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Which display aspect ratio would you like to have?


  • Total voters
    138

Retina MacBook

macrumors regular
Original poster
Jul 19, 2012
117
0
The only 16x9 MacBook Apple made is the 11" MacBook Air. Are you in favor of turning every MacBook Pro and Air to a 16x9 display? It will really remove the annoying black bars when watching movies and YouTube videos.
 
If they swap to 16:9 they can just rename it the MovieBook Pro and be done with it.
 
Going from a 16:10 ratio resolution to a 16:9 is a productivity downgrade. On the MBPR, this would mean losing 180 pixels vertically, just for the benefit of no black bars when watching videos... not worth it.
 
Going from a 16:10 ratio resolution to a 16:9 is a productivity downgrade. On the MBPR, this would mean losing 180 pixels vertically, just for the benefit of no black bars when watching videos... not worth it.

Then why not go with 4:3? Isn't that a "Productivity Upgrade"?
 
Going from a 16:10 ratio resolution to a 16:9 is a productivity downgrade. On the MBPR, this would mean losing 180 pixels vertically, just for the benefit of no black bars when watching videos... not worth it.

It's not that much.
 
Going from a 16:10 ratio resolution to a 16:9 is a productivity downgrade. On the MBPR, this would mean losing 180 pixels vertically, just for the benefit of no black bars when watching videos... not worth it.

Generally 16:9 should be seen as a horizontal EXPANSION rather than a vertical contraction.

For example the 27 inch Cinema display is NO TALLER than the 24 inch 1920x1200 panel.

I think people often see that both ratios have the number 16 for it and think that therefore the horizontal is held constant. However if you notice 1920x1080 has not been the successor to 1920x1200. 1920x1200 displays were never mainstream and were always expensive, the best analog would be 2560x1440 displays. 1080p was a replacement for 1680x1050 displays in the same way that 768p displays are a replacement for 1280x800 displays in the 13" space. Furthermore 1600x900 has replaced 1440x900 in the 15" space.

TL:DR: displays have gotten wider not shorter.
 
Going from a 16:10 ratio resolution to a 16:9 is a productivity downgrade. On the MBPR, this would mean losing 180 pixels vertically, just for the benefit of no black bars when watching videos... not worth it.

I agree. The extra pixels are good.

4:3 is considered old and it would mean MacBooks that are practically square shaped. Square shaped laptops aren't as attractive aesthetically.
 
It's not that much.
http://www.anandtech.com/show/4673/hp-elitebook-8760w-color-so-dreamy
I'll go ahead and get this out of the way right now before we even get into the nitty gritty: the chassis on the 8760w is a massive improvement on the 8740w's schizophrenic aesthetic, but there's a cost that some of you aren't going to be willing to pay, and I'm not talking a monetary one. You may have noticed that all of HP's new business-class notebooks feature 16:9-aspect panels instead of the old standby 16:10, and the 8760w hasn't been spared. I personally don't have a huge problem with it, but it's hard to deny something's been lost here. Where consumer notebooks have potentially benefitted from the move to 16:9 (1280x800 to 1366x768 is basically a wash, while 17" notebooks got a boost from 1440x900 to 1600x900), the change from a 1920x1200 panel to a 1920x1080 panel is a loss; end of conversation.
Read that.

The 8740w has a 1200v screen. The 8760w drops that to 1080p. It's a workstation laptop, so the loss of 120 vertical pixels - especially when you consider what it can be specced and used for - is a very big deal.
 
4:3 is just lol.

Oh and the 16:9 aspect ratio is horrible for anything under 1920x1080, which is generally overkill for laptops under 15"-17" anyway as everything will be tiny.

They would also have to drop the "pro" tag from the MacBook line, which I cant see happening anytime soon.
 
http://www.anandtech.com/show/4673/hp-elitebook-8760w-color-so-dreamy

Read that.

The 8740w has a 1200v screen. The 8760w drops that to 1080p. It's a workstation laptop, so the loss of 120 vertical pixels - especially when you consider what it can be specced and used for - is a very big deal.

