Comment by DownrightNifty
17 hours ago
The linked article seems to imply that this remains a good design choice even today:
> The use of this rule can be seen for example in MacOS, which always places the menu bar on the top left edge of the screen instead of the current program's windowframe.
I guess now that the browser is the one app you probably spend the most amount of time in, it might make a little less sense? Android's lack of a menu bar system makes it make very little sense there.
Apple's design never made sense. It's fine when apps are maximised but it gets very confusing when apps are not maximised and the menu is very far from the app that it belongs to.
Since it only works well for maximised apps, the UX is much better if you just merge the menu into the title bar of apps.
I found it to not at all be confusing once I got used to it—-I find it less confusing and more reliable in practice.
Speaking from 20+ years of Windows use with a local menu bar and 7 years of Linux desktop where I switched to a global menu bar—-it was an instant improvement in quality of life.
I no longer have to hunt for a narrow menu bar strip, just throw the mouse all the way up, and hope to never hunt for it ever again.