No Retina Display in Next-Generation iMac?

[JohnDoe98]

Please do.

I would love to know how my inability to discern pixels from my standard viewing distance (~20-24") is in fact me seeing pixels.

I never said you saw the pixels. I said a typical person with 20/20 vision typically would be capable of seeing the pixels. You claim to have 20/20 vision, well, maybe that's so maybe not; you could easily be mistaken as to your actual prescription. Doctors can also get it wrong.

In either case, what was left implicit in my claim was that the average person with 20/20 vision who had no other visual aberrations would.... Perhaps you have low cone density or other visual disorders. I don't know. If you really had 20/20 vision maybe you should be asking yourself why you aren't capable of distinguishing the pixels that the typical person with 20/20 vision does differentiate. Heck, maybe you don't know what a pixel is so you don't know what to look for. So what's the bottom line? Your idiosyncratic experience in no way invalidates the science in optics.

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57% of macrumors site users polled July as likely release of refreshed iMac.

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/1384568/

Could it be this guy saying fall was been cautious having got one thing wrong already in his original article, namely retina? So when he had to issue a correction, he kicked it outn onto the long grass some distance away so his story would have a bit more shelf life?

I'm still going for July release with ML

Your sample size is incredibly small.

 

[HurryKayne]

Simple math says there will not be a x2 27" Retina display...

A 5120x2880 display would require a bandwidth of ~21.2 Gb/s. This is over 2x what a single Thunderbolt channel can support today.

Even with the Cactus Ridge found on Air ( what about Mbpro?anyone?)
By the way,i don't need the...sorry..need for Retina Imacs,Gpu are available,Cpu are too..so no more excuses to wait till Fall or 2013.
Lets see what happens with MLION.

 

[gnasher729]

Could you please post again using the METRIC system? Virtually NO ONE outside the US (well, you are accompanied by Liberia and Burma) understands obsolete imperial measures.

This is an international forum and the civilized world has moved on, you know...

I think you are a bit confused here. You are saying "nobody outside the US understands imperial measures", when the fact is that the UK uses imperial gallons, while the USA uses the smaller US gallon.

 

[7709876]

There's a difference in PC hardware spec been outdated and Mac hardware been outdated. The former becomes technologically obsolete, the other carries on working as well as the day you bought it. There may be faster machines released, but you won't be noticing the slowdown which creeps into PCs because of malware in general.

Absolute rubbish. I just sold my Windows machine to buy an iMac. The Windows based PC ran as fast after three years as the day I bought it. I was never infected with any malware of any kind. Technology becomes obsolete no matter what OS it runs. There are plenty of Macs out there that will not run Mountain Lion in the the same way there are plenty of computers that will not run Windows 8. Both will run the software they came with as fast as the day they were purchased.

This sort of uneducated Mac v PC rubbish is tiresome and unhelpful. (Macs ARE PCs by the way)

 

[ghettochris]

Could you please post again using the METRIC system? Virtually NO ONE outside the US (well, you are accompanied by Liberia and Burma) understands obsolete imperial measures.

This is an international forum and the civilized world has moved on, you know...

not my chart. You should be able to convert the distance in feet to meters easily (divide by 3), and for the screen size in inches you should be fine. nobody here talks about buying 39 cm macbook pros, or 68.58 cm iMacs etc, so everyone knows inches, and arc minutes and degrees are international.

 

[potatis]

iMac is of course not retina already. It won't be until it comes with a pixel-doubled UI like the RMBP. The 27 inch has a high DPI though, it will probably be the 21.5" that gets pixel doubled, maybe a quad-HD in the 20"-24" range.

 

[ScottishDuck]

The panels don't exist yet and the graphical power required is still a big task.

 

[iBug2]

The panels don't exist yet and the graphical power required is still a big task.

Panels do exist, and graphical power required have been available since 2009.

 

[iMcLovin]

I couldn´t care less about retina imacs. I want those extra powers to make it run smoothly instead. i want a imac thats a workhorse! Can´t wait I hope so bad for imacs to be released with ML.

