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The size of the notch is interesting as it's bigger than you'd expect just for a camera. Perhaps someone wants software to cope with a notch and not need to change again if the notch size changes.

I wonder what might fit in a bigger notch.

ravnorodom said:

One important feature I do wish Apple to consider is touch screen capability on the monitor. After using iPad and iPhone for so many years, I have a habit of touching my MacBook screen for certain interaction when I realize it's not a touch screen. It's a more logical move than a Touch Bar.

I understand the instinct to go for the display with a finger if you've just been using an iPad/iPhone but I still believe that touchscreens should not be fitted to MacBooks. The normal usage is that your hands are at the keyboard and touchpad, reaching for the display is actually both clumsy and slower than just using the pointer. The ergonomic design of touch plus trackpad/pointer (or mouse) is also tricky.

The touchscreen then just becomes a cost/complexity/size addition for no good reason. But that's my view of the Touch Bar too .

Alex_V said:

williamlondon said:

Love the extra screen space with the new tab bar, but learning new things can be difficult. ;-)

Agreed. I was happily able to “revert” to the new design after the latest update. I always thought that there was wasted space and duplication in the existing Safari toolbar and tabs layout: address bar at top and tabs below. Apple’s software is exemplary at utilising the screen real estate to the maximum, which is very welcome for using laptops.

The problem I have with these 'compact' layouts is that they leave very little handle space on the window. That makes it hard to move windows around without first thinking about where you can safely place the pointer.

It's particularly noticeable if you sometimes use a second display (eg with a MacBook). When you return to the second display, macOS's lamentable multi-display handling often leaves only a small sliver of a window visible as it tries and fails to move it back onto the second display. You can end up with just a button and a thin margin visible and have to grab that thin margin to move the window.

AppleZulu said:

ApplePoor said:

Removing the Touch Bar is one less failure point in the laptop. 

And resurrecting the physical keys would add a baker's dozen more failure points. 

Not quite a fair comparison, the Touch Bar is a complex beastie compared to the simple switch that is a key.

Though Apple's track record on keyboards is a little spotty, now I come to think about it.

chia said:

Clamourers for USB-A ports on the new MacBook Pros have appeared with depressing predictability. It seems contradictory to want old tech on new products: the official USB organisation has dropped the USB-A connector from the current standard: USB 4 is achieved only via USB-C connectors.

All this clamour for USB-A ports is ironic seeing how 20 years ago Apple introduced the iMac with just USB[-A] ports, and there was lots of whining back then as to why Apple couldn’t also add the SCSI and Serial ports of the day. 

The USB-C connector is superior both in ease of use and the features it can offer; if Apple kept on catering to the technology luddites we’d all still be using ”laptops” the size and weight of the Macintosh Portable with ADB and SCSI ports.

It’s difficult to believe that those incapable of adapting to a $20-50 USB-C/Bluetooth mouse, or a $20 dollar USB-C to HDMI cable/adaptor, are serious, or should be taken seriously, in their consideration of several thousand dollar MacBook Pros for professional revenue earning work.

For me this is about design balance, Apple has been good at this in the past. The 'best' connected notebook is the one that can connect to everything (likely to be) required without extra devices (eg dongles); that's not the 'optimum' notebook because it's obviously going to be bigger/heavier than desired - it lacks design balance.

The trend in connectors is towards smaller and more versatile, USB-A was a good example when it was introduced. The trick now is to identify the future (I doubt anyone would argue about that being USB-C) and balance it with some subset of current (not legacy) connectors that are commonly encountered and may be inconvenient to adapt (ie a dongle might not be available at the point of need for whatever reason) or cannot be met by USB-C (don't forget that the USB-C MBP came with an analogue audio connector too - how ancient is a 3.5mm jack!).

Those decisions are trade-offs and they're not easy. Just deciding to do nothing (as Apple did in 2016) is an extreme design and, IMHO, history shows that it was a bad one. In 2021 there are still many situations where USB-C connectors on other equipment are entirely absent. For me, the pace of USB-C adoption, which Apple thought would quickly make the 2016 MBP able to ditch its dongles, is still sufficiently slow to justify some other connectivity.

Good arguments can be made for an SD Card reader, HDMI (or mini-HDMI), Ethernet and (yes) USB-A, all based upon their ubiquity in the real world. All would make the notebook fit better into many real users' real use cases. As I said, these decisions are difficult.