MacBook Pro 2021 is criticized: notch is confusing

Now that the MacBook Pro 2021 is in stores, we finally know exactly how the ‘notch’ behaves. In short: confusing.

MacBook Pro 2021 Notch

Immediately during the Apple event in October, there was a lot of speculation about how the notch of the MacBook Pro 2021 (the notch in the screen) and the pointer work together. Does the pointer stop? Will he go under? Or from behind?

We now know the answer: the pointer passes behind the notch. Surprisingly, however, this behavior is not always the same.

Notch and the menu bar

youtuber Quinn Nelson shared several videos on Twitter about the notch, showing what happens to it when the menu bar changes. It is clear from this that Apple has not yet thought out everything properly.

For example, do you have a program where the number of menu items (such as ‘Archive’, ‘Edit’ and ‘View’) becomes too wide together? Then they continue until after the notch. While this is quite logical, the pointer behavior is not.

In this case, it can no longer pass behind the notch, and instead jumps directly from one side of the notch to the other. And as you approach the notch from below, the pointer taps against it. So quite inconsistent. Or in Nelson’s words: ‘who designed this?!’.

Bug in the notch

Even weirder is the behavior of the status bar, the right side of the menu bar where, among other things, the time, battery status and certain apps are located. The icons in the status bar get a lot less space now that menu items go beyond the notch. However, you can expand them manually if you want to see them all.

However, there is a bug in this feature. If there are too many icons in the status bar, they will expand behind the notch, where you can no longer see them!

This is a remarkable error. Coupled with the pointer’s confusing behavior, Nelson feels the notch wasn’t ready for sale yet. Fortunately, it seems relatively easy to fix these problems with a macOS update, but it’s messy to say the least.