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Videos Show Menu Bar Behavior in Apps Not Updated for MacBook Pro Notch

CC77 said:
Uh....what?
(a) The notch isn't "a feature" - it's a design decision, and a compromised one at that
(b) This video is evidence that apple didn't consider edge cases when implementing it in their OS, something everyone on these forums for some inexplicable reason was certain they did. What is there to defend here? Why are you caping so hard for a sloppy implementation from a trillion-dollar company? Apple should have done better.
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I think maybe it's the reality that this is just the norm. It is impossible to think of every single use case, no company exists that does this. Every single product is flawed in some way shape or form, it's just simply what you are willing to put up with or not.

The point to it is this: The notch was not an unknown factor, it was announced with the product. If you had a concern that Apple would not implement it well or that it could possibly interfere, do not buy the product.

Simple as that. Don't buy if there is a concern it will not meet your needs. If there was not a concern and then it does not meet your needs, Apple has a nice return policy. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
 
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The right menubar icon area was never designed to be a placeholder for widgets. Even without the notch you can add too many menubar icons that will be hidden by an app with a lot of top level menus. Control Center was also added to reduce the number of icons you need to have visible at all times. I'm guessing this consolidation option with Control Center was developed with the upcoming notch in mind. I use the Bartender app to clean up this area further.

I'm not familiar with the person in the video. I thought it was someone doing an impression of a Joker ransom video ?.
 
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Marty80 said:
I do believe there is already a work around to this issue. it’s called bartender.
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Yep... Bartender 4 has a Monterey update out that works well.

Here is a screenshot the dev. posted.

Bartender 5 - Take control of your Menu bar

www.macbartender.com www.macbartender.com

macbartender_2021-Oct-27.jpg
 
So on top of FATUGLY, we’ve got NOTCHUGLY ???
Truly believe the professionals will be very happy!
 
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x-evil-x said:
His overly excited reaction is because Apple should have this known before the release of it and its a little crazy it wasn't written into the new systems.
Its one of literally the first things people think about when seeing the menu bar and icons on it. It should of been Implemented very far back in design but nope. Who's working for Apple to not see common sense?
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That’s what happens when you work from home.
 
That Quinn guy reminds me of Tucker Carlson. It’s like, you go to the bleeding edge, you’re going run into issues. This will all resolve by year’s end. No one in a real production environment is buying day 1 Apple products or running a day 1 OS.
 
CC77 said:
Uh....what?
(a) The notch isn't "a feature" - it's a design decision, and a compromised one at that
(b) This video is evidence that apple didn't consider edge cases when implementing it in their OS, something everyone on these forums for some inexplicable reason was certain they did. What is there to defend here? Why are you caping so hard for a sloppy implementation from a trillion-dollar company? Apple should have done better.
Click to expand...
If Steve were still around, he'd clear up all the confusion: "You're not looking properly"
 
robertts said:
I don't understand why this isn't handled at the system level. So, every Mac app needs to engineer a solution for the notch?
Click to expand...

It is handled automatically for well behaved apps that use official APIs, however the app in the video hacks into the menu bar without using official APIs - so Apple cannot do anything here (apart from possibly restricting the ability of third-party apps to modify system apps).
 
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Less likely to happen on the 16 inch.

But yeah this is a non-issue. Developers will update or Apple might just even issue a macOS update that blocks that section.
 
So silly. If you're on the 14-inch, run less status bar items until Apple issues a fix. You'll survive, I promise.
 
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nutjob said:
But you're still losing screen functionality there. Previously you didn't need to hide menu items, which kind of defeats the purpose. Hopefully you can use the tool to just skip around the notch.
Click to expand...

I have a 13" MBP and I do need to hide some status bar icons to keep long menu items in Photoshop, for example, and icons from overlapping. Hopefully Bartender also lets you hide them in the menu bar instead of with the second window.
 
nutjob said:
But you're still losing screen functionality there. Previously you didn't need to hide menu items, which kind of defeats the purpose. Hopefully you can use the tool to just skip around the notch.
Click to expand...
I used Bartender before this new MBP just to hide menu items when they are not being used. You can set it to only show menu items when the item is active, like when Time Machine is backing up for example. So you don't really lose any functionality.

You can see my two screenshots here show what I have hidden.

Everything to the left of the < stays hidden unless active or if I slide my mouse up into the menu bar it will show everything.

Screen Shot 2021-10-27 at 11.39.41 AM.png
Screen Shot 2021-10-27 at 11.39.53 AM.png
 
Bartender should take care of that. Love it. Let’s you tuck away your lesser used icons into their own row. I’ve been using it for years to keep things tidy as I use a lot of utilities.

As for apps with menus that big, what did you think was gonna happen when you bought it? The notch would just disappear?
 
darngooddesign said:
Back then we’re there even any OSX apps with menu bars long enough to wrap around that logo? There certainly weren’t any extra status bar icons.
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Having any icons at all in the top right wasn’t a thing yet (those were instead Docklings), but resolutions were much lower, so menus spilling over was absolutely a thing.
 
Oops, you'd figure they had already thought about this and came up with a solution
It doesn't sound like a big deal on the 16 inch but I can definitely see the 14 inche getting easily overwhelmed by a menu-heavy app.

And while realistically people don't use iStat that way with every single widget fully decked out I think it's a major oversight the system does do something.
The menu bar needs a bit of a overhaul in macOS 13, not even for the notch - it just feels like it's been neglected for far too long
 
The worst thing about the notch is that despite all the trade-offs, the webcam is still terrible. The majority of people will never even use it, but everyone has to deal with the problems it causes. If you actually need video conferencing you are much better off using your iPhone, iPad or an external camera. Hell Apple could make a decent 4k webcam that magnetically attaches to the top of the MacBook and remove the notch and bezels entirely.
 
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darngooddesign said:
I know it was a thing with the first release, but what about the non-public beta?
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The final version of 10.0 had an Apple menu instead. (I think that was kind of the bigger thing — people were unhappy there was no longer a central system-wide menu. Of course, they also expected something somewhat different from the Apple menu; Mac OS 9's let you put all kinds of custom stuff in there, and that functionality never returned.)

10.1 then ditched Docklings in favor of menu extras/status items to the right side of the menu bar. So, it was with 10.1 that the notion of "if you can't fit both all menus and all status items on the bar, then start removing status items until all menus fit" was apparently introduced, and frankly, that was never a great way of dealing with overflow.
 
downpour said:
The worst thing about the notch is that despite all the trade-offs, the webcam is still terrible. The majority of people will never even use it, but everyone has to deal with the problems it causes. If you actually need video conferencing you are much better off using your iPhone, iPad or an external camera.
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Ehhhhh. How many people do you know in a typical video conference that have a better camera than this? Most people just use their laptop's built-in camera.

By video conferencing standards, I'd argue this is above average.

downpour said:
Hell Apple could make a decent 4k webcam that magnetically attaches to the top of the MacBook and remove the notch and bezels entirely.
Click to expand...

Yep. They could even bring Center Stage to more devices that way.
 
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