I’m fascinated by this because it feels like a perception thing.
Does the notch remove pixels or are you getting added pixels on both sides? What does the resolution and ratio tell us?
If it was just a black bezel all the way across nobody would be commenting.
If they make it all black unless an app can utilize it well (ie. playing a video full screen is a rectangle, rather than a rectangle with a notch cut out) I don’t see the issue.
It is all back during full screen mode. Another commenter in the huge Apple MBP launch thread from Monday claimed it was extra pixels for the menu bar.
Mac Rumors has a short article with screenshots of Xcode in full screen.[1]
> According to Apple's marketing material, when macOS apps are in full-screen mode, macOS places an artificial black bezel at the top of the display that essentially hides the notch. When users are not in full-screen macOS apps, the notch remains, and the macOS Menu Bar has been made thicker to accommodate the notch.
Well, it's not illogical. It's a logical consequence of how human perception interprets "viewing a thing with a notch" greatly different from "using a thing with a notch".
If you're a driver, you're familiar with this; photos of cars clearly show these obstructing pillars left and right of the windshield, but in practice when driving, you get so used to working around them that you don't take conscious note of them anymore. That's why Apple said about the iPhone notch "trust us, you won't care", and sure enough, their users mostly don't care.
(Yes, it's still a good idea to reduce the blind spot of pillars, since lots of drivers don't bother looking around them to see if there's a person there. But the good drivers that do look around them still don't notice the pillars – they just move their head and look around them without taking much conscious notice of the pillar or the workaround.)
I could imagine this is because we need to be able to pay attention through a forest, and so whether or not there's a tree blocking one arc-degree of your field of view is ultimately irrelevant to paying attention in a forest, and that car pillars (and cracked windshields, and dangling objects hanging from rearview mirrors) fall into the same general bucket.
All eyes are on Apple and with each change or new release people are going to praise and shit on them.
Still trying to it figure out myself. According to some articles like the Mac Rumors one it’s no big deal. If you read some of the Verge stuff hell is freezing over.
Personally I have an M1 Air and trying to figure out if a 14” M1 Max is worth it. The M1 Air is only slightly slower than a 2017 mid spec 15”
I have encoding in handbrake. I’ve been doing some Final Cut Pro work for family/personal videos that could benefit.
Yes. There are some long answers to this, but yeah. I had heard about the annoying notch on newer iPhones for years. I have an iPhone 13 now. I have never noticed the notch. Looking up right now is probably the first time I’ve noticed it while using the phone.
I find the notch on my iPhone to be _incredibly_ annoying. It's by far the worst when in YouTube, where it covers a huge chunk of the video and UI elements when not full screened.
I don’t get this? I was just watching YouTube on my iPhone and the notch never covers any of the UI elements in either portrait or landscape? In portrait mode it’s got the clock and wifi elements on either side of the notch and when watching videos in landscape both sides of the phone are just black bars including the notch.
Edit: Even zooming in on the video doesn’t hide UI elements only whatever portion of the video overlaps the notch.
I just tested it, I can find no UI action in the YouTube app where the video or UI elements are obscured by the notch. It just has the time and wifi/battery status on either side.
If I have a video up in portrait, and tap on or pause the video to expose the UI elements that overlay the video (Chromecast, closed caption, and overflow buttons), they're all at the top of the phone. The Chromecast button is obscured by the notch and I cannot get the visible part to respond to taps.
The corner of the closed caption button is covered, and it's partially overlapping the radio signal indictators. There seems to be only a very small portion of the bottom edge of the button that responds to taps. It's very hard to tap successfully.
The overflow button is not obscured by the notch, but is partially overlapping the battery indicator. Like the closed caption button, there seems to be only a small portion of the bottom edge of it that will respond to taps.
It's so frustrating.
Here's a screenshot showing it, except for the notch which Apple doesn't include in screenshots: https://i.imgur.com/0KDIWEB.jpg
The notch covers the top half of the Chromecast button, and just touches the top-left corner of the closed caption button (the notch is curving back up, at that point).
