> But then I saw all these comments about how it was horrible and a deal breaker [...] I thought either everyone had lost their collective mind, or I was missing something
I think people dialled the outrage back again when they realised the area below the notch is a full 16:10 display—i.e. they added display where bezel used to be, rather than cutting into the display area.
It limits how many menus your apps can have or makes them draw around it. If you enable compatibility mode you'll be back to an even fatter bezel which looks like dog shit.
Understand you may be that 5-10% of the market that the notch impacts. The vast vast majority aren't running Photoshop and will spend 90% of their time on a browser which likely complies with notch.
I think people dialled the outrage back again when they realised the area below the notch is a full 16:10 display—i.e. they added display where bezel used to be, rather than cutting into the display area.