Instead of looking at it as a loss of height, look at it as a gain of width! See? Problem solved! You have the space you need and I have the movie enjoyment I wanted.
 
Instead of looking at it as a loss of height, look at it as a gain of width! See? Problem solved! You have the space you need and I have the movie enjoyment I wanted.
No.

A 16:9 screen is great when you are consuming content.

A 16:10 screen is worth every penny when you are creating content.

edit: it's a loss of screen real estate, not a gain of width. If all you do is watch YouTube, you won't understand just how incredibly useful the extra vertical real estate is when it's time to edit multimedia.
 
No.

A 16:9 screen is great when you are consuming content.

A 16:10 screen is worth every penny when you are creating content.

edit: it's a loss of screen real estate, not a gain of width. If all you do is watch YouTube, you won't understand just how incredibly useful the extra vertical real estate is when it's time to edit multimedia.

I use FCPX, Motion, AE, PS, InDesign and iLife. And I want a 16:9 display so whenever I preview my projects, I'll see it full screen.

Besides, I was talking about making it wider, not smaller. So you even have more space for your stuff.
 
http://www.anandtech.com/show/4673/hp-elitebook-8760w-color-so-dreamy

Read that.

The 8740w has a 1200v screen. The 8760w drops that to 1080p. It's a workstation laptop, so the loss of 120 vertical pixels - especially when you consider what it can be specced and used for - is a very big deal.

That's one isolated instance. For the most part 1920x1200 panels were not common on anything under 17 inches. You can blame the decline in high quality panels for 17" machines more on the lack of demand and the move away from mobile workstations of that size than on any effort to reduce vertical pixels.

For the most part 1080p is becoming common on the same screen size where 1680x1050 was the high end option.

I am more upset at the fact that Apple went with a nonstandard resolution. It is kind of in no-man's land between HD and 4K. You don't get pixel perfect HD now and you won't get pixel perfect 4K when that becomes standard.
 
I use FCPX, Motion, AE, PS, InDesign and iLife. And I want a 16:9 display so whenever I preview my projects, I'll see it full screen.

Besides, I was talking about making it wider, not smaller. So you even have more space for your stuff.
No.

In a field full of 16:9 displays, being able to use a rarefied, ultra high-resolution 16:10 display - on a laptop, no less - needs to be seen as a blessing, not a curse.

A curse is to lose a total of 518,400 pixels (2880 x 180) off the default MBPR screen just to preview a.k.a. consume 16:9 content without black bars. That's a lot of screen real estate for editing buttons and controls / displaying more of the content being edited, hence the loss of productivity.

Going from 16:10 to 16:9 is a productivity loss, let's leave it at that.
 
No.

In a field full of 16:9 displays, being able to use a rarefied, ultra high-resolution 16:10 display - on a laptop, no less - needs to be seen as a blessing, not a curse.

A curse is to lose a total of 518,400 pixels (2880 x 180) off the default MBPR screen just to preview a.k.a. consume 16:9 content without black bars. That's a lot of screen real estate for editing buttons and controls / displaying more of the content being edited, hence the loss of productivity.

Going from 16:10 to 16:9 is a productivity loss, let's leave it at that.

No the logical expansion would be a 1600x900 display times four, in other words a 3200x1800 display instead of a 2880x1800 display. It would be no taller and only marginally wider.
 
No.

In a field full of 16:9 displays, being able to use a rarefied, ultra high-resolution 16:10 display - on a laptop, no less - needs to be seen as a blessing, not a curse.

A curse is to lose a total of 518,400 pixels (2880 x 180) off the default MBPR screen just to preview a.k.a. consume 16:9 content without black bars. That's a lot of screen real estate for editing buttons and controls / displaying more of the content being edited, hence the loss of productivity.

Going from 16:10 to 16:9 is a productivity loss, let's leave it at that.

I see where you're going, you're trying to tell me that going to 16:9 is like 1280:800 to 1280x720 with the loss of 80 pixels.