I have a 13" MBP, and I use the full width of the menu bar, and then some: there are icons/utilities that get hidden for lack of space, depending on the current application. So the notch would be a step backward for me in reality.
There’s a flag that Mac application developers can set indicating whether their application can handle the extra screen space when in full screen mode. There are three modes, on off and null (the default). On = application uses that space however the developer chooses, off = black bar, null = user-configurable, with black bar by default. Sadly I’m on mobile and can’t find the Apple’s developer documentation for the flag, I saw it on HN the other day.
I think it’s interesting because a notch would have a much bigger effect on other OS interfaces compared to the Mac.
On the Mac, there is generally space up there anyway (usually menus on one side, icons on the other). In “full screen” they’ve decided to just black it out unless those same menus/icons are set to remain visible. In normal use, not really taking up important space.
On other desktops though, it would appear to carve a piece out of the background.
On Windows, a notch in the same place would be very noticeable.
On Mac OS, you'll likely have nothing in that part of the screen most of the time anyway.
Apple makes bad engineering tradeoffs all of the time, but I'm not convinced that this is one of them. Most people will just be glad to have a bit more vertical real estate to work with.
I don’t think the notch is a big deal on MacOS as that area has the menu bar anyway. It’s a much bigger deal on the iPhones. In dark mode, that notch won’t even be noticeable.
I am curious however on why Apple didn’t do a punch hole instead since it doesn’t even have Face ID? Unless they are setting the expectation for next year when they do add Face ID?
Also does anyone know what happens to the cursor around that area? Does the cursor go under that area or is it blocked from going in that area?
Cursor goes under. Furthermore I can guarantee one of the first "hacks" to be available will be to always have a black bar across top to make it look like there isn't a notch for all those people that think it is worthless to have extra screen realestate.
That's a stupid analogy. Transistors were immediately much more reliable than vacuum tubes, and already almost as fast with massive efficiency improvement and almost limitless room for speed improvement as we've seen. So nobody hated that trend.
A notch in the screen is simply an inconvenience, and this particular notch has no extra functionality, so it's simply a bad design. Maybe they'll add extra stuff in that spot for future models, but this model just has a missing chunk of screen for no reason.
You know before calling something stupid may be look deep? Everything starts somewhere dude, just because you don’t like it, it doesn’t become stupid. Transistors didn’t become AMD Ryzen EPYCs since day one. The first transistor was not even solid state and weren’t used since day one like you think, they went thru lot of changes to come where they are to replace vacuum tubes.
This notch may not have the functionality you expect but they don’t consume any real estate of usable screen, they if anything add to menu bar. If you don’t like the aesthetics of it, why should I even consider what you like? Every aesthetic has haters.
I had a look at the wikipedia page on transistors before I posted, but even had I not done that, it is obvious from where we are at now that a transistor had potential to be better than vacuum tubes.
Going from a screen without a chunk out of it to a screen with a chunk missing from it is not an advantage in any way.
A missing chunk of screen has no potential to be better than a complete screen. Complete screen > incomplete screen, simple as that.
It's not simply an unlikable aesthetic, it is functionally worse in every way. It takes up the same physical space as a full screen, with less functionality. No amount of Apple fanboyism can change that fact.
We are talking about this product, not some hypothetical future where that missing screen space is used for something more useful than a screen.
They've gone in the correct direction for a few things in this product (HDMI, magsafe), but the screen chunk is a clear and obvious step backwards. How anyone could argue differently is beyond me.
I wish they would mask the notch by making the area with the clock and the menu bar always full OLED black, so that it would be perceived as the menu bar bleeding into the border rather than the border bleeding into the screen.
As long as the notch is handled by the OS and software I doubt it will be a real issue. I've got a circle in the corner on my moto phone screen for the camera and I literally don't care. That circle buys me extra pixels the height of that camera for the full width of the screen. Doesn't impact movies or anything. Nice.
Personally, this is the least of Apple's "problems" if you want to call them that. Having seen how easily serviceable Framework's laptops are, I think Apple need to rethink their designs.
