It will obviously follow the same path as the iPhone and iPad in doubling the resolution for crystal clarity and sharpness!
I thought this was pretty obvious even when people were debating this with the original iPhone 4 retina display.
Exactly!
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Apple to Launch 2880x1800 Resolution 'Retina Display' MacBook Pro in Q2 2012?
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It will obviously follow the same path as the iPhone and iPad in doubling the resolution for crystal clarity and sharpness!
I thought this was pretty obvious even when people were debating this with the original iPhone 4 retina display.
Exactly!
So you want the world's first 30 inch laptop?
Something we should've done a long time ago. But something I get flamed for saying around these parts.
Forget that the KDE desktop had implemented a lot of support for SVG rendering in the UI in like 1999, people around here will tell you "it's impossible and too computationally intensive!".
First, everything _is_ vector graphics or scaled images already, so that argument would indeed be stupid. The problem is that with current resolutions, resolution independence without visible artefacts is difficult to achieve. If I draw ten lines, each one pixel thick, one pixel apart from each other, and you scale this to be 50% bigger, then it will look ugly, because you can't make lines that are 1.5 pixels thick and 1.5 pixels apart (you can use anti-aliasing but that would be blurry). Doubled native resolution would mean that whatever artefacts there are would be much much less visible, so it would be possible to go to resolution independence.
Find me one application that reacts correctly to the monitor resolution. Challenge for programmers: Write a program that displays a ruler, just like the mechanical ruler in your drawer, that shows inches and centimetres in the correct length on any monitor or TV, so that it matches correctly with the mechanical ruler if I hold it against the screen. Then make it work correctly in a window that is split over two monitors that have different resolutions. Good fun.
Won't this mean that all the pictures on the internet will either be pixelated or smaller than before?
Why don't we all just move to vector graphics!
How would it be pixelated? If you look at my avatar image, that would look exactly the same as it looks now, except when you display this page very small, in which case it would be in exactly the same place, exactly the same size, but sharper. And why don't we all move to vector graphics? Well, I won't buy software and learn to use it and spend hours changing that avatar to vector graphics just to please you. Especially when changing photo images to vector graphics won't do anything to make them look better.
FSAA usually calculates all the pixel colour values at normal resolution, and the geometry and Z buffer at double resolution. Then in places where different items meet, it mixes those pixel colours together and shrinks it back to the normal resolution. For example, if you have one black and three white pixels in a 2x2 square, it would be mixed to one light grey pixel. If you have a screen with twice as many physical pixels, you can do exactly the same calculations, but remove the mixing step, so you would display one black and three white pixels. That will give you a slightly better image than on the normal screen, at just slightly reduced cost.
So if you display for example a triangle with a gradient, the pixels inside the triangle would look exactly the same (the gradient wouldn't be calculated at higher resolution), but the borders would be sharper. At the same or slightly lower cost. Alternatively, you can do everything in the doubled resolution; FSAA would be rather pointless because nobody would see it, and your frame rates in games would go down, especially in cases where lots of time is spent in pixel shaders anyway.
That can be done once you have the double resolution. You know that you can change the resolution of your MBP to a different resolution, but as a result images will get unsharp. If you had 2880 x 1800 or 2880 x 2100 native resolution, then you could change the MBP to a different resolution, images would still get unsharp, but the effect would be much less visible because the resolution is so high to start with.
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I'd love to get a 13" "Retina" MacBook Air. But what I'd love even more, which doesn't even need to be invented, is a non glossy screen for that one :-/
I could see skipping the first generation of this. Third party apps might be pretty ugly until everyone gets on board.
Put this sort of hi-res display inside a 15" Air form factor, and Tim Cook can personally rifle through my pockets, find my wallet, and relieve me of my bank-issued plastic, whilst I stand there with a big grin upon my face.
Two reasons:
- computational cost (yes, some people say this is not a problem but I have seen enough level-headed people say that that is still an issue)
- with todays resolutions (pre-retina), UI designers still need to sweat the pixels to get a good enough outcome, automatic scaling of vector graphics often does not produce an optimal result (there are exceptions like the scaling of fonts which works basically perfectly but a lot of effort has been put into making that happen), take a 1-pixel line and scale it by 70% or 150%, should the result be still a 1-pixel line or a 2-pixel line? In short, as long as their are enough user-discernable UI elements that are 1 pixel thick, automatic scaling won't produce an optimal result
I still hate my 15" Hi res MBP. My eyes literally scream for mercy as the high resolution makes the text uncomfortably small. Increasing DPI in Windows 7 causes all sorts of app compatibility problems and images appear blurry. How to increase DPI in OSX Lion? I have almost stopped using Lion just because of that.
What's the point if these super high res displays are going to make the text unreadable?
A radically new approach is needed where the text displayed appears to be of same size irrespective of resolution and screen size.
What's the point if these super high res displays are going to make the text unreadable?
A radically new approach is needed where the text displayed appears to be of same size irrespective of resolution and screen size.
In a way I'm surprised it's still taken them as long as it has. They've been toying with that idea for a long time, I believe since Tiger. As far as I remember that already had some resolution independence (and it was gradual, in my opinion a much better way than the current double or nothing way or thinking). I would LOVE that option now on the 11" air, where the text is just a bit too small for me to be comfortable. Just to be able to scale it up a little bit and use the extra pixels for more crispness.
But I know the application support for gradual scaling was a nightmare, which is probably what killed that iteration of the idea.
The only thing holding it back at this stage is the availability of suitable, affordable panels I'd say. I haven't heard anything about them even being in development.
