Mac Pro/OS X 4K Display Compatibility 'Like the Wild West', Some 4K Monitors Unsupported

[thekev]

I am a full-time web engineer and I understand these technologies intimately. But I must admit I don't understand the point you are trying to argue here. OS X Retina is a published spec. Dell et all have the choice whether to support that spec, or they can allow Sharp to gobble up all the market. At this stage, it appears they have gone with the second option of giving the market to Sharp.

Interesting. I thought you were just trolling (which always aggravates me) or I wouldn't have made the response snarky. I thought the point of contention in the article was hidpi scaling of text. It seems the problem with the Dell specifically is wherever it is. Previously I was arguing that they wouldn't have had time to appropriately test these things yet, due to their having just been released. Anandtech actually suggests that Apple has to do some driver work, which I suspected. I was however unaware unaware of that issue with tiling layout. It's mentioned right below the second graphic. It shouldn't be surprising anyway that Sharp is the first to be tested and supported, considering that Apple seems to work directly with them.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/7603/mac-pro-review-late-2013/11

The 4K/MST support requires a software component as well. The GPU driver needs to know how to divide its frame buffer for output to the individual tiles, which can vary between monitors. MST topologies for single-display/4K60 support aren’t standardized unfortunately. Apple handles this by maintaining some sort of a whitelist for various displays they’ve tested. The Sharp PN-K321 that Apple sells alongside the Mac Pro (as well as the ASUS clone of it) ships with 4K60 support configured out of the box. All you need to do is ensure that DisplayPort 1.2 MST is enabled on the display itself (something that appears off by default) and plug it into the Mac Pro. OS X will automatically recognize the display, configure it for 3840 x 2160 at 60Hz and you’re good to go.

 

[MacLC]

Apple has been slacking on their displays for awhile now. I mean the current Cinema Display is thicker than the year old iMacs!

Apple's been slacking on everything other than iTablets and iCells. There are quite literally only a handful of 4k monitors on the market. A single tech could have checked each one for compatibility in a matter of minutes. Come on Apple, you know that you are better than that.

 

[wiz329]

What the article missed...this is a 4K display....you plug it in to your Mac Pro, and it displays everything at 4K resolution...it works.

It is not a Retina display, nor does it do Retina scaling, NOR was it even meant to.

It displays a 4K resolution picture, and workspace.

The display at this resolution may have tiny text and UI elements, but it was not meant to operate at any other resolution (as of now). You must learn to deal with this. I think that is what they are complaining about here...people have gotten extremely spoiled by Retina scaling, and this display is flat out HIRES, so the UI elements are small.

It does everything its advertised to do.

I think the article missed this.

It IS actually a retina display. For the viewing distance, it is considered a retina display. Sure, it "works", but UI elements are prohibitively tiny.

Mark my words, though, Apple will fix it soon enough.

 

[WardC]

Apple's been slacking on everything other than iTablets and iCells. There are quite literally only a handful of 4k monitors on the market. A single tech could have checked each one for compatibility in a matter of minutes. Come on Apple, you know that you are better than that.

You're missing the point...the displays ARE fully compatible and DO work properly at their 4K resolution. There is no scaling of text and UI elements however, which leaves this review only pointing out those aspects, which were not even promised in this monitor. This is a 4K display and works properly at full 4K resolution when plugged in, with full mac compatibility. No scaling of anything to make the display easier on the eyes. That is why this review is talking this display down so much. It's neither Apple nor Sharp's fault. It's simply that Apple users have come to expect certain things like Retina scaling, etc....and this is a professional monitor for use with FinalCutPro, not an all-purpose laptop display!

 

[jnpy!$4g3cwk]

For all of us broadcast professionals 4k currently is a worthless feature anyway.

I guess the operative word is "currently", because 4K will eventually take over on the production side, and, it will be filtered down to HD for actual broadcast. Better quality that way. Sure, there is no hurry, but, no reason not to plan for it eventually either.