 

[KnightWRX]

This doesn't even make sense. It's not like you hook up ad internal monitor with a thunderbolt cable.

You're still sending it a signal over a display compatible port. Be it DP/DVI/VGA. Just because it's "internal" doesn't mean there isn't some standard signaling going on and that standard signaling will be limited to its spec sheet bandwidth still.

 

[Lancer]

I think you are a bit confused here. You are saying "nobody outside the US understands imperial measures", when the fact is that the UK uses imperial gallons, while the USA uses the smaller US gallon.

Yes I'll be getting a 68.6cm iMac in a few weeks, the 54.6 is too small

 

[JayLenochiniMac]

No it's not. There is still tons of it available. It is far from dead.

Physical media is dead as far as Apple is concerned. They're not supporting blue-ray, people are downloading music from iTunes and OS/apps from the App Store, and everything is in the cloud now. Sooner or later, ALL macs (including Mac Pro) will lack an optical drive.

Removing the optical drive would probably be the worst decision apple could make for the iMac.

People said the same thing when they got rid of the floppy drive

 

[50548]

I think you are a bit confused here. You are saying "nobody outside the US understands imperial measures", when the fact is that the UK uses imperial gallons, while the USA uses the smaller US gallon.

Even the UK has officially adopted the metric system; besides, I don't understand why people still refer to "inches" and "feet" in an international forum, when we should at the very least have both standards indicated for the sake of non-US/Burma/Liberia readers.

p.s.: Of course I took into account the original poster's comment that it isn't his chart - I just hope that whenever referring to measures, we at least try to refer to the worldwide standard which is NOT the imperial system (the British Empire died a long time ago anyway).

 

[Don Kosak]

2014 iMac Update Prediction:

* Large Curved Glass Display at 4k resolution.

* Leap Motion Controller or equivalent

I think we're 2 updates away from that, but that's where we're heading.

 

[JohnDoe98]

Panels do exist, and graphical power required have been available since 2009.

In what quantities do these panels exist, and in what sizes? Are they thin enough to meet Apple's specs? What kind of color saturation and contrast ratios do they provide? Again, does that meet Apple's specs? The truth of the matter is we simply don't have enough inside knowledge to know if it is possible for Apple to release Retina iMacs right now, or in the next few months. I think it is quite clear given the precedent that Apple wants to release them. If they do, you'll be shown right after all. If we don't see them, then the only plausible reason is because it wasn't currently possible, not because they held them back.

 

[MacsRgr8]

I would think Apple will release a Retina Thunderbolt Display before the iMac gets one if they are going that direction.

Possibly after the release of the Mac Pro in late 2013.

I think that too.

Quite logical to assume that Apple is busy making a (> 27" ?) Retina Thunderbolt Display to be released alongside the new Mac Pro, as this über-high resolution display probably requires a huge, huge grfx card to be able to keep at least the same performance as a current 27" attached to a Radeon 5870...

Wouldn't surprise me to find out later that a 30" Retina 4K display (7680 x 4320) prototype is being tested, but that a Radeon 7970 has performance issues.

 

[JohnDoe98]

People said the same thing when they got rid of the floppy drive

And non-digitally distributed software, and the ethernet port...

 

[JayLenochiniMac]

....besides, I don't understand why people still refer to "inches" and "feet" in an international forum, when we should at the very least have both standards indicated for the sake of non-US/Burma/Liberia readers.

If Apple calls them the "21.5-inch iMac" and "27-inch iMac," then that's what we're going to call them.

 

[MH01]

People have to get over Retina. There is no need for it on the iMac, especially the 27" one.

It just needs an update to USB 3, GPU and Ivy Bridge.

 

[JohnDoe98]

I think that too.

Quite logical to assume that Apple is busy making a (> 27" ?) Retina Thunderbolt Display to be released alongside the new Mac Pro, as this über-high resolution display probably requires a huge, huge grfx card to be able to keep at least the same performance as a current 27" attached to a Radeon 5870...

