With the introduction of the new MacBook Pro 2021 14-inch and 16-inch laptops, many users have taken social media by storm in an effort to solve one interesting question: how does the mouse pointer work with the notch on the new MacBook Pro 2021. Why did Apple make this special design choice? Let us find out all the details below.
How mouse pointer works with the Notch on the New MacBook Pro 2021
A notch is not new. Apple first introduced the notch on the iPhone X in 2017. There it offers space for various parts: think of a speaker, a microphone, an ambient light sensor, and the TrueDepth camera system for Face ID.
Now, immediately after the announcement of the new MacBook Pro 2021 design, questions arose about the mouse cursor and notch. Do you always have to move it around the notch with a subtle bend?
Well, a short video was posted on Reddit illustrating how the mouse pointer would behave with the notch in the new MacBook Pro 2021. In the first solution, we can see that when the mouse pointer scrolls in the notch area, it is not visible to the user. In the second case, the notch area blocks the movements of the mouse pointer, so the user has to go around it.
Where else in the third case, when the mouse pointer scrolls horizontally and touches the notch, it immediately jumps to the opposite side. In the last case, when the macOS detects the collision with the mouse, it makes the movement of the mouse pointer to follow the profile of the notch.
With so much confusion and questions on Reddit and on social media, finally, an answer came from Linda Dong, an Apple designer, who solved the question on Twitter.
Yup! The cursor moves underneath
— Linda Dong ? (@lindadong) October 19, 2021
Linda explains that when the mouse pointer moves through the notch, it disappears from view for a while. This offers an unexpected advantage: you can leave your mouse pointer behind the notch if you don’t want to see it for a while, for example when you are watching a video. According to the comments on Twitter, the solution adopted by Apple seems to be among the most popular with users.
Developers for their apps can choose whether to display a black bar at the top to cover the notch in full screen, thus using less vertical space to view the software, or whether to use the entire display, including the areas to the right and left of the notch.
This is how the mouse pointer works with the notch on the new MacBook Pro 2021. For more information about the new MacBook Pro 2021 laptops, check how long does MacBook M1 Pro and M1 Max battery life last, or what is the power consumption of MacBook M1 Max, etc.