Apple’s new 14- and 16-inch MacBook Pros both feature a rather unnecessary notch, a first for the Mac, and seemingly Apple’s attempt to double down on design idiocy. That said, one question remains: How does macOS, i.e. the cursor, handle this inelegant kludge, this silly speed bump, bad design that accomplishes nothing?
The predicament about how the mouse pointer handles the notch has been a question floated across Twitter and Reddit over the last 24 hours or so since the new MacBook Pro’s announcement.
The new MacBook Pros will begin arriving next week, but thankfully, we don’t have to wait that long to get an answer. Linda Dong, an Apple designer, has confirmed on Twitter that the macOS pointer travels behind the notch, allowing users to essentially hide the mouse pointer from view.
Apple is taking steps to make the notch less of an annoyance for most customers in day-to-day use. When macOS apps are in full-screen mode, Apple adds an artificial black bar to the top of the display that hides the notch. Developers can, however, opt to allow their apps to make full use of the entire screen real estate, notch included.
Yup! The cursor moves underneath
— Linda Dong 🥽 🌸 (@lindadong) October 19, 2021
MacDailyNews Take: Stupid and pure post-Steve Jobs Apple. But, we repeat ourselves.
“We couldn’t figure out how to do it elegantly (read: right), so we’ll spread it everywhere to make it look intentional” is hardly a winning design philosophy.
Or any design philosophy. It’s just bad marketing. “Unapologetically plastic,” as it were.
That Apple adds an artificial black bar in their apps to try to hide the notch tells you all you need to know.
The MacBook Pro’s unnecessary notch is literally a black mark on an otherwise near-perfect machine.
And, it doesn’t even deliver the benefit of Face ID. Ugh!
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