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Waiting for the iMac with Retina Display
- Thread starter Hexley
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You're going to be waiting a while. Good luck!
If you're waiting for the next best thing, you'll never upgrade.
If you're waiting for the next best thing, you'll never upgrade.
I have been following these boards very closely since the iMac announcement, it seems to me that there are very few that are holding out for Retina... so I'm not sure who you are talking to when you ask this.
It would take a major GPU to be able to push a 5120x2880 display, or 3 of them if you used external displays as well like I do.
Not only that, but I imagine it would push it into the $3000-4000 range... just guessing... that's basically 4 thunderbolt displays crunched down into the size of one!
Not only that, but I imagine it would push it into the $3000-4000 range... just guessing... that's basically 4 thunderbolt displays crunched down into the size of one!
No, I'm hesitant in getting a current iMac because it is completely (save for RAM on the 27" model) un-upgradable or serviceable. Though this is nothing new. Given that I don't expect that to ever change, I will always be hesitant in getting an iMac.
I have 27 2011 imac.. Upgraded to ssd and 16 gig memory and it's gonna stay that way till retina comes.. i don't care about the thinness of the machine if it means it's that much harder to upgrade.(not that last year's model was anything to scope at.. ).
Next time I will upgrade is when they go retina.. i dont think i can resist.. But honestly.. 27 imac is the best thing in the world.. People just don't know what they are missing until they sit in front of 27 imac and start working.. man .. I love this machine.. productivity goes !!!!! up up up up up... I think imac is gonna be the last product i will give up from apple..
Next time I will upgrade is when they go retina.. i dont think i can resist.. But honestly.. 27 imac is the best thing in the world.. People just don't know what they are missing until they sit in front of 27 imac and start working.. man .. I love this machine.. productivity goes !!!!! up up up up up... I think imac is gonna be the last product i will give up from apple..
iMac is pretty close to a Retina display anyway, from what I gather - based on seating distance. I sit in front of my 27" iMac all day, and I don't ever complain about pixellation generally. Could it be higher res? Sure! Does it need to be like the iPad 1/2, iPhone 1/2/3, and low-res MacBook Pros needed to be? Not a chance.
Can't say it's close to retina in my eyes - I would have loved my new iMac to he retina with gorgeous clear text but it's the fuzzy stuff . With an iPad and iPhone both being retina it's pretty obviously inferior. Of course I'm realistic and know it will be a number of years off due to cost of the size of the panels. I would have been happy to pay an additional 500 dollars such as I would have loved it
It may be sooner than you think
http://liliputing.com/2012/04/intel-retina-laptop-desktop-displays-coming-in-2013.html
http://liliputing.com/2012/04/intel-retina-laptop-desktop-displays-coming-in-2013.html
All very well for Intel to put something out theorising about display technologies, but the last time I checked the company didn't produce any displays.
And based on Intel's current who-how levels, it won't be Intel integrated graphics that are powering them when they do arrive.
This year's top desktop GPU can handle 4K displays (the real number to look for in Retina iMacs) just fine, on demanding games. Next year's top mobile GPU should be able to do it. So the GPU isn't going to be the limiting factor; it's going to be the cost of the display.
I agree.
Apple would need to charge extremely high prices to maintain their huge profit margins. Therefore retina is out for the immediate future.
So supposedly Sharp is putting out hires screens February next year, so it will happen soon just not many will be getting them at first.
http://9to5mac.com/2012/11/28/sharps-new-4k-igzo-32-display-has-apple-written-all-over-it/
http://9to5mac.com/2012/11/28/sharps-new-4k-igzo-32-display-has-apple-written-all-over-it/
I'm hesitant because they're using a panel based on 3 year old tech that has inferior color reproduction to an iPad 3 or 4...that's pretty sad.
At normal viewing distances, I think the current resolution is fine. Everyone seems to think a retina 27" has to be 2x the horizontal and vertical resolution and that's simply not the case. A 4k display (3840x2160) would qualify as retina, could easily be driven by today's GPUs, and would display 1080p without any scaling artifacts for gaming purposes where the higher resolution would impact performance.
