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For gaming maybe. Resolution alone really isn't that big of a deal. We have 1440p displays running smoothly in smartphones now.

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Smartphones don't run full applications. It absolutely is an issue.

People say that the MBA can push a Cinema Display, and it can, but I don't think it does it very well. There is a stark difference in my 2013 MBA pushing the ACD and my 4.5ghz i7/ gtx780 pc pushing it.
 
i can only imagine what the price tag will be for the iMac Retina, holy hell. and the graphics to power a Retina screen of that size


i am looking to buy an iMac right now actually:

21.5"
i5 2.7Ghz
8GB memory
1TB drive

it's currently on sale at Best Buy for $1179. minus the $100 .edu discount it becomes $1,079. minus the 10% mover's coupon it becomes $927. i can get it tax free if i drive 35 mins to the Delaware Best Buy.

is the above build for $927 worth it?

Depends on what you want, but I think so. My rMBP was $2000, and my windows desktop computer about the same.
 
I believe it won't make all that much of a difference.

I don't want to spend the time calculating this another time, but I do believe that humans cannot distinguish the pixels from a 27-in iMac at a distance of 60 cm already. (As a reference, I had calculated back in the days that I needed to be like 3 meters aways from my 1080p 50" TV to not distinguish those pixels.)

In this case, Retina screens on iMacs won't make a difference and is gimmicky marketing, just like the new Retina HD screens on the iPhones.
 
Depends on what you want, but I think so. My rMBP was $2000, and my windows desktop computer about the same.

well i also have a 13" Macbook Pro retina lol. i scored that for just $1,168 following the same coupon stacking + sale pricing
 
definitely not cool that apple would make such a big deal about the nmp's 4k capabilities, launch the machine with a third-party display and then when they finally do roll out a new acd, they skip 4k altogether and release a 5k display that's not capable of begin driven by the 2013 nmp. :(

besides, i want an acd that's 16:10 and in matte!

exactly!:(
 
It won't be in the iMac pretty soon. It will be used for 27" Apple Retina Display. And it's going to cost an arm and a leg just like MacPro does. Because that's who these monitors are targeted for.
 
I believe it won't make all that much of a difference.

I don't want to spend the time calculating this another time, but I do believe that humans cannot distinguish the pixels from a 27-in iMac at a distance of 60 cm already. (As a reference, I had calculated back in the days that I needed to be like 3 meters aways from my 1080p 50" TV to not distinguish those pixels.)

In this case, Retina screens on iMacs won't make a difference and is gimmicky marketing, just like the new Retina HD screens on the iPhones.

It's not just about the crispness. If you work in video or photo editing, it would be extremely valuable to be able to display a 1080p video at its native resolution within an otherwise pixel doubled 1440p screen. This would mean that the video would take up only halve the space it currently does on a current TB display. That means more space for UI elements around the video.
For my field of work in Adobe After effects, that would be super awesome, because I never have enough space EVER to fit everything on there, mainly because the video just takes up so much space right now.
Retina 5k would be the solution that I've been waiting for since the day I ordered the nMP.

If apple now just screws us first gen buyers over, I would be super disappointed.
 
Prepare to go nuts, I think. The height of the irony is that I will be able to buy Display Port 1.3 card for my 2009 Mac Pro...Apple abandoning the cheese grater form factor made for great TV, and provided a machine for buyers who wanted a work of art or a a whisper quiet machine, but all of us who wanted the old workhorse updated mourn.

If only I had bought the dual CPU version back in 2009: little did i know. It iis so amazing -- my bought disk is a super fast PCIe flash card, I have 16TB of internal hd space, soon to be upgraded to 24TB now that the 6TB drives are out. I have room for a couple of more 1TB PCIe flash drives -- and I can upgrade the video card whenever I want.

All Apple had to do was release a Thunderbolt capable cheese grater...

Sorry buddy, it's not that simple. Apple had to let Jony Ive get his hands on the MP to make it into a piece of art that is better for some tasks but crappy for others. God forbid they continue the tradition of upgradeable computers at Apple. They just can't seem to make real, flexible computers over there anymore.
 
Why should the Retina iMac require a DP 1.3 connection!?

Why not, if not the display is rumored to have 5120 x 2880 resolution?

EDIT:

On a side note, I don't think Apple will release an iMac or ACD with 5120 x 2880 resolution this year. I don't see any of those products getting that native resolution until Thunderbolt 3 is released on Macs, which won't happen until Intel chipsets supporting Skylake come out. That's still about a year and a half away.

In the interim, what I think we'll get is an iMac and ACD with 4K resolution but Apple will scale the resolution to 5120 x 2880 and then downsample it to 4K.
 
This is great news. In a couple years I hope to be the owner of a retina MBP and 5k TBD. Either that or a 12 retina MBA and retina iMac.
 
I believe it won't make all that much of a difference.

I don't want to spend the time calculating this another time, but I do believe that humans cannot distinguish the pixels from a 27-in iMac at a distance of 60 cm already. (As a reference, I had calculated back in the days that I needed to be like 3 meters aways from my 1080p 50" TV to not distinguish those pixels.)

In this case, Retina screens on iMacs won't make a difference and is gimmicky marketing, just like the new Retina HD screens on the iPhones.

You absolutely can tell the difference. The 3k display on my 15" retina Macbook Pro looks fantastic compared to a traditional 1080p monitor. You may not notice in a movie, but you can absolutely tell when reading text. Now stretch that same image onto a 27" display, and a 5k resolution is about right.
 
I believe it won't make all that much of a difference.

I don't want to spend the time calculating this another time, but I do believe that humans cannot distinguish the pixels from a 27-in iMac at a distance of 60 cm already. (As a reference, I had calculated back in the days that I needed to be like 3 meters aways from my 1080p 50" TV to not distinguish those pixels.)

