Apple defends notch on new MacBook Pros, says it's a 'smart way' to give users more space

Last week, Apple finally took the wraps off the hotly anticipated new 14 and 16-inch MacBook Pros .

These notebooks are powered by Apple's latest M1 Pro and M1 Max and, for the most part, they have been warmly received.

One slightly controversial thing, however, is the notch on the display that houses the notebooks' new 1080p FaceTime HD camera.

Some wondered if Apple couldn't have perhaps resorted to a reverse notch and free up that space so that the display is more seamless.

Apple, however, has defended the notch in a recent interview with Justine and Jenna from Same Brain. You can skip to 10:19 to see that part of the interview.

Regarding the notch, Justine said that there's where the menu bar sits and a lot of that is unused space, to which Shruti Haldea, who presented the new MacBook Pros during the Unleashed event last week, said:

"What we've done is we've actually made the display taller. Like on the 16-inch notebook, you still have a 16.0 active area on the diagonal in that 16:10-inch window, and we just grew the display up from there and put the menu bar up there.

"We just kind of moved it up and out of the way. So it's a really smart way to give you more space for your content, and when you're in full-screen mode, you have that 16:10 window, and it looks great. It's seamless."

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Granted, not many people maximise their menu bars, but for those who do (like yours truly), the notch takes up valuable screen space.

I run iStat Menu to monitor my system and a little app called Music Bar to see what's currently playing on my Music app and I'm pretty sure the notch will limit what I can display.

I also suspect the notch will impinge on certain apps that have a lot of menu bar options.

That said, it does help in reducing the size of the bezel so at least there's an upside to that.

For now, we'll have to wait until we get our hands on the new notebooks to know just how effective or annoying the notch is.

You can order the new 14 and 16-inch MacBook Pro from the Apple Online Store now, and deliveries will start tomorrow on Oct 26.

This article was first published in Hardware Zone.