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Retina MacBook Pro Review: The Age of the High-Resolution PC

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Re: Retina MacBook Pro Review: The Age of the High-Resolution PC

#21

Post by rsynnott »

stusmith1977 wrote: post #9

Does anyone else think it weird that the first mainstream hi-res displays weren't pushed by Microsoft? Let me explain... Back when WPF was still called Avalon, Microsoft were pushing the technology as a solution for the soon-to-be-arriving high-dpi displays (which, we were assured, were right around the corner). As an example, see a contemporary blog post: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/marcelolr/archive/2004/12/03/274213..…

> Back when WPF was still called Avalon, Microsoft were pushing the technology as a solution for the soon-to-be-arriving high-dpi displays

Although they were quieter about it, it has been quite clear that Apple was interested in resolution independence since at least 10.4, when such features started to show up.

Remember that very few third-party Windows applications use WPF. Most first-party stuff, even, doesn't use WPF. We're seeing on the retina Macbook that, while most Cocoa apps work well enough, most non-Cocoa apps are at least somewhat broken; imagine how much worse this effect would be on Windows, where so few apps use the current UI toolkits.

Re: Retina MacBook Pro Review: The Age of the High-Resolution PC

#22

Post by lawnchair_larry »

calpaterson wrote: post #18
MetaCosm wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Microsoft isn't a hardware company. Apple's supply chain dominance is what brought this to market. Microsoft sells some rebranded hardware products (manufactured and designed by Samsung, Acer, IBM, ATI, Nvidia and Asus)... but it makes PROFIT by selling software. Apples makes software, but it makes its PROFIT by selling hardware.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Surface http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Natural_keyboard http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LifeCam http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_SideWinder http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xbox

All whitelabel products.

Re: Retina MacBook Pro Review: The Age of the High-Resolution PC

#23

Post by rsynnott »

jesstra wrote: post #16

Retina displays are suddenly the buzzword. Is it a new concept? No. Do we really need it? Debatable. Do we want it? Undeniable. Credit where its due once again to the Apple marketing machine...

It's not so much marketing as that _they are actually making these things_. There has been a small but rather fanatical demand for high-DPI screens for a good while, particularly since the demise of CRTs. Note how excited people got about the resolution independence features introduced (and subsequently scrapped; 10.7 does it very differently) in MacOS 10.4.

Re: Retina MacBook Pro Review: The Age of the High-Resolution PC

#25

Post by UnoriginalGuy »

MetaCosm wrote: post #12

As someone who has used a retina display in daylight, it is unusable (bring up a black terminal, it is a goddamn mirror). It only compares favorably with the notoriously horrible apple glossy displays... well know for having some of the worst imaginable glare problems (unusable in many office overhead lighting situations). How the author found this better than the matte screen is beyond me. That all said, I am happy…

Can this kind of decoupling be accomplished on Windows and or Linux?

I just ask because I have a 1920x1080 (native) resolution LCD which looks wonderful in Movies and Games, but makes text and other OS artefacts unusable small.

Windows will let you set the text size (Medium, Large) but all this seems to accomplish is to break all non-native applications (e.g. force text off of the right hand side of the drawable area).

It would be wonderful if I purchased for example a 2048x1536 display which Windows could run in 1024x768 "mode" but with four times the pixels per every dot of content on the screen.

Re: Retina MacBook Pro Review: The Age of the High-Resolution PC

#26

Post by UnoriginalGuy »

lawnchair_larry wrote: post #22
calpaterson wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Surface http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Natural_keyboard http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LifeCam http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_SideWinder http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xbox

All whitelabel products.

The X-Box is a whitelabel product?

Re: Retina MacBook Pro Review: The Age of the High-Resolution PC

#28

Post by lucian1900 »

UnoriginalGuy wrote: post #25
MetaCosm wrote: post #12

As someone who has used a retina display in daylight, it is unusable (bring up a black terminal, it is a goddamn mirror). It only compares favorably with the notoriously horrible apple glossy displays... well know for having some of the worst imaginable glare problems (unusable in many office overhead lighting situations). How the author found this better than the matte screen is beyond me. That all said, I am happy…

Can this kind of decoupling be accomplished on Windows and or Linux? I just ask because I have a 1920x1080 (native) resolution LCD which looks wonderful in Movies and Games, but makes text and other OS artefacts unusable small. Windows will let you set the text size (Medium, Large) but all this seems to accomplish is to break all non-native applications (e.g. force text off of the right hand side of the drawable area…

Don't know about windows, but it certainly can be on Linux. The only problem is the marketing: people buy "HD" screens now.

Apple sells "retina" screens, and people buy them.

Our world is quite sad.

Re: Retina MacBook Pro Review: The Age of the High-Resolution PC

#29

Post by MetaCosm »

UnoriginalGuy wrote: post #26
lawnchair_larry wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All whitelabel products.

The X-Box is a whitelabel product?

Depends how you define it. But, X-Box (the original) was a PIII + Nvidia + Other PC Hardware... none of it made by Microsoft.

The 360 I give them more credit with, because they worked closer with partners and got off the WinTel brand... opting for PowerPC chips with ATI ... again, not manufacturing the hardware.

Re: Retina MacBook Pro Review: The Age of the High-Resolution PC

#30

Post by MetaCosm »

UnoriginalGuy wrote: post #25
MetaCosm wrote: post #12

As someone who has used a retina display in daylight, it is unusable (bring up a black terminal, it is a goddamn mirror). It only compares favorably with the notoriously horrible apple glossy displays... well know for having some of the worst imaginable glare problems (unusable in many office overhead lighting situations). How the author found this better than the matte screen is beyond me. That all said, I am happy…

Can this kind of decoupling be accomplished on Windows and or Linux? I just ask because I have a 1920x1080 (native) resolution LCD which looks wonderful in Movies and Games, but makes text and other OS artefacts unusable small. Windows will let you set the text size (Medium, Large) but all this seems to accomplish is to break all non-native applications (e.g. force text off of the right hand side of the drawable area…

It can't even really be accomplished well on OS-X yet. But I am delighted Apple is going for it, because the application will catch up.

Right now it works really well with Apple's font render engine, and not much else. But application developers will catch up -- as will Microsoft and Linux (some Linux mailing lists are already blowing up with how to handle it). X can handle it no problems, it is the libraries that can't.

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