I hope you were not one of those folks who kept saying right up until HD-day that no one could tell the difference between NTSC and HDTV?

 

[thekeyring]

Plugging my MacBook Pro into a normal, standard resolution monitor was such a headache. You think they'd make sure the headless macs didn't have this issue.

 

[abhibeckert]

With this kind of resolution/size combo, whether you'd want HiDPI turned on or off is really subjective.

With it on, you'd only get the real estate of 1080p (21.5" iMac) on a 32" display...

I'm not sure why everyone is acting like this is some kind of bug.

You can manually activate it with a utility like SwitchResX anyway can't you?

On a retina macbook you can run at the native resolution or HiDPI or something half way in between.

With any other display, you can't do the half way in between part. For example my 27" iMac can do 1280x720 in HiDPI mode, but I can't do anything higher than that. I should be able to set it to 1920x1080 in HiDPI mode, but Apple only allows that on retina macbooks.

This is a big problem, because a 4K display at 32" inches is too small at native res and too big at "proper" HiDPI resolution. To realistically use the display, you have to be able to run it half way in between like you can on a retina macbook.

As far as I know it is not possible to fix with third party software. I tried doing it myself, spent days looking at the core foundation API for working with screen resolutions and could not find a way to make it work.

 

[2128506]

Apple has been slacking on their displays for awhile now. I mean the current Cinema Display is thicker than the year old iMacs!

I'm sure Apple will update them eventually, perhaps when they release their Apple Television and retina display iMacs. Apple may move slooooowly....but when they do it, they do it right. Too bad we have to wait for it tho.

iMacs these days have horrible displays. Image quality is sacrificed for thickness/price.

I have couple years old TB Display and late-2012 27" iMac. TB display works flawlessly, but iMac has image ghosting (which is somehow considered "normal" by Apple) and colors issues - warmer than on TB Display, no matter what profile I use. Previous-gen thick iMac did not have this problem. Also same issues for my last year rMBP.

But of course they are thin, woohoo.

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On a retina macbook you can run at the native resolution or HiDPI or any something half way in between.

With any other display, including for example the display in my current 27" iMac (which is an Apple display and fully supported presumably) I can either run at native (2560x1440) or HighDPI (1280x720). What I can't do is run half way in between like all retina macbooks.

For example I should be able to set my iMac to, 3840x2160 and have it downscale that to 2560x1440. That is possible on all of apple's "retina" displays but it's not possible on any other display, including apparently third party retina displays.

And no, as far as I'm aware, it cannot be fixed using any third party resolution switching tool.

That.

Using HiDPI on Retina MBP is quite pointless - you trade most of your screen real estate for super-smooth fonts. I usually set smallest scaling setting - that way it's still easy on the eyes but gives lots of space to work on.

This is a "must have" for 4K desktop displays.

If I'm not mistaken, this scaling is done via GPU on rMBP and the code itself is highly GPU-specific, so Apple will have to write it for Dxxx cards.

 

[Macist]

Apple's been slacking on everything other than iTablets and iCells. There are quite literally only a handful of 4k monitors on the market. A single tech could have checked each one for compatibility in a matter of minutes. Come on Apple, you know that you are better than that.

Not exactly. The MacBook range of still miles ahead of the competition.

The iMac does the job, not that I've ever been a fan of all-in-ones (MacPro with desktop-class components anyone?)

When Apple had a decent line-up of displays they were poor sellers. People either cut costs by buying cheaper brands and high-end users were just as likely to go with an Eizo, LaCie or some such.

 

[Macist]

No biggie. I'm sure the best practice for handling 4K will be sorted out by the industry pretty quickly as more units are sold.

 

[aloshka]

What the article missed...this is a 4K display....you plug it in to your Mac Pro, and it displays everything at 4K resolution...it works.

It is not a Retina display, nor does it do Retina scaling, NOR was it even meant to.

