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2012 Macbook Pro Redesign
- Thread starter Funkymonk
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I largely agree with this, except with the 13" MBP staying and maybe the addition of a 15" MBA, with the recent rumors of a thinner MBA/MBP. And, I think the ODD will stay for the MBPs.
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11" MBP?
Typo. MBA.
No.
What people fail to realize is 1920x1200 on a 17 inch is already pushing the dpi so high that traditional scaling will cause some people to strain at reading text. 1920x1200 on a 15 inch would be a nightmare. That is partially why absolutely no one does a 1920x1200 on a 15 inch. Not because it's not doable but rather not desired.
Hence why there's talk about HiDPI with 2880x1800 on the 15 inch. Doubling pixels in a way to preserve the same text scaling on screens will allow the same sized text but sharper images.
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I think OSX lacks some functionality for font scaling. Quite a few windows machines are available with higher resolutions, e.g. Sony puts 1600x900 on 13.3'' screens, and Lenovo offers some 15.4'' machines with 1920x1080 resolution (16x9 format btw).
I'm not exactly sure how big text appears on those machines, but I have yet to hear widespread complaints.
Yes, this is true. It might even be less demanding for the GPU than an ordinary resolution bump.
Regarding the speculation about a retina display:
Scaling the interface would make sense. But, how would that handle web content? Apple can't exactly design a scaled up version of every website on the internet.
The reason it works on the iPhone is because websites still take up more pixels than the 4 and 4S have to offer, even with their Retina displays. But, how would a doubled in every dimension Retina display on a computer handle that? I'm guessing most websites are designed to fit a 1280x800 monitor comfortably. On this theoretical retina display, that would take up a fraction of the screen. Either every website would have to be scaled up, and would consequently look pixelated and absolutely hideous (yeah, fonts and CSS elements, and all that would scale fine, but images definitely wouldn't)... or they'd be left at their original size and be completely illegible.
Scaling the interface would make sense. But, how would that handle web content? Apple can't exactly design a scaled up version of every website on the internet.
The reason it works on the iPhone is because websites still take up more pixels than the 4 and 4S have to offer, even with their Retina displays. But, how would a doubled in every dimension Retina display on a computer handle that? I'm guessing most websites are designed to fit a 1280x800 monitor comfortably. On this theoretical retina display, that would take up a fraction of the screen. Either every website would have to be scaled up, and would consequently look pixelated and absolutely hideous (yeah, fonts and CSS elements, and all that would scale fine, but images definitely wouldn't)... or they'd be left at their original size and be completely illegible.
Good argument. But I don't see that this will be a show stopper. Technical developement will end in high dpi screens.
A solution would be meta tags you can set if a website is optimised for high resolution displays or not.
The hardware has to offer the possiblity of high dpi screens, software will follow (like always).
If the browser is smart enough this shouldn't be a problem. Even without adding new technology, one could just make Safaris default behavior to open every page in 200% zoom.
I'm a bit disapppointed in the rumors lately... no news in the last couple of weeks. Maybe it gets more interesting again when the chinese holidays are over.
Well, that's my point: Do you really want to look at all your webpages zoomed 200%? I personally hate looking at scaled up graphics. Considering a good chunk of what I do with a computer is surfing the internet, I don't particularly relish the idea of spending that time looking exclusively at ugly zoomed in graphics.
Fufufu: Yeah, the hardware does need to exist before the software will follow. In order for web developers to start making retina-optimized content for computers, we need retina capable screens for computers. The transition will probably be messy regardless. But, in this case, I'd rather more of the PC market as a whole started adopting the standard from the get go, instead of just Apple. If it's just Apple, web developers won't have nearly as much incentive to make retina-optimized sites as there isn't much point in catering to such a small demographic. If other manufacturers adopted it from the beginning, I think the transition would be a lot faster.
The content will just look as it looks on a 1440x900 screen. Double resolution and 200% zoom = looks the same
Hey guys
I have been lurking macrumors for a few years now. I am an iPhone owner but I use Windows7.. I have been looking into purchasing a new MBP13 and switching indefinitely but I don't want to buy one now and then get hit with a refresh a month later. When do you guys think a refresh will hit? I will wait til then.
Thanks for any help.
I have been lurking macrumors for a few years now. I am an iPhone owner but I use Windows7.. I have been looking into purchasing a new MBP13 and switching indefinitely but I don't want to buy one now and then get hit with a refresh a month later. When do you guys think a refresh will hit? I will wait til then.
