As much of a chrome minimalist as I try to be, I still can’t extricate myself from needing a menu bar in my OS and tab and address bars inside my browser. That’s to say, most computer screens were the shape of an iPad when many of today’s most common interface and design elements were being developed. Tabs are a couple of decades old now, and, like much of the rest of the desktop and web environment, they were initially thought up in an age where the predominant computer displays were close to square with a 4:3 aspect ratio. Lateral space is simply not as valuable as vertical space in desktop apps or on the webĪs if all that wasn’t enough, there’s also the matter of tabs. Look at your favorite website (hopefully this one) on the internet, and you’ll again see a vertical structure. Every window in these operating systems has chrome - the extra buttons and indicator bars that allow you to close, reshape, or move a window around - and the components of that chrome are usually attached at the top and bottom. On Windows, you have the taskbar serving a similar purpose - and though it may be moved around the screen like Apple’s Dock, it’s most commonly kept as a sliver traversing the bottom of the display. At the bottom, by default, is the Dock for launching your most-used apps. At the top of every MacBook, there’s a menu bar. Practically every interface in Apple’s macOS, Microsoft’s Windows, and on the web is designed by stacking user controls in a vertical hierarchy. And in most of these other applications, a 16:9 screen of 13 to 15 inches in size just feels like a poor fit. We use these machines to read, write, remember, create, connect, and communicate. For myself and millions of others, it’s the primary tool for earning a living. Lenovo ThinkPad X1.īut a laptop is more than just a video playback machine. We tolerate the glare and reflections for the sake of the superior contrast and more appealing saturation of a glossy panel.

Making video and images look great is also why the majority of displays, laptop or otherwise, are now glossy rather than matte. Video is something that all users care about, whether the source material is Netflix, YouTube, or their own high-definition creations. I understand why laptop makers have opted for this populist choice. A laptop is more than just a video playback machine

Aspect ratio apple computer monitors