{"id":34271,"date":"2021-11-24T15:46:09","date_gmt":"2021-11-24T20:46:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/?p=34271"},"modified":"2025-09-03T15:50:48","modified_gmt":"2025-09-03T19:50:48","slug":"the-macbook-pro-notch","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/2021\/11\/24\/the-macbook-pro-notch\/","title":{"rendered":"The MacBook Pro Notch"},"content":{"rendered":"

Tom Warren<\/a>:<\/p>\n

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Snazzy Labs owner Quinn Nelson has posted two videos on Twitter demonstrating some of the early notch issues. The main video demonstrates what appears to be a bug in macOS. Status bar items like Apple’s battery indicator can get hidden underneath the notch when status bar items are extended.<\/p>\n

Nelson demonstrates this with iStat Menus, which can be hidden under the notch or can force system items like the battery indicator to be hidden underneath the notch. While Apple has issued guidance to developers on how to work with the notch, the developer behind iStat Menus says the app is just using standard status items<\/a> and that Apple’s dev guidance “won’t solve the issue presented in the video.” This doesn’t appear to be intended behavior, as the notch works differently inside certain apps.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n

Jason Snell<\/a>:<\/p>\n

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You could imagine this notch being a major pain point for developers and users alike, but it’s not. And that’s thanks to the menu bar, a Mac convention since day one that provides the perfect<\/em> place to hide a display cutout. The menu bar has been given a little extra height to completely encompass the notch, and menu items automatically move to the other side of the chasm if there isn’t room for them to fit.<\/p>\n

It takes no time to get used to having a notch at the top of the display. And it’s a good use of space since moving the menu bar up into what would otherwise have been unused bezel means that there’s more room downstairs for everything else. (I see now why Apple changed the metrics on the menu bar in macOS Big Sur—it was clearly laying the groundwork for this display. Add in the curved-edge highlights that appear when you click on a menu-bar item and the whole approach really looks great.)<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n

Howard Oakley<\/a>:<\/p>\n

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If you obsess about it, I’m sure it could become irksome, but I barely notice it.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n

John Gruber<\/a>:<\/p>\n

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The notch in the menu bar for the camera is very weird at first. The mouse pointer passes under it, so it justs disappears when in the center of the menu bar. That’s really weird! If I had written this review a week ago, after my first day with the machine, I’d have written a lot more about the notch. One week in, I’m just not noticing it. One notch-related change I’m still getting used to is the taller menu bar. It makes the menu titles look even more disconnected from the actual menus. It’s interesting that last year’s redesigned menu bar in MacOS 11 Big Sur was seen by some as laying UI groundwork for future touch screen support in MacOS, but it now seems clear it was redesigned to more elegantly fit with the notch. You’ll notice that most of Apple’s product photography for these new MacBooks shows them with dark desktop pictures. With default translucency settings, a dark desktop gives you a dark menu bar, and a dark menu bar disguises the notch.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n

D. Hardawar<\/a>:<\/p>\n

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Upon first glance, it’s almost laughable that Apple is leaning even more into a design element that everyone hates. But, honestly, the notch isn’t a big deal.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n

Stephen Hackett<\/a>:<\/p>\n

A week in, I’ve mostly forgotten it’s there.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n

Nilay Patel and Monica Chin<\/a>:<\/p>\n

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But to me, rather than thinking of the notch eating into the display, I think of the display getting larger except in that one spot. The MacBook Pro effectively has a 16:10 display with a little extra bit at the top where the menu bar and the notch live. You stop noticing it after just a few minutes, just like you stopped noticing the iPhone notch.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n

Riccardo Mori<\/a>:<\/p>\n

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On the Mac, the notch visually splits the menu bar, a UI element you interact with all the time<\/em>. The notch covers, occupies a part of the menu bar that could be devoted to displaying menu items and menu extras. This isn’t a real problem when you have apps with just a few menus. But with more sophisticated and professional apps, with many menus on the menu bar reaching and even surpassing the middle point, then yes, the notch is definitely in your way and you can’t tell me you’re not going to notice it. When you launch an app with lots of menus on one of the new MacBook Pros, all the ‘excess menus’ will get moved on the right, and the notch will of course be a sort of gap between them. So, according to Linda Dong (Apple Design Evangelist), developers now need to take the notch into account when designing their apps (more unnecessary work for them, but who cares, right Apple?)<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n

Fred McCann<\/a>:<\/p>\n

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It’s tempting to call this bad design, but this looks more to me like someone who was responsible for making a product level decision refused to make a decision about what was the most important thing and shipped a broken compromise.<\/p>\n

[…]<\/p>\n

What’s not evident from this screenshot is that menu items are under the hole<\/a>, inaccessible. Unlike menus which wrap around the hole, menubar items simply disappear. This isn’t some Bartender behavior, this is the default behavior in the operating system.<\/p>\n

[…]<\/p>\n

What were the product people at Apple thinking? I can’t know for sure but I suspect they thought thin bezels, a better webcam, and a nicer screen were all equally important. This is another way of saying is no one at Apple actually decided what the most important thing was. They punted.<\/p>\n

[…]<\/p>\n

The one thing the product people at Apple thought wasn’t important was a working menubar.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n

Previously:<\/p>\n