I am hearing that a lot - but indeed with 1.5 you can use 6 pixels for 2 and the result doesn't look bad on MacOS.
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Samsung's iMac-Style 'Smart Monitor M8' With AirPlay Now Available to Pre-Order
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I know some people can see the difference. I have a friend who co-owns a small media company with his wife that is kind of a kitchen sink shop where he will do graphic layouts and videos and design web sites. He automatically notices details that when pointed out to me I can see but I may have looked at the picture or video for years and never noticed what he sees in a few seconds. As a parlor trick he can usually tell you what approximate resolution a picture is being displayed in. He bought a pretty well maxed out 27 inch iMac in 2019 right before the M1 Mac Air/13 inch MacBooks was first announced. He went through the Power PC to Intel transition and he wanted a known quantity rather than hoping that the new new architecture would not have problems or be a lot more expensive. I’ve asked if he is going to buy some Mx version but right now he says no, the Intel iMac will work for a couple of years and then he will have to decide how to upgrade.
I bought a 4k ultra wide monitor - didn’t like how it looked and because it wasn’t curved, the edges of the screen felt like the application windows were facing away from me. I ended up buying a used 27” Apple Thunderbolt display. I love the glossy screen which provides a sense of depth, the build quality, the built-in web cam and the bigger speakers than my laptop. The fact that a used Apple monitor was about the same price as the LG I had bought and returned was not lost on me. Apparently, the specs on paper cannot fully explain one’s experience.
I may get the Studio Display next year because I love the sharp text of a high pixel density screen and will use the web cam a lot (assuming Apple fixes the quality with a software patch). What I notice is that Apple pay’s a lot of attention to the subjective side of the experience which is often lost on other manufacturers.
I may get the Studio Display next year because I love the sharp text of a high pixel density screen and will use the web cam a lot (assuming Apple fixes the quality with a software patch). What I notice is that Apple pay’s a lot of attention to the subjective side of the experience which is often lost on other manufacturers.
It works well on a 27" monitor too. I kind of doubt it's useless on a 32" either...
No, it doesn't. Why do you think Apple doesn't ship 27" or 32" 4K displays? In their own products, or even carry them in their store?
Because macOS is not designed to be displayed on that type of monitor. Maybe it should be, but it's not. That's another conversation entirely.
If you can't do 2x display scaling and also achieve normal sized UI assets, it isn't usable for macOS. If you try anyway, what you get is a low quality compromise.
Even the LG UltraFine 4K is pushing it. They are slightly too large at 23.7", so 1920x1080 appearance results in large display assets. I have to run them at 1.6x scale/looks like 2304 x 1296 to get an acceptable size, which looks fine thanks to its borderline pixel density, but is still a compromise and less than perfect.
24" really needs to be 4.5K, which is why the new iMac is precisely that.
27" needs to be 5k.
32" needs to be 6k.
Unfortunately these panels are rare and expensive. But being rare and expensive doesn't change that this is what macOS is designed for, and anything less looks really, really bad.
...which is disappointing when Apple have managed to "push the envelope" by putting miniLED into the 14" and 16" MBP without pushing the base prices up significantly.
It also makes it harder to justify the Studio Display as a long-term investment that will outlive several computers, if MiniLED is going to be just around the corner.
If you accept that, OK, even a $2-trillion company, the 4th biggest PC maker etc. can't magic up a 5k miniLED panel in a $1600 display, that leaves the question - could they not either have (a) made it cheaper or (b) done more to make it feel like better value for money.
The answer to (a) is probably yes, but they preferred not to. They've shown that they have no shame with $1000 display stands, $700 wheels and $20 cleaning rags. Enough of the faithful will probably pony up to hit their growth targets for next quarter, and the consequences of continuing to make Apple prices a joke amongst the unbelieving majority won't show up in the short term...
The answer to (b) is duh! yes! - including the proper stand, a proper socketed mains cable and a cleaning cloth for the base price would be a start. Testing the webcam properly would help. Beyond that, how about making the screen bigger? Adding a second input so you could plug in an iPad without unplugging the Mac? 16:10 or 4:3 ratio?
The current offer feels too much like "minimum viable product in a nice box"?
It looks good to me, it's clear, not fuzzy at all. Whether thy ship a monitor that size doesn't make a difference to me, they have thought about how to use a 4K monitor that size, otherwise it wouldn't even be supported.
Sorry, I totally disagree, like I said, it looks good, and yes, it is supported by the OS. That other discussion is one that doesn't need to be made since MacOS already supports it, and quite well.
No low quality here, and yes, I use scaling. Native is WAY too small!
I have an LG, not ultrafine, 27", there is no problem using it for this Mac user.
I mean maybe. Do you have a Mac laptop? If so, does the display bother you? If you have left it at default, it is not using integer scaling. Yet I do not people gouging their eyes out due to fuzzy text...
This is easy. They need to come up with specs that cannot be compared easily so they can sell you a monitor that costs twice as much as the competition.