It displays a 4K resolution picture, and workspace.

The display at this resolution may have tiny text and UI elements, but it was not meant to operate at any other resolution (as of now). You must learn to deal with this. I think that is what they are complaining about here...people have gotten extremely spoiled by Retina scaling, and this display is flat out HIRES, so the UI elements are small.

It does everything its advertised to do.

I think the article missed this.

So basically it's unusable in Photoshop, and pretty much every program that is on the Mac because you cannot even see the icons in the toolbar they are so small., don't even get me started on tooltips to select different tools.

And of course osx does not allow you to change font size, scale anything... So I'm going to go with unusable unless you want to use he Mac Pro hooked into a 4k tv. Even if there is one program that supports it, the rest of your os worthless.

Retina scaling has nothing to do with the monitor. It's a simple double the pixels and scale down instead of up (like windows). It's just a fast bitblt and there is no reason it cannot be enabled for this monitor. The scaling "resolutions" are just scale factors on the retina MacBook Pro.

 

[Bug-Creator]

The "failing" really is OSX which never had a global prefs to set sizes for fonts or other UI elements.

Something pretty much any other alt.OS could do for 20 years or more.

"Retina"-scaling is just a kludge to retrofit that feature in a rather clumsy way.

 

[aloshka]

The "failing" really is OSX which never had a global prefs to set sizes for fonts or other UI elements.

Something pretty much any other alt.OS could do for 20 years or more.

"Retina"-scaling is just a kludge to retrofit that feature in a rather clumsy way.

To be fair windows is even worse at it. At least with osx (on retina) unsupported apps look blurry. In windows they are just straight out broken. Even in windows 8.1 it's horrific. A lot of ms apps handle themselves as supporting hi dpi when they don't and break completely-I.e. Window is big but font is small, buttons overlap because positioning is screwed up.

I miss CRT monitors. Every resolution was a native resolution. You switched to whatever your eyes were comfortable with. Everything scaled perfectly.

I was hoping that retina or 4k screens would work like that. With pixels being so small it would seem a lot of different resolutions would look good. But they don't. OSX doubling and then scaling down definitely makes it feel like it works and dpi aware apps look beautiful. So it's definitely step in the right direction.

My wish is to just have smooth adjusting resolutions. So instead of 1080p or 1440p, you would just use a scale bar and it would be anything in between and still look good.

Excuse the mistakes. I am ready to throw this ipad out the window for auto-"correcting" everything I type.

 

[N64]

Almost everything I plug into DP or DVI (or VGA) looks exactly like it should. Maybe HDMI is a ****** protocol or devices having only HDMI input aren't too smart.

DVI video and HDMI video are the same. They both suck because they use the scammy DRM known as HDCP

 

[juanm]

Somehow I doubt in the wild west they worried about the appearance and size of their pixels...

 

[Icaras]

iMacs these days have horrible displays. Image quality is sacrificed for thickness/price.

Disagree. My family has owned every model iMac since 2009 (including the latest 2013) and no ghosting issues ever.

Your term "horrible" is a gross over exaggeration. Every iMac display has been excellent in my experience.

 

[2128506]

Disagree. My family has owned every model iMac since 2009 (including the latest 2013) and no ghosting issues ever.

Your term "horrible" is a gross over exaggeration. Every iMac display has been excellent in my experience.

Then my eyes are deceiving me and $4K+ all-in-one computer I've bought does not have panel quality comparable to $100 no-name Chinese monitor. Same with a $4K+ laptop computer. Having these issues (and having them described as "normal" by Apple) is exactly "horrible", considering "premium" marketing.

My thick iMac started to develop dust buildup behind the glass - looked like the panel was failing. Was solved by getting it to service to clean (out of warranty, so had to pay money to resolve the issue that should never have been there).

Fact that you've been lucky does not mean that all Apple computers are some sort of fairy-dust-powered miracles.

