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Apple Including Ultra High Resolution Artwork in Lion for Possible Retina Displays?
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This is where Apple is headed and boy do I like that fact
A few of my friends just don't get it until they see what I'm talking about. Example, my friend swore his 32" 1080p HDTV gave him all this 'real estate' until I showed him the 27" iMac.
I hope there's higher resolutions coming.
Ok, I'll try this question, which is a fair question...............
Everyone says again and again, Apple does not aim for the high end.
If we put Mac Pro's to one side as they are the proper PC's of the Apple Mac world.
Let's speak about iMac's
They are Apple mass consumer, man/woman in the street computers.
They type of customers who just want to enjoy their computer and be able to get the jobs they want done in a nice and easy way.
I think that's a fair statement.
Also, as has been said, over and over and OVER again, these customers, that the iMac's are aimed at, are not Nerds, Not Tech Freaks, Not spec junkies.
They are just normal people who probably don't want to be worried about specs and to be honest as long as it looks nice and moves smoothy on screen, don't care what's inside the case.
Given this. If these "typical consumers, who don't care or really know about specs" are today, looking at their current 1920x1080 screens, or 1920x1200 screens, and they cannot see the individual pixels from their normal, let's say two feet away viewing distance, then what on earth would be the point in increasing costs, and slowing down an iMac by lumbering it with a higher resolution screen?
What is the point, for these consumers, to increase the screen resolution when they can't make out the individual pixels currently?
Everyone says again and again, Apple does not aim for the high end.
If we put Mac Pro's to one side as they are the proper PC's of the Apple Mac world.
Let's speak about iMac's
They are Apple mass consumer, man/woman in the street computers.
They type of customers who just want to enjoy their computer and be able to get the jobs they want done in a nice and easy way.
I think that's a fair statement.
Also, as has been said, over and over and OVER again, these customers, that the iMac's are aimed at, are not Nerds, Not Tech Freaks, Not spec junkies.
They are just normal people who probably don't want to be worried about specs and to be honest as long as it looks nice and moves smoothy on screen, don't care what's inside the case.
Given this. If these "typical consumers, who don't care or really know about specs" are today, looking at their current 1920x1080 screens, or 1920x1200 screens, and they cannot see the individual pixels from their normal, let's say two feet away viewing distance, then what on earth would be the point in increasing costs, and slowing down an iMac by lumbering it with a higher resolution screen?
What is the point, for these consumers, to increase the screen resolution when they can't make out the individual pixels currently?
Apple has products that meet pretty much every market. Professionals buy Mac Pros, which are top notch (although the design is getting a little dated) and non-pros buy iMacs, which suffice for everything they need to do.
The only market they aren't meeting are the high-end gaming market. And considering how few games supported macs, and how the vast majority of games were actually played on dedicated consoles, this wasn't a bad decision at all.
Re: Resolution Independence, that idea is essentially dead. Its a great idea in theory, but nearly unworkable in practice. No developer wants to go back and redesign all their graphics in vector art (nvm that vector art doesn't even work for all designs, and that most designers prefer pixel drawings). And since there is a clear upper bound after which any improvements in resolution are largely worthless, as long as people develop their artwork at that resolution, every range of useful resolution is covered. At much lesser effort, and expense. The only tradeoff is Hard disk space, and I think we can all agree that HD space is one of the cheapest resources we have.
Finally a screen quality on my MBP to rival that of my iP4! Hopefully the next MBP refresh will bring these retina displays!!!
Because those screens WILL look better to those normal customers. Text and graphics will look sharper, and clearer.
The iPhone screen, before the retina screen, had a higher resolution than macs. People could not see individual pixels. Despite that, ask any Tom Dick or Harry on the street, and they will be unequivocal that the Retina screen is far better looking than the 3GS screens.
Bogus story because Apple would never fit graphics cards capable of outputting at that res in the iMacs or laptops. Plus I don't think any single monitor can have that resolution that you can buy today?
What was the point in bringing retina display to the iPhone?
Same thing I guess...
For one I want it, it is very kind on the eyes...
They currently do... even the Airs can do 1440x700 plus a 2560x1440 Cinema Display. And the 15" MBP and up and all the iMacs have pretty good video cards. You're wrong.
I'm hoping for a new Cinema too, but the DPI on them is as high as it's ever going to get, IMO. There's no need for a higher pixel density on a screen that you see from that distance. The screens in them are already very dense. They're equivalent to the Dell Ultra Sharp, which are over $1000.
The resolution will not be updated, but hopefully the Cinemas will get dual Thunderbolt ports and maybe USB 3.0 and audio through Thunderbolt.
I'd settle for 1440x900. It's got such an incredibly poor panel for the price point.
The iPhone, before the current model had a screen res of 320 x 480
The first iMac, made 13 years ago in 1998 (the G3) had a screen res of 1024x768 the same as an iPad2 they are making today.
The first Apple Mac in 1984, 27 years ago had a screen res of 512×342 on a black and white screen.
I don't know where you get your statement than the "iPhone had a higher resolution than macs"
What was the point in bringing retina display to the iPhone?
Same thing I guess...
For one I want it, it is very kind on the eyes...
Yes, because the iPhone was low res for a device you hold up to your nose and a typical consumer, which is what Apple design for, could easily see the pixels.
I am wondering how many typical consumers, when viewing at the distance you would view, say a 24" monitor, can make out individual pixels.
I do know Apple's font smoothing is a little, ummmm, shall we say, different to what Microsoft do, so perhaps typefaces do look more jaggy on a Mac than they do on a PC ?