At normal viewing distances, I think the current resolution is fine. Everyone seems to think a retina 27" has to be 2x the horizontal and vertical resolution and that's simply not the case. A 4k display (3840x2160) would qualify as retina, could easily be driven by today's GPUs, and would display 1080p without any scaling artifacts for gaming purposes where the higher resolution would impact performance.
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You're assuming that retina = doubling the resolution.
As many people have pointed out, the current 27" display is almost retina if you factor in the fact that people generally view it from further away than an iPad or MacBook. So even a 20%-30% increase in linear resolutions would put it indisputably into retina territory.
How about a bump from the current 2560x1440 to 2880x1800 and a shift to 16:10 to keep it the same res. as a 15" rMBP? Or 3342x1880 to keep the current 16:9 format?
However, the next logical step is surely "4k" (i.e. 4096×2160 - still a lot less than double the current res).
Having said that, I use a 27" Cinema display at work, which still invokes serious screen envy, and rarely do I thing "gee - I need a better screen".
It doesn't technically mean doubling, but actually at the same time it does, because all graphics are 2x the non retina graphics, so a 4096x2160 display would only have an effective resolution of 2048x1080 with double density graphics, which anyone used to a 2560x1440 worth of real estate would not be too happy with.
I can see them possibly bumping the 21.5 to retina first at 3840x2160 but the 27" would have to get 5180x2880 to have an effective resolution of 2560x1440 and have the same real estate that it currently does. Sure, just giving the 27" a 4K resolution would look wonderful, but the trade off would be screen space.
I haven't actually used a retina macbook so I can't say anything about it, but I am fine with the 27" iMac being non retina since it sits 2 feet away from me. Now if they actually made a 5160x2880 iMac and I saw it I'd probably not be saying that any more, but for now I'm way more than fine with it as is
If you're only increasing resolution by 20-30% (rather than doubling) then you don't necessarily need to switch to 2x graphics - you just get physically smaller icons. Think about the high-def MacBook Pro option of the past, the old 17" MBP (which has higher ppi than the 15") or the current 13" Air vs the 13" MBP (1440x900 vs. 1280x800 on the same sized screen).
Meanwhile, please don't tell me that making an application Retina-compatible is a matter of saying " IF (retina) THEN multiply-coordinates-by-2". I've never programmed for OS X but every other OS I have written for since the late 80s has had the facilities to support resolution-independent graphics: separate device- and physical- coordinate systems, calls to determine the required size of off-screen bitmaps, find the current size of standard UI elements, downsample bitmaps to screen resolution etc. I was assuming that the initial lack of retina-compatibiliy was lazy programmers, not an OS feature.
If you are only increasing resolution a little then like you said, you are just making everything tiny on screen. On retina displays, everything stays the regular physical size on screen, but they're all much clearer (because they're 2X) and yes, this applies to apps as well as websites. If you run a retina macbook pro at native resolution, you have a lot of screen real estate but everything is very tiny and uses the regular graphics, but in retina mode, everything is normal size but super crisp, using the 2x graphics. Moving resolution 20-30% will just give us a higher resolution screen with small menu bars, toolbars, etc. while moving to 2X gives you the same screen real estate you had before and same size menus/toolbars but they are all really clear. That's kinda the whole point of Retina, to give you the same screen you had before, but so clear you can't distinguish pixels.
The iPad mini is a perfect example of the opposite of this. To make it easier on developers (I assume) they just gave it the iPad 1 & 2 resolution. If they had just built it non-retina iPad mini at the same time as the iPad 1, it would have had a resolution of somewhere in the 900x600 range (well not exactly, but 132 ppi like the iPad). A retina version of that would then be 1800x1200. But instead they just gave it the old iPad resolution on a smaller screen, not using the 2X graphics. The result is a pretty display (which I am fine with), but everything is small. The menu bars are small, the icons and text are small, etc. It's just scaled down. That's what would happen in your scenario. It would be more stuff just made smaller on screen.