Screen Resolution

[landis]

Why does it seem that the screens apple uses in its computers all have lower resolution that those of competitors.

the new thinkpad x300 has the same resolution as a mbp

some dell 15" has 1920 by 1200

why would apple use lower res screens?

 

[Tallest Skil]

So that you can read text? Seriously, they don't make desktop monitors smaller than 23" be 1920x1200.

 

[Eidorian]

1920 x 1200 on a 15.4" monitor kills my young eyes.

 

[squeeks]

seriously..i sometimes think 1440x900 is to small on the 15.4" and because of this i make good use of the zoom feature

 

[NKA]

Because the Apple OS is not resolution independent. In the Windows OS you can change the screen DPI. Changing the DPI in Windows allows you to clearly see the text and icons with hi-res screens because all the graphics get scaled.

Apple dropped support for resolution independence from Leopard. As a result if you try and use Leopard with high resolutions on small screens you end up with very small icons and text, which leads to eye strain. Even on the Hi-res 17" MacBook Pros the OS looks too small IMHO.

 

[bigandy]

Because the Apple OS is not resolution independent. In the Windows OS you can change the screen DPI. Changing the DPI in Windows allows you to clearly see the text and icons with hi-res screens because all the graphics get scaled.

Apple dropped support for resolution independence from Leopard. As a result if you try and use Leopard with high resolutions on small screens you end up with very small icons and text, which leads to eye strain. Even on the Hi-res 17" MacBook Pros the OS looks too small IMHO.

Are you saying Windows is resolution independent?

lolz.

 

[heatmiser]

Are you saying Windows is resolution independent?

lolz.

It does at least give you the option to scale DPI; a feature, to my knowledge, entirely absent from OS X (at least Tiger). The bad thing about Vista compared to XP, though, is that it doesn't allow you to scale DPI below 100%. In other words, you can make everything bigger, but you can't make everything *smaller*. You could do that on XP, but it's no longer an option on Vista. That was actually one of my primary reasons for avoiding Vista.

Anyway, to the OP, I find 1440x900 to be a good res for a 15" screen. I would like my Macbook even more if it could be scaled up to 1440x900 on its 13" screen (something you could simulate if OS X allowed for DPI scaling), but in general, 1440x900 on a 15" isn't bad at all. There are so many budget Win laptops with 1280x800 resolution on 15" screens it's not even funny.

 

[landis]

i agree that it is a fine resolution, but i think that macbooks should have the option to go up to 1440 by 900 and 15" mbp should optionally go up to atleast 1680 by 1050, similar to the option with the 17" mbp

 

[NKA]

Are you saying Windows is resolution independent?
lolz.

Yes and no. Depends which version of windows you are talking about and the applications you are running. The OS and the applications that run on them, both need to be Hi'res DPI's/Resolution Independence aware in order to work properly on Hi-res screens.

The Vista OS defenently is Resoltion Independent. The main problem is that alot of the third party applications are not. Sometimes this is a problem other times it's not. Sometimes it just means the application glyph's get scaled by the OS instead of the application substituting a higher res glyph. Other times it can be a problem and UI elements, (buttons, checkboxes etc) get moved and appear off the window's client area and are no longer accessible. This is not the OS's fault, and is the third party Application developers problem.

The problem with Windows is that the DPI settings are hidden away and most users do not know what, or where the DPI settings are. So they end up with either eye strain or end up simply changing the Font sizes and not the DPI.

Even when OSX adds "Resolution Independence", it too will depend on the third party applications also being "Resolution Independent" aware. I really hope this is sooner rather than later.