But that isn't what I was talking about. Instead of losing 80 pixels, you gain more pixels by making the resolution 1440x810. This is achieved through making the screen larger and increasing pixel density (to avoid making it too small).

In short, it will not be any taller or shorter. Just wider.
 
I see where you're going, you're trying to tell me that going to 16:9 is like 1280:800 to 1280x720 with the loss of 80 pixels.

But that isn't what I was talking about. Instead of losing 80 pixels, you gain more pixels by making the resolution 1440x810. This is achieved through making the screen larger and increasing pixel density (to avoid making it too small).

In short, it will not be any taller or shorter. Just wider.

This won't work for video editing interfaces where you need vertical space for the scrub bars. You can't just squish these over to the side with more horizontal space. Same goes for photo editing. An extra wide screen doesn't help if the image you're editing doesn't have as wide an aspect ratio as the screen and the tool panels are snapped to the left and right edges.

Web browsing also suffers with the loss of vertical space. Most web pages still look their best on a 4:3 screen. More horizontal space won't help. 16:10 is a nice compromise between consumption and production.
 
Then why not go with 4:3? Isn't that a "Productivity Upgrade"?

While ratios are dimensionless, in general a 16:10 display has the same (or larger) vertical resolution as its 4:3 counterpart while increasing the horizontal res. And generally 16:9 displays have had the same horizontal resolution as their 16:10 counterparts while reducing vertical.

Example:
4:3 - 16-10 - 16:9
1600x1200 - 1920x1200 - 1920x1080

In that above example, the 16:10 is the best of both worlds. It can display native 1600x1200 and 1080p content without scaling. Neither the 4:3 or 16:9 display can natively display 19x12 content though. Even for production work, 1920x1200 should not be an issue. There I'll be black bars, but you're not losing details compared to a 16:9 display.

Similarly, 1280x1024 displays are commonly replaced with 1680x1050 and 1600x900 displays. And 2048x1536 usually is replaced by 2560x1600 and 2560x1440. I realize the horizontal resolutions in those cases aren't exact, but generally those are the resolutions in the same "tier" - as in, a computer that originally had a 1600x1200 display would likely be updated with a 1920x1200 in the move to 16:10

For productivity, 16:10 is generally a better ratio due to the larger resolution. Though it also let's you tile two windows side by side at a more "useful" width IMO.
 
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No the logical expansion would be a 1600x900 display times four, in other words a 3200x1800 display instead of a 2880x1800 display. It would be no taller and only marginally wider.

Whether screens have become "wider" or not becomes semantics if we just start adding pixels (in both directions) ad infinitum. There's always a bigger number.

Using the same horisontal resolution, 16:10 means more vertical screen estate than the 16:9 dito. As simple as that.

To which you could reply that "using the same *vertical* resolution, 16:9 is equal to the 16:10 vertical estate with more horisontal estate!". Etc.

E.g. 1920*1080 vs 1920*1200. Which would you choose for you daily chores?

Most GUIs today aren't built around width but rather a bit of both height and width. That could of course change. As for content, doesn't "cinema wide" give you black bars even on a 16:9 screen? Also, text flows downwards and a column of text should ideally not be wider than 60-70 (give or take) characters since you might loose track of the lines with more than that, e.g. books, web pages.

As long as I have a mix of content that caters to both width and height, depending on the medium, I'd much rather have a 16:10 screen. For larger monitors (say 24" and up) 16:9 might be ok but the smaller the screen gets the worse a wide(r) ratio becomes. There's probably a theorem for that somewhere. That's where the iPad got it right.
 
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Nope. I'd be more intrigued by a high res 4x3 than 16x9 though. 4x3 makes more sense for a lot of things, like portraits, text documents, 99.9% of the internet, & email. More situations seem to benefit from an increase in vertical pixels. Most movies are shot anamorphic so it's cut off on any screen or letter-boxed. Does it really matter if a significant portion of the monitor is unused when you watch a movie? Not in my view. For most people a laptop is not the primary movie screen anyway.

I think for 90% of work tasks 4x3 is better.
 
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