Best Apple-Related Accessories at CES 2022

[ignatius345]

The 2K version of this monitor is the right PPI. It’s 108 PPI, which is exactly the same spec as Apple‘s last thunderbolt display from years ago. It will work better with MacOS than the 4K. And you get a better refresh rate. Yes, slightly lower resolution, but that’s something you probably will notice less over time compared to possible scaling or performance issues.

Performance issues? No. Any modern Mac is perfectly capable of driving a 4K display. Any if there was some slight performance hit it would be far far outweighed by the screen not looking like absolute crap like a 108ppi display would.

I know there are issues around pixels not being perfectly aligned at certain resolutions, but a 108 PPI screen is barely usable today.

 

[permanoob]

Performance issues? No. Any modern Mac is perfectly capable of driving a 4K display. Any if there was some slight performance hit it would be far far outweighed by the screen not looking like absolute crap like a 108ppi display would.

If 108 PPI displays are still selling, they can’t be total crap. But yeah, not going to look nearly as good as an iMac or ASD. But it will definitely be usable for a lot less money, with a natural MacOS PPI.

Here is one of the videos that influenced me. The creator describes noticing performance issues because of MacOS scaling and does a deep dive into why, the PPI thing, and links to a PPI calculator. Once you go looking at the PPI of all Apple displays you see they are all almost exactly 220 PPI. That’s not a coincidence. They could have made the IMac 4k, but didn’t, they could have made it 5K, but didn’t. They could have made the ASD 4K or the Pro XDR 5K, but they didn’t, they made all those monitors at 220 PPI. The guy in this video also links to a long article explaining it all, and which PPI work well with mac and which don’t.

Maybe you will find a bunch of holes in this guy’s argument, and this whole idea. And yes, a 4K 27 Inch monitor at around 160 or 180 PPI with MacOS will look absolutely fine for most people. But for me, I would prefer no chance of taking up CPU or GPU power for the monitor. So I will choose one that is either 110 PPI and save money just for the extra screen real estate with good enough visuals (I‘m not a professional film or photo editor) or I will choose one at 220 PPI if I want to splurge for the best for MacOS and something that will last me a long time. Not in between.

 

[ignatius345]

If 108 PPI displays are still selling, they can’t be total crap. But yeah, not going to look nearly as good as an iMac or ASD. But it will definitely be usable for a lot less money, with a natural MacOS PPI.

Here is one of the videos that influenced me. The creator describes noticing performance issues because of MacOS scaling and does a deep dive into why, the PPI thing, and links to a PPI calculator. Once you go looking at the PPI of all Apple displays you see they are all almost exactly 220 PPI. That’s not a coincidence. They could have made the IMac 4k, but didn’t, they could have made it 5K, but didn’t. They could have made the ASD 4K or the Pro XDR 5K, but they didn’t, they made all those monitors at 220 PPI. The guy in this video also links to a long article explaining it all, and which PPI work well with mac and which don’t.

Maybe you will find a bunch of holes in this guy’s argument, and this whole idea. And yes, a 4K 27 Inch monitor at around 160 or 180 PPI with MacOS will look absolutely fine for most people. But for me, I would prefer no chance of taking up CPU or GPU power for the monitor. So I will choose one that is either 110 PPI and save money just for the extra screen real estate with good enough visuals (I‘m not a professional film or photo editor) or I will choose one at 220 PPI if I want to splurge for the best for MacOS and something that will last me a long time. Not in between.

Yes, I agree that there are optimal resolutions for Mac displays, and that there's a lot of value in non-scaled resolutions -- especially for designers.

Where I really differ is at the low end. The compromises you have to make in display quality to work with a 110ppi display are just not worth it -- even for casual use. That's the kind of dot pitch you'd see on a monitor back a couple decades ago. I had the misfortune recently of working in Illustrator on a big 24" 1080p display the other day and it just sucked. Sure, I could read emails on the thing, but coming from my iMac M1 or my MacBook Air or my iPhone, it was just jarring to look at such a low-resolution screen and I had to zoom in really far constantly just to see any detail in what I was working on. I'd take a "compromised" 4K display any day of the week.