Nope, looking through my system, nothing is vector graphics. Maybe it was on the artist's computer, but it got changed to a bitmap format before shipping out. So now we have these huge 2000x2000 bitmaps that are getting scaled down to a proper size for the UI just so we can have a semblance of resolution independance...
But guess what, vectors aren't "one pixel thick" lines, they're 10 lines. The thickness is defined by a pixel independant measurement and that's why vector graphics "just work".
The people who flame me and say "vector graphic UIs" won't work obviously don't understand vector graphics.
If you can point out the API/Framework/Syscall that will give me the monitor diagonal size, I will gladly write such an application. Until such a thing exists, what you propose is impossible.
And frankly, quite unnecessary for proper UI rendering.
Lion doesn't have scaling. The only option is to make text bigger in the various programs but that usually can't be done for parts like toolbars. I totally hear you on the small text
However with these HiDPI screens the size of the UI elements would be doubled, signs have been found in Lion of support for this. So the text wouldn't be smaller per se, it would just be much more crisp and defined, like on the retina screen on the iPhones.
And that radically new approach was already been worked on in the Tiger era (like I said in my previous post), unfortunately there was very little developer support and it was quietly removed. It was never accessible by consumers by the way, it was always available solely to developers to make their apps compatible.
What ? That's barely 130 PPI. Get better glasses. 160+ PPI is where it should be at for laptops and monitors. Anything lower than that looks atrociously Duplo block sized to me. Of course, I keep my eyewear prescription up to date
well, instead of 13" air or 15" refurb I think it's an SSD for my old C2D MBP for now and time to start saving some upgrade money for a new retina replacement.
I've used one of Dells 1080p 15" monitors.
Sharp as, but it's UI is FAR too small. Hate it.
I use 1920x1200 on desktop monitors they are 20-26" not something that is 15"!
If this is true, the UI real size needs to be somewhere between the 900p and 1050p that we currently have.
Reading from my 15" 900p screen is lovely, the 1050p of the Hi-Res option is nicer still, but a little tougher on the eyes.
And for the record, I have perfect eyesight, just incase anyone feels the need...
Sharp as, but it's UI is FAR too small. Hate it.
I use 1920x1200 on desktop monitors they are 20-26" not something that is 15"!
If this is true, the UI real size needs to be somewhere between the 900p and 1050p that we currently have.
Reading from my 15" 900p screen is lovely, the 1050p of the Hi-Res option is nicer still, but a little tougher on the eyes.
And for the record, I have perfect eyesight, just incase anyone feels the need...
You are talking about artwork. I'm talking about text, lines, shapes, most things that get drawn by most applications. And scaling huge bitmaps down _works_.
While this would certainly make things look so nice, I'm not sure I'd be able to go back to having less screen real estate after upgrading to the 1680x1050. It makes programs like Photoshop and FCP so much easier to use.
Sure it does "work". But then again, so does washing dishes with a sponge. I'd still rather use the washing machine.
The fact that there are better tools out there doesn't mean the tool you use doesn't "work", it just means it's not optimal. But I do like people who say things like "hey, it works!". So anti-innovative.
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I feel the need. I have from perfect eye sight and frankly I find 1920x1200 barely tolerable on a 21" monitor, much less on anything bigger. Huge pixels.
The Sony Vaio Z with a 13" 1920x1080 monitor is perfect for me.
"It measures 1.5-by-10.6-by-13.1-inch and weighs about 6 pounds. It has a resolution of 1,400 x 1,050 on a 15″ screen."
http://thinkpadr51.com/
nope, not this time
Productivity gains?
While higher pixel density would certainly look cool, I don't see how they would actually enhance productivity much. I'd much prefer more powerful CPUs, greater max memory capacity, and larger SSD storage options--you know, innovations that result in real productivity gains via faster processing, longer battery life, or both.
Still, "retina" (smooth sharp imaging with imperceptible pixels at typical use distances) displays are wonderful eye candy. Nice to see that Apple is still pushing baseline expectations upward for consumer electronics.
While higher pixel density would certainly look cool, I don't see how they would actually enhance productivity much. I'd much prefer more powerful CPUs, greater max memory capacity, and larger SSD storage options--you know, innovations that result in real productivity gains via faster processing, longer battery life, or both.
Still, "retina" (smooth sharp imaging with imperceptible pixels at typical use distances) displays are wonderful eye candy. Nice to see that Apple is still pushing baseline expectations upward for consumer electronics.
How far away do you sit from your monitors?
15" MBP: ~30"
26" 1200p & 27" 2440p: ~60"
I've had to increase the size of a few UI elements and the minimum text size in Safari because it was just too small for comfortable reading on the 27".
If the text size becomes 1080p on this new 15" then I for one won't be getting it. And I bet this 2010MBP on the fact that Apple won't do that either.
As great as this sounds, websites won't look great at all - their graphics will be all pixelated, even if Apple applies some sort of smoothing technique over them.
I guess we'll see with the iPad 3 how the high-res display performs against graphics on websites.
I guess we'll see with the iPad 3 how the high-res display performs against graphics on websites.
I sit the same distances than you. And that's just were my myopia kicks in too. If I don't have my glasses on, I can't read my laptop or my external monitor at all unless I squint and look at it from closer up.
And still, I find anything under 160 PPI+ to be too low. So frankly, I don't know about your perfect eyesight...
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No, they won't. They'll look the same as they do now, with sharper text.
A 100x100 image will look the same blown up to 200x200 on this thing than it does at 100x100 on a non-"retina" MBP. The magic is in the PPI.