It makes more sense when you think of it "the monitor's top bezel was shrunk to about an inch wide, which allows for the menubar to be pushed up to where the bezel would be, creating more usable vertical screen space."
On my old MBP, the menubar starts below where the camera module is.
That area rarely gets used, so why not put the camera there? It is weird how large the area is, however. The camera is a fraction of the tab's size and there aren't any sensors on either side, I don't think.
You pretty much forget about it after a week or so. The only people who make a giant fuss about it are people who haven't used a system with it for very long, if at all.
No, it's not needed. My theory is that they picked that shape intentionally to match the notch on the iPhones. They could have gone with a much tinier notch, since that notch is only hiding a single web-cam lens. The notch on the iPhones also holds the FaceID cameras and tech, but for some reason Apple refuses to put FaceID on their laptops where it would be much more useful. I suspect they'll make it much smaller in the future or change it to a "dynamic island" notch instead.
I don't think FaceID is a good idea on the computer. On the phone it unlocks when the device is quite close to you, but I suspect someone could sit down at your computer and watch it unlock if you are behind them. Touching the keyboard or just using your watch is more secure.
Of course if you were in the kind of environment where it might be a problem if your computer unlocked as you walked by, you probably wouldn't enable the feature anyway. As it is I am annoyed by iphone and ipad apps that require faceid or other login each time as I'm the only one who uses those devices anyway.
Nevertheless I think faceid on the laptop or imac is an insecure idea.
BetterDisplay[0] can even change the display mode to just use the display area below the notch (which is the same 16:10 that older MacBooks had). Probably noticeable on a MacBook Air, but on a MacBook Pro, the local dimming makes the unused area look exactly like the bezel.
You don't even need third-party software to do that. In Settings/Displays, under advanced you can enable the full resolution list. In there, choose the resolution with just slightly less vertical resolution than the current selection, boom that is your 16:10 resolution without the notch area.
Not really ugly. It is a clever design solution to allow the screen space to be larger without making the case larger. Pushing the display up into the bezel space. the only limitation is leaving space for the camera and two different sensors plus mounting hardware in an area of the screen that is not often used.
Once you’ve used it for a few days, it tends to fade out of awareness. If you really don’t want to see it, there are utilities that make the menubar black so it blends in.