We at Consomac.fr have shared this very information last Tuesday. I clearly remember sending you guys an e-mail about this. I'm very disappointed we are again not cited as original source for an exclusive news we've published...
Automatic English translation: http://translate.google.com/transla...=fr&tl=en&u=http://consomac.fr/news-1129.html
French original: http://consomac.fr/news-1129.html
Automatic English translation: http://translate.google.com/transla...=fr&tl=en&u=http://consomac.fr/news-1129.html
French original: http://consomac.fr/news-1129.html
3200x2000 requires 6,400,000 pixels. At 32 bit per pixel, we're talking 25,600,000 bytes of data. Considering modern framebuffers are double buffered, this requires 51,200,000 bytes of memory to hold. That fits into 48.82 MB of RAM. GPUs have had that much since ... hum... 2004 ? So we're good on framebuffer RAM.
Now, bandwidth. In order to refresh the screen 60 times, we need to push out those 25,600,000 pixels. That's going to require 11718 Mbps of bandwidth. Let's see... Display port 1.1a has 10.8 Gbps so it's a no go (though it could almost do it). If only there was a DP 1.2 spec that had a 21.6 Gbps cap... Oh wait there is.
So we're good on RAM and bandwidth. Now, what ATI family introduces DP 1.2 so that we can use this new standard ? Oh right, the Radeon HD 6000 series, AMD's current shipping tech! Now if only Apple would release some kind of support for these GPUs, like they did back in 10.6.7
: http://appleheadlines.com/2011/03/2...ion-for-amd-5000-and-6000-series-video-cards/
So let's see if I got all of this right. We're good on RAM (have been for quite a few years). We're good on bandwidth for 60 hz 3200x2000 resolution. We're good on hardware (AMD 6000 series) and we're good on OS X support (with 10.6.7).
What exactly is missing here ? Oh right, a hardware refresh with said hardware included, which is probably a formality seeing all of these news and facts
Piggie, you're my favourite!
You were quite concerned about how far behind Tegra 2 the iPad 2's specs were going to be and then when the tables turn in Apple's favour for specs it's, "but why, who needs this?"
Are you trying to say that having a higher resolution wouldn't be beneficial? Especially in light of your comment about the iPad's resolution.
You were quite concerned about how far behind Tegra 2 the iPad 2's specs were going to be and then when the tables turn in Apple's favour for specs it's, "but why, who needs this?"
Are you trying to say that having a higher resolution wouldn't be beneficial? Especially in light of your comment about the iPad's resolution.
Resolution is a function of both pixel count and screen size. While there were less pixels on the iPhone screen, it had "higher resolution" in the form of higher DPI
However, the person you are replying to is still wrong. The math behind the "retina" display (as explained here) is that indeed, 300 PPI is the magic number at the viewing distance you usually hold a phone away from your eye in order for pixels to not be distinguishable.
As such, the older 320x480 iPhones did indeed have quite visible pixels (and yes, I can see the pixels on my 3GS just fine).
Translating a photo to a vector based format would be completely pointless and would end up massive. Take for example the Snow Leopard Prowl JPEG. It's 1.2MB, and converting to BMP or TIFF (both describe each pixel individually, i.e. lossless) makes it 12mb, 10 times the size. Converting it to the much less efficient SVG, makes it insanely massive; 225mb or 187.5 times bigger to be exact.
Computer generated imagery can be converted to a vector format more efficiently, as long as the source is available. The computer knows that for example, there is a gradient starting at X,Y and ending at X,Y with colour RGB at the start, and colour RGB at the end. Thus eliminating the need to keep detail about each pixel individually. This is great for things such as icons and certain web images, but for images with lots of detail, it quickly becomes much less efficient than even the highest quality JPEG. For real photos, it's pointless to vectorize. You'd just end up pixellating the image when scaled over it's original size anyway. So in other words, it's unlikely we'll see vector graphics for most icons and most certainly not for desktop backgrounds.
I agree with others about Apple needing to beef up the GPUs if they want retina displays in their Macs. They always seem to put last-generation cards into them... I'm sure it wouldn't keep them away from iOS development for too[/] long to add the latest, even as BTO. Valve has really helped gaming on the Mac, bringing great new releases like Left 4 Dead 2 and Portal 2 at the same time as Windows. At least it seems Apple have had a kick up their ass from Valve pointing out the inefficiencies in OpenGL. Maybe that's what's made them hire a few gaming-type developers...? C'mon Apple!
Note: what "I" want, and what I think Apple's targeted consumer group want are to entirely different things.
Myself, I see a computer as a box of bits. I really don't care what the "box" looks like, it's just a box, it's what's on screen that matters to me.
I would NEVER EVER compromise what a computer can do to make it fit inside a pretty box, which is why I can never like an iMac as it's just fundamentally a bad design, cramming a lot inside a tight hot case just to make it look pretty.
I don't care who makes a product, and I have no brand loyalty at all.
I will go for the best I think I can find/afford at time of purchase based upon the criteria that matter to me.
Case thinness, material it's made from, colour, etc are all way down on my list of importance.
But then, Apple don't generally make anything for me due to this.
The current iPad2 being the exception as, at the moment I'm more than happy to admit that despite the bad lockdowns Apple has applied to the iPad, it's technically the best tablet at the moment.
I will draw back that statement a little as it can't read memory cards and lacks output ports and is lumbered with iTunes, but putting those negatives to one side, it's positives in speed and quality outweigh those points at the moment.