The original Macintosh of 1984 placed a menu bar along the top of the screen, with an Apple menu on the far left. Unlike Windows, where menus live inside each window, the Mac bar belongs to whichever app is active and always sits at the screen edge.
There is a practical reasoning behind that. A target at the edge of a screen is easy to hit, because the cursor stops there, so users can fling the pointer upward without careful aiming. Interface designers often cite this principle, known as Fitts's law, as a reason the top-edge menu is efficient.
Over time the bar picked up new roles. Mac OS X, released in 2001, added menu extras for the clock, volume and network status on the right side. Later versions made the bar translucent and, with macOS Mojave in 2018, adapted it to dark mode.
Control Center, introduced on the Mac in macOS Big Sur in 2020, brought iOS-style quick toggles into the menu bar. In late 2021, notched displays on the redesigned MacBook Pro changed the bar's layout, since the strip now flanks a camera housing.
The menu bar has also become a home for third-party utilities, from clipboard managers to system monitors. Its survival suggests that a good interface idea can outlast its original hardware.
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