The explorer toolbars you could write for Windows died a quiet death with Windows 10, and little has come of it. If you managed to hook in a toolbar, that API in Windows 11 has been screwed over all over again.
Windoes 8 has also destroyed a lot of tools with their full-screen start menu, although toolbars in explorer continued to work there.
Unfortunately, breaking changes in the shell of your operating system are the norm. Microsoft used to score very well in this, but nowadays it is quite disappointing.
Personally, I think the extra screen space on both sides is only an advantage, as long as one can turn those strips off to get old stuff working. Anyway, old stuff is of course subject to the transition from x64 to ARM, and while Rosetta is very good, emulating something like that perfectly is impossible. Bugs will appear sooner or later if you don’t update your software for a long time.
A prototype for the new screen for developers would indeed have been a luxury, but things like this are now the norm at large companies, unfortunately. You can run software early, but you often don’t get hardware dummies.
When the Essential P1 first had the notch as we know it now (in Android country that is, Apple’s has always been bigger and (in my eyes) uglier, and I don’t count the LG V10 because it uses a separate screen ) into the world, there were also no dev kits available. In the long run, support was brought to the emulators to put notches in all kinds of places, but that took a while. I don’t know if there is an API for Windows at all for the new rounded screens, but if there is, nothing about it was announced before Microsoft presented their screen.
Of course, developers had to recreate their screenshots to make sure everyone tested their app with the new screen layout and fix any major bugs. The timing of it was downright unfortunate, but I think the process is actually positive for the user experience of the platform.
When you develop for Apple, you have a somewhat separate relationship with the platform as a developer. Many platforms cater to good developer relationships so that integration works well, but at Apple, their idea of what the customer wants always comes before what you as a developer want. I avoid the platform like the plague myself, because I wouldn’t be able to work with it, but these kinds of steps have been completely unexpected for five years now. The post-release testing rounds are therefore part of the process, or at least should be.
I don’t see any problem with repairability. You should have bought new parts for the new screen anyway, and two projections above the LCD are not that much work compared to the existing procedure. Third parties already have to hack Apple’s connector and standard on their screen, so I expect that they will also produce these types of screens in the long run. It will be less easy to add the two rows of pixels to existing screens, but it is clearly not impossible. After all, there are also alternatives for telephones with such a design.
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