Apple doesn’t make 4K displays. They’ve been on 5k for years because that’s that only way to get precise “retina” display without scaling (which intrusives blur as a side effect).
This would be far far FAR more interesting if it were 5k. At 4K it’s a non-story.
I'm not offended by one's opinions on technology. I tend to think statements like that are from perfectionists or those who do detailed photo/video/graphic work for a living, though.
This said, I do love a good monitor. I'd toss this 32" out the window in exchange for two of the panels from a 24" iMac if apple would slap them in housings and sell them to me. They can even slap them in wobbly cheap garbage plastic housings, since that's basically what all monitors come in anyway.
Except no. Not at all. There are plenty of legitimate examples of Apple's greed without inventing some in topics you don't understand.
If low quality looks fine to you, great. But it is objectively low quality, that's not up for debate here. There is a difference between low and high quality, and on macOS anything less than 2x is lower quality. The lower it goes, the lower quality it is.
I understand why he needs better, but really applying his needs on every Mac user is way WAY overboard. If he said it's not good enough for him, you wouldn't have heard a peep from me, but since I am a Mac user and he said 4K wasn't good enough, well, that's just incorrect for me.
As for 32", I'd probably throw anything that big or bigger away if I wanted to use it with a computer, but that's just because that big would be harsh close to my face! I also wont pay $1600 or more for a monitor, any monitor, I'd never get my money's worth out of it. The minor stuff I do photo-wise doesn't pay any of my bills, nor do I want it too, as I make enough being an IT Manager.
It really isn't low quality.
Sorry, no.
But not every Mac user needs 5K high quality, that's what I'm complaining about. You basically said the monitor I have couldn't be used by a Mac user. That's wrong.
I might consider two of these 32" displays for my X-Plane setup when I figure out which Mac Studio I want when X-Plane 12 is released.
But...being a photographer who's fussy about post-processing, only a 5K display that supports a P3 color gamut (the Samsung doesn't) will work for me. I'm seriously looking at Apple's display for that.
But...being a photographer who's fussy about post-processing, only a 5K display that supports a P3 color gamut (the Samsung doesn't) will work for me. I'm seriously looking at Apple's display for that.
Seems the predecessor, the M7, is a better deal. $370 instead of $730.
Both are 4K at 32".
The M8:
Both charge at 65W, which might be enough to keep any MacBook charged?
Just a real bummer about the relatively low ppi.
Both are 4K at 32".
The M8:
- increases brightness from 250 to 400 nits
- adds "HDR10+", which at 400 nits seems dubious
- improves response time from 8ms to 4
- increases color from 8bpp to 10bpp
- adds a camera
Both charge at 65W, which might be enough to keep any MacBook charged?
Just a real bummer about the relatively low ppi.
Accessory pricing aside, I just don't think they're interested in that market. They're doing this as a "fine, if you really need it" monitor, with the associated price tag. People either really want it, in which case they'll spend $1600 (and more, if they need matte and/or a better stand). Or they don't.
I don't mind. What I do mind is that, ten years(!) into Macs moving to retina, Apple has utterly failed to convince third parties to create a healthy market of monitor choices. How utterly weak.
Imagine if Apple introduces AirPort Extreme January 2003, but without an access point. Then seeing that third parties are still mostly on Wi-Fi b, they partner with Broadcom in 2007 for the Broadcom Ultrashine 802.11g. Then, seeing that more options still don't pop up, they decide to do the AirPort Extreme Studio base station themselves in 2013, ten years in, but make it so expensive almost nobody wants it. Oh, you want to attach it to the wall? That's another $180. But hey, they did make a solution, right?
Well, yeah, if you squint.
I suspect the webcam thing is a case of a last-minute bug fix for iPhones or iPads that caused a regression for the display (which runs the same iOS 15.4 iOS build), that they didn't see quality being this bad in their development builds, and that 15.4.x will improve matters.
Which, given the price point, is hard to swallow.
I understand why he needs better, but really applying his needs on every Mac user is way WAY overboard. If he said it's not good enough for him, you wouldn't have heard a peep from me, but since I am a Mac user and he said 4K wasn't good enough, well, that's just incorrect for me.
As for 32", I'd probably throw anything that big or bigger away if I wanted to use it with a computer, but that's just because that big would be harsh close to my face! I also wont pay $1600 or more for a monitor, any monitor, I'd never get my money's worth out of it. The minor stuff I do photo-wise doesn't pay any of my bills, nor do I want it too, as I make enough being an IT Manager.
I like to be able to have three windows open side by side and to be able to easily read the text. For example, I may have a ppt file, a word file, and a vector graphic open. Or, I may have a word file, an acrobat file, and a web page. I'm referring back and forth between all three doing this work, so I don't want to have to move anything around, I like it al just there.
Given that, 32" in 4k does it fairly well. I have an old 32" 2560x1440 monitor laying around that is god awful for these purposes. If I shrink the pages enough to get the views the way I like, the text looks fairly pixellated. Just, eew.