You can see numerous reports on these issues even here on forums.

P.S. I'm not saying that every Apple display was bad, quite the contrary - Cinema/TB displays are very good, Macbook pre-Retina displays were very good, iMac thick displays were very good. Problem is that new thin displays are really crappy.

P.P.S. I can see you live in USA, maybe it's a first-world thing, I was talking about what's sold in EU/CIS.

 

[indiekiduk]

Apple didn't call it a Retina Mac Pro.

 

[the-msa]

Almost everything I plug into DP or DVI (or VGA) looks exactly like it should. Maybe HDMI is a ****** protocol or devices having only HDMI input aren't too smart.

hdmi is only ****** on apple. there is a reason its a standard and everyone uses it and it works everywhere.

only on apple is doesnt. why? wait until apple releases their own 10000$ 4k thunderbolt display, while 4k-display prices have settled at around 1000$. out of a sudden it will work. and they probably give it their own "brand" name, like that stupid "retina". whats the point? high end dell laptops have higher resolutions, but i dont see them making a ****ing fuss about it.

 

[Patrick Jane]

Then my eyes are deceiving me and $4K+ all-in-one computer I've bought does not have panel quality comparable to $100 no-name Chinese monitor. Same with a $4K+ laptop computer. Having these issues (and having them described as "normal" by Apple) is exactly "horrible", considering "premium" marketing.

My thick iMac started to develop dust buildup behind the glass - looked like the panel was failing. Was solved by getting it to service to clean (out of warranty, so had to pay money to resolve the issue that should never have been there).

Fact that you've been lucky does not mean that all Apple computers are some sort of fairy-dust-powered miracles.

You can see numerous reports on these issues even here on forums.

P.S. I'm not saying that every Apple display was bad, quite the contrary - Cinema/TB displays are very good, Macbook pre-Retina displays were very good, iMac thick displays were very good. Problem is that new thin displays are really crappy.

P.P.S. I can see you live in USA, maybe it's a first-world thing, I was talking about what's sold in EU/CIS.

Indeed no one can make a better display than no name chinese manufacturer.

 

[MacScott]

I was really surprised that Apple didn't update their displays at the same time as the new Mac Pros were announced.

 

[Robert.Walter]

Maybe Apple is only giving half-hearted Luke-warm temporary support to existing 3k displays because they have something better in store. If so, they should get a move on and spring it soon.

 

[vmachiel]

"It just works"

Well actually...

 

[nexusrule]

Mmmmm…why this 4K display should work as a retina display when it is not advertised as one? I don't care about justifying Apple but I really think at this point 4k display are to be intended as 4k video preview only.

I mean, the resolution on these displays it's just 3840 x 2160 against the regular 27'' 2560x1440 but with the money you buy the 4K you can buy 4 Thunderbolt Display and get a lot of screen estate if that's what you are after. And if you want a 4000$ display just because the higher density makes things look a bit nicer maybe you are a bit spoiled?

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So basically it's unusable in Photoshop, and pretty much every program that is on the Mac because you cannot even see the icons in the toolbar they are so small., don't even get me started on tooltips to select different tools.

All Adobe products allow you to increase the size of interface elements. Given the fact that many people are able to work on 1920x1200 15'' display they should be able to work on a 3840 x 2160 27'' one.

 

[theluggage]

I was really surprised that Apple didn't update their displays at the same time as the new Mac Pros were announced.

…because its fairly clear from the more informed comments here that 4k in its current form is a bit of a kludge.

Mmmmm…why this 4K display should work as a retina display when it is not advertised as one? I don't care about justifying Apple but I really think at this point 4k display are to be intended as 4k video preview only.

Some of us have been saying for the last several months that UHDTV is the wrong resolution for a retina display & would give a choice between 'too small' 1:1 mode and 'too chunky' "Best for retina".

I'm sure its fine as a second display for working on 4k media in full-screen mode.