While I fully get the whole at-scale limitation that Apple operates in, I no longer see non-removeable batteries or other parts, eg ssd, as a necessary aspect of laptop manufacture. Its now going to be an indicator of just poor design. If Framework can make something that is serviceable then Apple should be able to innovate much better.
I don't even think this is actually an engineering decision or problem. Its a business/design one.
Apple hardware in the early-to-mid-90s was incredible for serviceability. You could replace the CPU on some Powerbooks without tools. Their desktops were even better.
Customizability always disappears as a company grows to target the mainstream. There's no (strong) why for user repairs (yet;awaiting legislation) so it's not happening.
I think the author needs to be reminded that the pixels to the left and right of the notch are basically free bonus pixels. They are not eating into the screen aspect ratio to build the notch.
Given that, I prefer the notch to a thicker top bezel, as I will take any free vertical space I can get to basically offset wasted space by macOS menu bar.
I too think Apple did a poor job at introducing their new screen.
When showing the screen growing into the sides of the frame, they could have paused and introduced their 16:10 aspect ratio (or whatever it is, below the notch) and then said "but we want that screen realestate to be used by you, and not by the MacOS menu, so we have moved the menu on top of the screen, surrounding the camera"
> "Apple's hiding the notch in a lot of its promo images on its own website. Not embarrassed, surely?"
Actually, they aren't hiding it at all. The app in the picture is in fullscreen mode. They have added additional space on the vertical, and they take it away in fullscreen mode so the notch isnt an obstruction.
They literally gave you additional vertical real estate and you complain because theres a notch it invalidates it...
Im happy for the extra pixels that are being used by the menu bar, giving me more screen realestate to play with.
I have just glanced up at the top of my monitor where my logitech webcam sits to realise that is creates a notch in my monitor with its mounting hardware.
41 comments
[ 3.2 ms ] story [ 99.7 ms ] threadDoes the notch remove pixels or are you getting added pixels on both sides? What does the resolution and ratio tell us?
If it was just a black bezel all the way across nobody would be commenting.
If they make it all black unless an app can utilize it well (ie. playing a video full screen is a rectangle, rather than a rectangle with a notch cut out) I don’t see the issue.
Mac Rumors has a short article with screenshots of Xcode in full screen.[1]
> According to Apple's marketing material, when macOS apps are in full-screen mode, macOS places an artificial black bezel at the top of the display that essentially hides the notch. When users are not in full-screen macOS apps, the notch remains, and the macOS Menu Bar has been made thicker to accommodate the notch.
[1] https://www.macrumors.com/2021/10/18/macos-hides-notch-on-ne...
If you're a driver, you're familiar with this; photos of cars clearly show these obstructing pillars left and right of the windshield, but in practice when driving, you get so used to working around them that you don't take conscious note of them anymore. That's why Apple said about the iPhone notch "trust us, you won't care", and sure enough, their users mostly don't care.
(Yes, it's still a good idea to reduce the blind spot of pillars, since lots of drivers don't bother looking around them to see if there's a person there. But the good drivers that do look around them still don't notice the pillars – they just move their head and look around them without taking much conscious notice of the pillar or the workaround.)
I could imagine this is because we need to be able to pay attention through a forest, and so whether or not there's a tree blocking one arc-degree of your field of view is ultimately irrelevant to paying attention in a forest, and that car pillars (and cracked windshields, and dangling objects hanging from rearview mirrors) fall into the same general bucket.
Still trying to it figure out myself. According to some articles like the Mac Rumors one it’s no big deal. If you read some of the Verge stuff hell is freezing over.
Personally I have an M1 Air and trying to figure out if a 14” M1 Max is worth it. The M1 Air is only slightly slower than a 2017 mid spec 15” I have encoding in handbrake. I’ve been doing some Final Cut Pro work for family/personal videos that could benefit.
Edit: Even zooming in on the video doesn’t hide UI elements only whatever portion of the video overlaps the notch.
The corner of the closed caption button is covered, and it's partially overlapping the radio signal indictators. There seems to be only a very small portion of the bottom edge of the button that responds to taps. It's very hard to tap successfully.
