shrink each tab":
Obviously an extreme example, but this very quickly devolves into "uhhhhh I can't find anything in this mess".
Another bonus option is hover (please don't do this one either), where, say, you do have multiple rows of items, but they only show if you move within a certain region of the screen. Terrible for discoverability, but looks clean.
Safari I believe does a mixture: it shrinks them a little, but after a certain threshold, you have to scroll to see more details. It's a bit weird.
My understanding (I don't have such a system yet) is the notch'd menu bar also does a mixture of strategies: it first squishes the text a little, and if that's not enough, it overflows into the other end. And if that isn't enough, it starts removing status items.
So I find the insinuation by Quinn that Apple didn't put thought into this… off the mark.
Yep. Discoverability is one of the huge benefits of the menu bar, and a scrolling or chevron approach would lose that.
Yes. I remember when FileMaker 3 (??) started removing the menu items depending on what mode you were in, instead of disabling them. It looks cleaner, but it's more disorienting.
I don't know what Apple will do for better overflow management. I'm not sure they'll do anything; they haven't in two decades (the status items in their current form appeared in 10.1 Puma, in fall 2001). They should totally address the bug that status items can in some cases partially be obscured by the notch, sure. But what Quinn is really asking for is a magic trick to make more horizontal space, and that has nothing to do with the notch, and isn't a problem for which a good solution exists.
Apple yesterday, presented by none other than Steve Jobs:
By the way, that Apple logo did nothing. It wasn't an Apple menu; it was simply an image that was in the way, and menus had to float around it.
Actually yeah it is the developer's job.. One developer has one fix. Funny you think Apple should pore through every single third party program and accommodate. Ever been on an airplane? Well if you are too fat you need a seatbelt extender required by that specific plane to supply you one. Should; they take every plane in the world and send it back to Airbus or Boeing? Do they design new planes with seatbelts that will fit every one? No they don't.
That is one excellent post which fully appreciate my points. Thank you.
For some reason (maybe logic? maybe just being too slow to even think of other possibilities?) I automatically assumed no reordering of menu bars. Inconsistent attitudes towards re-ordering (yes in one app, no in another, across apps, platforms, user-selectable or not, etc.) are hideous.
if I paid $2k-$3k+ for a machine and there was weird oversights like this I'd also go joker mode
See an app developer’s opinion above. Seem they think this is a complete non-issue and a relatively easy fix.