Apple | The dynamic island needs to come to the Macbook Pro | macbook

I could use a Mac upgrade, but I’m tight-fisted and put off the investment. The performance of my old Mac is completely sufficient for my work. There have been a lot of great deals on the 14-inch MacBook Pro lately, but I haven’t made the investment yet.

Currently the cheapest price Macbook Pro 14 inch with 16 GB RAM and 512 GB SSD in silver

But you know what would finally make me spend my money? A Mac with Dynamic Island!

Dynamic Island – the dynamic island – is a new one User interface element that Apple brings to the Phone 14 Pro brought. With this phone, Apple redesigned the front notch, which houses the true-depth camera system, into an oval shape, but instead of having something on the screen that you’re trying to ignore (as was the case with the notch), Apple decided to give it an official name and make it an important element of the phone’s user interface.

Current cheapest price iPhone 14 Pro 128 GB in dark purple:

$999

$999.99

The demonstration of the Dynamic Island during the iPhone 14 keynote last week have greatly impressed. Cute little icons popped up, and tapping them revealed relevant and useful controls. It seemed like Apple had performed a miracle by turning what is commonly perceived as an obstacle into a useful anchor point of the interface.

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I recently got my hands on an iPhone 14 Pro Max and the Dynamic Island feels like a breakthrough. The functionality is huge and extends to third-party apps that use Apple’s APIs, like the Now Playing API, which controls media playback. Third-party developers will find more creative ways to use the feature, and then the full power of Dynamic Island will come into play.

And what about the Mac?

That excitement needs to come to the Mac, too. Apple’s 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pro models already have cutouts, and the display could easily be reconfigured to mimic the oval Dynamic Island. On the iPhone, Dynamic Island brings a fun, whimsical feel to the UI, and that would work just as well on a Mac. For example, I’d like to see the icon of the podcast I’m listening to minimize to the Mac’s Dynamic Island – just like on the iPhone – and when I click on it, the playback controls appear.

Now, one could argue that the Mac doesn’t need a Dynamic Island because it already has a menu bar. While it’s true that the menu bar serves many of the same functions, the right-hand side of the Mac UI has become quite cluttered. The menu bar icons are right-aligned, and everything that appears on the desktop (storage devices, network servers, saved files) is displayed on the right side of the screen. Notifications also appear on the right side, and when you click the time in the menu bar, a column of notifications and widgets appear above the desktop icons. A dynamic Mac island would alleviate some of this right-side stress.

From iOS to Mac

Apple already implements features introduced with iOS in macOS, and often these features are tailored for use on the Mac, so they don’t always behave the same across platforms. The same could be true for Dynamic Island—if it doesn’t make sense for a Dynamic Island feature on iPhone to behave the same way on Mac, then it doesn’t have to. Because the dynamic island on the MacBook Pro is surrounded by the menu bar, the controls may not expand because they may interfere with other elements in the bar. Instead, these controls could appear in a pop-up window just below Dynamic Island.

macworld

And there are also Mac-specific features that might work in Dynamic Island. Multitasking on the Mac is much more robust than on the iPhone, so Dynamic Island might work a little differently. Perhaps the activity monitor could show CPU stats or memory usage, or the zoom could show mute and camera controls. But bringing a similar user interface to the Mac would be a great way to liven up macOS.

There are some nuances of a dynamic island on the Mac that Apple would have to work out. Would it be a feature only available in the Pro version? Could the user have the option to disable Dynamic Island? How to make sure it doesn’t introduce a UI that would be missing on a Mac without notching the monitor? But I think it would be worth the effort. It’s a UI element that I already love on the iPhone and would love to have on a new Mac.