The overflow button is not obscured by the notch, but is partially overlapping the battery indicator. Like the closed caption button, there seems to be only a small portion of the bottom edge of it that will respond to taps.
It's so frustrating.
Here's a screenshot showing it, except for the notch which Apple doesn't include in screenshots: https://i.imgur.com/0KDIWEB.jpg
The notch covers the top half of the Chromecast button, and just touches the top-left corner of the closed caption button (the notch is curving back up, at that point).
On the Mac, there is generally space up there anyway (usually menus on one side, icons on the other). In “full screen” they’ve decided to just black it out unless those same menus/icons are set to remain visible. In normal use, not really taking up important space.
On other desktops though, it would appear to carve a piece out of the background.
On Windows, a notch in the same place would be very noticeable.
On Mac OS, you'll likely have nothing in that part of the screen most of the time anyway.
Apple makes bad engineering tradeoffs all of the time, but I'm not convinced that this is one of them. Most people will just be glad to have a bit more vertical real estate to work with.
I mean, in Windows 10. Not 11 because they half-ass rebuilt it, heh.
I mean, not beyond the scope of a design that still has some windows that haven't been changed in 25 years, but you know.
I am curious however on why Apple didn’t do a punch hole instead since it doesn’t even have Face ID? Unless they are setting the expectation for next year when they do add Face ID?
Also does anyone know what happens to the cursor around that area? Does the cursor go under that area or is it blocked from going in that area?
It also solidifies the notch as an Apple brand symbol, at a time when it may fade from the phone within a few years.
So much advertising for apps and other services use notched iPhone screenshots, which is massive advertising for Apple.
The notch ties the iPhone and Max together, and not by accident.
A notch in the screen is simply an inconvenience, and this particular notch has no extra functionality, so it's simply a bad design. Maybe they'll add extra stuff in that spot for future models, but this model just has a missing chunk of screen for no reason.
https://www.ultrabookreview.com/21772-laptops-small-thin-bez... has a list of thin bezel laptops that shows that you can have a thin bezel without a notch.
Going from a screen without a chunk out of it to a screen with a chunk missing from it is not an advantage in any way.
A missing chunk of screen has no potential to be better than a complete screen. Complete screen > incomplete screen, simple as that.
It's not simply an unlikable aesthetic, it is functionally worse in every way. It takes up the same physical space as a full screen, with less functionality. No amount of Apple fanboyism can change that fact.
We are talking about this product, not some hypothetical future where that missing screen space is used for something more useful than a screen.
They've gone in the correct direction for a few things in this product (HDMI, magsafe), but the screen chunk is a clear and obvious step backwards. How anyone could argue differently is beyond me.
Personally, this is the least of Apple's "problems" if you want to call them that. Having seen how easily serviceable Framework's laptops are, I think Apple need to rethink their designs.
While I fully get the whole at-scale limitation that Apple operates in, I no longer see non-removeable batteries or other parts, eg ssd, as a necessary aspect of laptop manufacture. Its now going to be an indicator of just poor design. If Framework can make something that is serviceable then Apple should be able to innovate much better.
I don't even think this is actually an engineering decision or problem. Its a business/design one.
But I'd much rather have a notch on my laptop than a notch on my phone.
Given that, I prefer the notch to a thicker top bezel, as I will take any free vertical space I can get to basically offset wasted space by macOS menu bar.
When showing the screen growing into the sides of the frame, they could have paused and introduced their 16:10 aspect ratio (or whatever it is, below the notch) and then said "but we want that screen realestate to be used by you, and not by the MacOS menu, so we have moved the menu on top of the screen, surrounding the camera"
Actually, they aren't hiding it at all. The app in the picture is in fullscreen mode. They have added additional space on the vertical, and they take it away in fullscreen mode so the notch isnt an obstruction.
They literally gave you additional vertical real estate and you complain because theres a notch it invalidates it...
Im happy for the extra pixels that are being used by the menu bar, giving me more screen realestate to play with.