Wouldn't surprise me to find out later that a 30" Retina 4K display (7680 x 4320) prototype is being tested, but that a Radeon 7970 has performance issues.

FFS people learn to read.

A 27" screen or greater, with a resolution of 5120x2880 or greater "would require a bandwidth of [at minimum] ~21.2 Gb/s. This is over 2x what a single Thunderbolt channel can support today."

 

[iBug2]

In what quantities do these panels exist, and in what sizes? Are they thin enough to meet Apple's specs? What kind of color saturation and contrast ratios do they provide? Again, does that meet Apple's specs? The truth of the matter is we simply don't have enough inside knowledge to know if it is possible for Apple to release Retina iMacs right now, or in the next few months. I think it is quite clear given the precedent that Apple wants to release them. If they do, you'll be shown right after all. If we don't see them, then the only plausible reason is because it wasn't currently possible, not because they held them back.

I think the quality of the panels would pass the test for Apple since those panels have been used for high end imaging so far. But the thinness, I have no clue of course.

I'd guess the main reason Apple wouldn't release them today would be availability.

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FFS people learn to read.

A 27" screen or greater, with a resolution of 5120x2880 or greater "would require a bandwidth of [at minimum] ~21.2 Gb/s. This is over 2x what a single Thunderbolt channel can support today."

You can always have two thunderbolts driving it. Read a bit about how those things have been driven so far and you'll see it's most of the time two interfaces of the same kind and two cables. The bandwidth is a rather "trivial" thing to solve through that method.

 

[themcfly]

You're still sending it a signal over a display compatible port. Be it DP/DVI/VGA. Just because it's "internal" doesn't mean there isn't some standard signaling going on and that standard signaling will be limited to its spec sheet bandwidth still.

ever heard of dual link dvi?

 

[mrbyu]

Thunderbolt display instead of iMac

I'm thinking about getting a Thunderbolt Display at some point in the future. Now I have a 13" MBA, and I would really love to use a bigger screen estate when I'm at home (for amateur studio works, photo editing, etc.). The power of the machine is pretty enough for me, I wouldn't really need any extra features of an iMac except of the superb screen.

So I was thinking about the following. As notebooks getting stronger and stronger, I can see them being capable of pretty much everything that a normal user would need. So it's almost a waste of money to buy a MacBook AND an iMac for home too. So I thought it could be a good investment to buy "only" a nice Thunderbolt display which could serve me "forever", and to only update my notebook every now and then, which would actually be my only and main computer. So, what do you think about the idea?

(ok, these screens are not retina, and it's a little bit funny that the retina MBP has bigger resolution than the 27" iMac/TB Display, but I still found these screens very nice and usable)

 

[iBug2]

Wouldn't surprise me to find out later that a 30" Retina 4K display (7680 x 4320) prototype is being tested, but that a Radeon 7970 has performance issues.

I think a Radeon 5870 can drive that with ease. I can easily run a game with 5870 at 4x or even 8x anti aliasing, which basically renders the game at 4x or 8x resolution and then downsamples and the framerate is still really high for most games. That's how FSAA works.

Radeon 5870 Eyefinity edition, released in the beginning of 2010 supports resolutions up to 8192x8192 in theory. 6 displays, each at 2560*1600 can be driven simultaneously in practice which is 7680*3200. But that's only due to the limitations in display port technology. The GPU is capable of running 8192*8192.

 

[JohnDoe98]

You can always have two thunderbolts driving it. Read a bit about how those things have been driven so far and you'll see it's most of the time two interfaces of the same kind and two cables. The bandwidth is a rather "trivial" thing to solve through that method.

How many macs currently have two TB ports right next to each other whose GPUs can push that many pixels? I don't see Apple designing a Retina Thunderbolt Display only for those machines, nor do I see them runnings cables from all over the place, far too cluttered and inelegant.