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On a recent episode of ATP, Casey mentioned that one of the issues with an ultrawide Mac display, such as the one now provided by the Vision Pro, is the long trek to the left side of the screen to access the menu bar. This wasn’t an issue in 1984 when the screen was only 9”, but as displays have grown it’s become more and more of a factor. This apparently lodged somewhere in the back of the brain, and percolated up again in the form of a strange idea:

(Click for a full width version — this is of course a mockup, rather than implemented software.)

The idea is hopefully simple and obvious; the menus, starting with the Apple menu, starts in the centre of the menu bar and goes left, whereas notification area, starting with the clock, grows to the right, again from the centre. On modern Mac laptops this means they grown from either side of the notch, as shown, but on older hardware and external displays the Apple menu could act as an anchor.

This design stems from the observation the the easiest place to reach on the menu bar is the centre, rather than either end. Traditionally, the most used items are placed at the extremes (for example, the application and File menus, and the clock and control centre) — these end up closest to the centre¹.

The only downside of this change is that you only have half the available width for each side of the menu bar, but Apple have largely crossed that bridge by introducing the notch, and in my experience it doesn’t seem to be a major problem in practice. The new design would require a different solution (perhaps an overflow menu?), but it seems like a win overall.

I don’t expect that Apple will make this change, but if they did it wouldn’t be entirely without precedent. Way back at the turn of the millennium, Mac OS X Developer Preview 3 put the Apple menu squarely in the middle of the menu bar, mirroring the placement on the iconic iMac. That never made it to the final release, but perhaps it’s an idea who’s time has come.