My workaround was to restore pre-notch behaviour by picking a resolution from the "show all resolutions" list that is conveniently+ exactly screen res height minus notch height.

I theoretically "lose" that much height but gain a) zero notch b) non-rounded top corners and c) a traditionally heighted menubar instead of the giant one that is so big only to cater for the notch.

+ I thought this was thanks to BetterDisplay but it turns out no third party tool is needed and it's all first party probably because someone at Apple is as annoyed by the notch as I was and so that's their solution.

I think it is because they want to send to apps resolution list that includes or excludes the notch area to choose from for full screen modes (eg in games). Selecting "show all resolutions" basically shows this list.

Hasn't menu bar applets crowding with no official overflow menu been a problem with MacOS with an obvious solution (add an overflow menu) for... 2+ decades now? I know third party solutions exist and it's kind of an edge case, but still, I remember encountering this back in the day on my ancient plastic Macbook.

It's much worse than it used to be. Before it was only really a problem with apps with a lot of menus, and you could access the items by switching to an app with fewer of them. Now, the notch takes up a lot of space, and you hit it really soon on a 14" display—I can only have maybe three third party menu applets on top of my collection of built-in ones before they disappear into the notch.

I think it's not just the notch, but that menu bar icons are more widely spaced than they used to be. I want to say it happened around Sonoma (10.14)? I was working on a Mac app at the time. Icon styles went from dense with a generally square clickable area to widely spaced, wide rectangular clickable area, and a highlight with rounded corners when clicked.

I have a 16 inch and even I moved to the “no notch” resolution last year because a ton of apps don’t let you choose whether to have a menu icon, and many of them are required corporate crapware. Apple should have bought Bartender and made it part of the OS 10 years ago, or at least before shipping this stupid notch. Apple’s “we know what you need better than you do” approach is so exhausting.

From what I can tell, OS X is no longer one of their flagship products.

they kindamostly cared when it was OS X. everything's been a bit of a mess since it became macOS while trying to make a unified platform for all their hardware

macOS UI/UX has been declining at an accelerating pace with each new version.

My only hope at this point is it gets _so_ bad it becomes an absolute meme and they get around to fixing it.

The weird duality of Apple: their hardware becomes better with each devices, while their software gets worse with each version.

iOS is a POS too, now.

Did you ever think it was good? Aside from the tight integration with other Apple products enabling extra features, I never liked it better than Android. Switched for work, not really a choice. Still use “DROID!” from the OG Moto Droid as my text tone.

Yeah, it was pretty good, even without the "tight integration." The most important integration I can think of is answering texts on my computer. This is a huge win. And it does suck that Android still lacks a central syncing facility like iCloud.

I do think we benefit from competition. I also have a Moto Droid and it was OK, but there was some janky UI. And the noises... talk about infuriating. The phone was always making noises with no indication as to WTF was making them or what they meant.