In this case, Retina screens on iMacs won't make a difference and is gimmicky marketing, just like the new Retina HD screens on the iPhones.

If you can see aliasing when viewing content which is not anti-aliased, then there is still room for perceptible improvement. While aliasing is almost nonexistent on my 28" 4K monitor, there is still a small amount present and thus a small amount of room for perceptible improvement.
 
WTF? 5K? What happened to 4K? DAMN! I'm left on the dock watching the ship sail away. Would these monitors work with the current Mac Pro since they have Thunderbolt 2 ports already?

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It's nice to see an article about Macs. All this talk about watches and iPhones and we forget about how innovative Apple really is especially in the PC side of things. A Retina iMac (whistle). So how does the Mac Pro get to use these monitors?
 
I'm happy with the iMac I bought 3 weeks ago. I maxed an iMac out with a 3.75 ghz i7, 32 gigs of ram, 4 gig video and a 1t solid state. I wont be upgrading to a new mac for at least another 5 years.

With super fast renders, video and design programs working fabulous; I have no need to upgrade to this new machine.

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I still prefer to stick it out with my 2013 iMac until 4k takes off, with app store games and movies.

I totally agree with you man. I have a maxed out 12 core, 64g ram mac pro at work and I didn't buy the 4k display. I see nothing wrong with shooting 4k video, but its not worth editing and exporting 4k unless your making a youtube video and even so are they streaming 4k in their players?

You wont see 4k video being broadcasted on TV for at least another 2/3 years, then it would be totally worth buying 4k displays and editing 4k video for TV. Those $3,000 4k displays everyone is drooling over will cost half that when the market is ready to edit 4k on the main stream.
 
2015 is gonna be an interesting year for Apple.

They clearly need to update their displays. There is simply too much demand for them to ignore it.

Also will Apple 4k+ displays really need to be sold separately or is Apple working on iMac only 4k+ displays? It wouldn't seem right having a 2560 x 1440 iMac for another year when the industry has clearly moved on and demand something better.

The industry has clearly moved on? Sure for the ultra wealthy maybe. Average home standard is 1080p STILL. Will remain that way for a good 8 years or more because of broadcast limitations as well as cost limitations within the broadcast industry. An upgrade in camera or screen tech means nothing to bean counters. How long did it take to make HD a standard? Technically this still is not even the case in some cable companies. Basic cable or satellite packages only give you a limited amount of actual HD broadcasts forcing you to pay extra for a channel in HD. Often those channels are only broadcast in 780p HD.

(and yes there are some people out there like my idiot brothers who think owning an 80 inch tv is AWESOME but don't actually watch the HD channels because it cuts off the top and bottom black layer. They feel they are being cheated. I love them but the concept of HD and pixel density is lost in their sad little brains. Stubbornness prohibits education on the subject so i let them alone and don't watch their televisions. I will make an assumption everyone here is more intelligent than my brothers)

I digress

How this bleeds over to computer monitors is in the production costs. Without the volume production costs will remain excessive. Affordable in a year or 2? NO CHANCE!!! 5k or even 4k will remain excessively priced for at least 4-5 years. Heck even 1440p is still 700$ to 1k$ I would love to see apple 1440p TB displays
drop in price by 500 dollars or more.
 
Apple's display (i.e., one product) are a product line that is completely neglected. I will never understand the rationale that would leave all that cash 'on the table'.

Clearly, Apple has the ability to make great displays, but clearly they also choose not to. The product update cycle of Apple's displays is the longest, and the worst.

This needs Tim's immediate attention. Connectivity questions, hardware questions, questionable price points, etc.

Garbage.
 
Apple's display (i.e., one product) are a product line that is completely neglected. I will never understand the rationale that would leave all that cash 'on the table'.

Clearly, Apple has the ability to make great displays, but clearly they also choose not to. The product update cycle of Apple's displays is the longest, and the worst.

This needs Tim's immediate attention. Connectivity questions, hardware questions, questionable price points, etc.

Garbage.

Great artists ship but equally importantly great artists know when to ship.
 
If Apple forces me to buy a new mac Pro, just a year after purchasing the first machine for 8000 € to be able to drive such a display I will go nuts. They HAVE to figure out a way to drive this on the current machine.

Couldn't you simply swap the graphic cards with a new one which supports the new DisplayPort 1.3 standard and be done with i... uh... wait a moment!

;)
 
You absolutely can tell the difference. The 3k display on my 15" retina Macbook Pro looks fantastic compared to a traditional 1080p monitor. You may not notice in a movie, but you can absolutely tell when reading text. Now stretch that same image onto a 27" display, and a 5k resolution is about right.

Good thing a 27" iMac isn't a traditional 1080p monitor then, eh?

The 27" iMac is 2560x1440, and is retina at about 32" viewing distance.

ie, at 32" away from the screen it is physically impossible for the human eye (with 20/20 vision) to distinguish individual pixels due to the laws of physics.

As it happens, most people's viewing distance is slightly closer than that, thus making the display *almost* retina already, but not quite.

I have measured before and I sit about 26-27" away from my screen, so under the line. Even so, the difference is not "night and day" as some people claim between my 27" iMac and my 13" rMBP.

At typical viewing distances from each screen, they look the same to me - i.e., text looks sharp and crisp, figures look well defined, UI elements look sharp.

If anything, the retina screen looks worse for certain applications because they are not high-DPI aware - like ChemDraw, which is still not retina-aware in 2014, meaning the UI and the images and graphics in it look blurry on the 13" rMBP, but not on the 27" iMac. This is a specific problem relating to the software, however, and not the hardware.
 
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