Thanks for any help.
Abosolutely: 2: totally and definitely; without question
No One: not a single person
I don't think those words mean what you think they mean. Within 30 seconds I found an alienware laptop from 08 that does 1920x1200 at 15" display.
http://www.notebookreview.com/default.asp?newsID=4328
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Personally I think it will be June 2012.
Intels Ivy Bridge processors are supposed to be available on April 8th - so this seems to be the earliest possible date. Beyond that, we don't know very much.
With the iPhone 4S's release, anything can happen. Just don't pile up too much expectations on Apple and you'll be happy.
Motivational quote of the day
The current design is ~4 years oldand yes, it DOES feel very current and trendy but it needs SOME sort of redesign (even slight) to ensure its "up-to-dateness" and for Apple to protect their cutting edge pedigree (design wise).
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I would assume a lot of these users would be using their MacBooks for web browsing and office apps. As a designer, it's ridiculous to even think that the 17" would be dropped and likewise to have 1920 on a 15". Any serious users of the "MacBook Pro" like would agree.
What do you guys think, will there be Nvidia or AMD GPU's?
With a possable redesign in mind, maybe they'll integrate Nvidia to go thinner, wich could also be a solution for the 13"..
Or 'au contrair', will they stay with AMD? They say their new 7xxxm line will fit "in smaller packages than their predecessors"..
With a possable redesign in mind, maybe they'll integrate Nvidia to go thinner, wich could also be a solution for the 13"..
Or 'au contrair', will they stay with AMD? They say their new 7xxxm line will fit "in smaller packages than their predecessors"..
What I'm describing is essentially the same as watching 480p content on a 1080p TV. Granted, there isn't a precise doubling of resolution in that case. But, the image is still scaled significantly to fit on a screen that's running at a higher resolution. It looks highly pixelated compared to watching the same content on a 480p TV. Or, if you want to use the iPhone as an example... run a pre-retina app on a retina screen. The image is doubled to fit the retina screen, but it's obviously stretched and appears pixelated. Any image (i.e. jpeg, gif, etc...) in a web browser on a high resolution screen would respond the same way. The proportions would be the same, but the image would appear pixelated because it has to be doubled beyond its original size to appear the same physical size on the high resolution display.
I somewhat doubt that it will look more pixelated if you keep the screen size the same and just double the resolution. I think there are two other effects that make the 480p content look like crap: One is that usually the HD TV will also have a larger screen size, and the other is that once you know how awesome 1080p content looks on that TV, the 480p content will look like crap.
Yes, at the end of the day, non-high-res content will look not so great. I checked a few websites with Safaris zoom yesterday: Text seems to scale very well, and remains incredibly sharp even with 200% zoom. Most images don't scale that well, e.g. here in the forums the buttons and smileys don't look particularly nice once zoomed in.
Now, since you brought up TVs... for about 30 years we were stuck with 480p TV programs and movies. HD content only was created after the devices became available.
A lot of web content for tablets and smartphones is already designed such that it looks decent when zoomed in - because you do that a lot on those devices. Honestly many news sites use more advanced technology for their mobile sites, e.g. properly scaling graphics and flash-free content, because devices like the iPhone and iPad created demand for it.
A complete redesign would be welcome, but I don't mind if Apple uses the same overall "look" and continues to use aluminum and glass, as long as they do SOMETHING to differentiate it from the past two models. Making it thinner and lighter is one option. My idea of a change doesn't mean adding a small thunderbolt symbol on the side.
Well, I wouldn't expect it to be a lot thinner, if you look at Razer's Blade gaming laptop, it has no ODD but is only marginally thinner then a MacBook pro. I wouldn't expect an Air like design because of this?
No one seems to mention that Ivy Bridge 'books could achieve a noticeable boost in battery life thanks to the Configurable TDP feature. In short, you could tweak at will the CPU TDP to act as a lower voltage one when on battery, or higher when docked.
Hey guys. I'm going to college next year and my iMac just crapped out on me. I'm thinking about picking up one of this generation's MBPs instead of waiting because i'm afraid that they will most likely drop the ODD. I would definitely want to load up Windows and some games on here, though, so the performance boost would be nice. Am I crazy for wanting to just get this model? I mean, it's already scoring 2.5 times my iMac on Geekbench.. (2.4 GHz, 1 GB Graphics)