The problem of course is that on my 14” screen the area to the right of the notch is already close to full and I don’t even have that many things there…
For this kind of read-only tool, I doubt that’s the case. A regular application probably serves most users better.
Also, if you want users to have the option of permanently displaying this kind of info, a desktop widget (https://developer.apple.com/documentation/widgetkit) may be a better option than a menu bar item.
My menu bar is also full and, unlike the Dock, I can’t resize it to fit more.
How is this conducive to the typical usage pattern of an app like this?
Well, I can think of one reason why it wasn't that much more trouble. François Chollet had a nice tweet [1] on why removing human cognitive friction is resulting in needless software complexity.
[0] https://github.com/darrylmorley/whatcable/blob/main/Sources/...
This is kind of a hilarious statement just on the surface. Isn't removing burden from humans the whole purpose of software? How can you call the complexity "needless"?!
(the actual tweet seems to go into a bit more detail around being incentivized to find good abstractions)
If so, it feels like a needlessly indirect and combative way to go about it.