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The Retina War is upon us.

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Re: The Retina War is upon us.

#81

Post by pooriaazimi »

ScottBurson wrote: post #52
rorrr wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Search for "Catleap" or "Qnix" on e-bay. 2560x1440px 27" IPS displays at $295 (free shipping). http://www.ebay.com/itm/New-Qnix-27-LED-Monitor-Full-HD-2560... http://www.ebay.com/itm/New-Qnix-27-LED-Monitor-Full-HD-2560... http://www.ebay.com/itm/27-Inch-New-Potalion-2710QW-2560x144... http://www.ebay.com/itm/New-Tempered-Glass-27-Yamakasi-Catle...

But the Retina MBP is already past that resolution on a 15" screen (2880x1800). If "Retina" means 2x the standard resolution, we'd need 24" monitors at 3840x2400 and 27" monitors at 5120x2880. I wonder if even Thunderbolt could drive that.

> I wonder if even Thunderbolt could drive that.

It can't.

http://www.marco.org/2012/06/22/predicting-mac-desktops

"" - If a 27” Retina Display is a “2X” version of the current panel, that’s a 5120x2880 panel — running that at 60 Hz requires more bandwidth (over 21 Gbps for 24-bit color) than Thunderbolt offers today (up to two 10 Gbps channels).""

Re: The Retina War is upon us.

#82

Post by cmelbye »

ilaksh wrote: post #16

Just to clarify, Retina is an Apple brand for a screen with a significantly increased resolution and high pixel density. Its definitely a brand name, so lets not confuse that. Maybe just refer to the actual pixels per inch or even easier, the screen size/type and resolution. MacBook Pro 2012: 2880×1800 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Retina_display

I think the generic term would be something like "HiDPI display".

Re: The Retina War is upon us.

#84

Post by DeepDuh »

Macha wrote: post #73
hapless wrote: post #36

This is hilarious. Pro tip: not all your users are graphic designers. It may be the case that the author, and everyone he knows, has new "retina" products from Apple. That's wonderful. But it can't be taken to represent a broader userbase. It seems to me that the web's mainstream properties are built for workers in large corporations to fiddle with when they should be working. Most of these people have 1280x1024, 96…

1280x1024? Do you have any data for that? 1366x768 would strike me as the much more likely resolution. The "normal" users I know are split into two groups - those with newish cheap 15" laptops, which are all 1366x768, or those with ancient desktops at 1024x768, or worse, 800x600 because they stumbled on the resolution setting and used it as a way to make things bigger.

Don't say this is the user's fault though. People with weak eyesight NEED to get stuff bigger and because of tons legacy software even Windows 7 can't really help you with scaling. Scaling the resolution is still the only really viable option for these people.

In fact, Apple's way of scaling by internally doubling the resolution on retina displays is the most useful way of scaling I've seen so far. It gives you an -almost- crisp image for 3 different scaled settings and one perfectly crisp image for the retina resolution.

Re: The Retina War is upon us.

#85

Post by wonderzombie »

SwellJoe wrote: post #80

This change will not be dramatic like this. "Retina Display" is a "very high resolution display". It is not magical. It is not a fundamental technological shift. It is only Apple fanboyism that makes it seem that way. There have been "very high resolution displays" at the front edge of PC tech for decades, and the Internet has scaled slowly but surely to meet our current middle ground (probably approaching 1080p on d…

Like someone else says downthread (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4253475):

(1920 * 1080) / (2880 * 1800) = 0.4 Your 1080p 15" display contains just 40% of the pixels of a single Retina 15" display. They even showed this in the demo. They edited a 1080p video in Final Cut at full resolution and there was plenty of room left for UI elements.

---

Retina stuff isn't supposed to be remarkable just because the resolution is higher. It's remarkable because there are drastically more pixels in the same size screen.

The reason why folks are talking about this as if it's different is because cramming that many more pixels in the same amount of space requires some technology for it not to get all screwed up. It's not a modest jump from, say, 1024 to 1280, the progression you're describe. It's from 1920 to 2880. That's big. You might not like it because it came from Apple and Apple people like it but it does matter.

Re: The Retina War is upon us.

#86

Post by scotty79 »

stan_rogers wrote: post #67
scotty79 wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Resolution is only thing that matters. It tells how much information you can cram into a screen. If pixels are too large move back. If they are too small move closer. If your screen is glued to the keyboard. Detach it. Like in asus transformer.

The point of these displays is to (eventually) get away from slavery to the pixel. Just because a printer can render, say, 4800 dpi, doesn't mean you want to render your body copy in a 1pt text (which it can do with better letter-shape fidelity than any of my old dot-matrix impact printers); you still print at 9 or 10 points and enjoy sharper and better-defined type. Moving to high-linear-resolution screens does the…

Decorative visual information is still information and how much you can fit in a screen depends on it's resolution not dpi. To enjoy smoother visuals you just have to move away a bit from big screen.

Re: The Retina War is upon us.

#87

Post by zokier »

SwellJoe wrote: post #80

This change will not be dramatic like this. "Retina Display" is a "very high resolution display". It is not magical. It is not a fundamental technological shift. It is only Apple fanboyism that makes it seem that way. There have been "very high resolution displays" at the front edge of PC tech for decades, and the Internet has scaled slowly but surely to meet our current middle ground (probably approaching 1080p on d…

> Note that on a modern display, these graphics are tiny, and the site itself only takes up about a 5th of the page (if that much). We've "gone Retina" maybe three or four times since 1997, we just didn't have Apple telling us that doubling display resolution was an epochal shift in computing technology and a legion of fans to carry forth the message.

Display pixel density (some call it resolution, a term that is bit overloaded these days) has been hovering at 100 PPI for a long time. There has been almost zero development in that area. Even in the old CRT days, 19" screens were used at 1600x1200 (roughly 100PPI), and almost all desktop monitors since have been 200 PPI. I'd call that a fundamental technological shift.

> Final point: The shift from CRT to LCD was much more dramatic than this shift, and we all made it through. Scaremongering is pointless.

Did you live an alternative history? There was almost no change in the outputted picture in CRT->LCD transition. And especially very little change that required attention of software developers.

Re: The Retina War is upon us.

#88

Post by ramblerman »

SwellJoe wrote: post #80

This change will not be dramatic like this. "Retina Display" is a "very high resolution display". It is not magical. It is not a fundamental technological shift. It is only Apple fanboyism that makes it seem that way. There have been "very high resolution displays" at the front edge of PC tech for decades, and the Internet has scaled slowly but surely to meet our current middle ground (probably approaching 1080p on d…

you're confusing resolution with dpi.

Re: The Retina War is upon us.

#89

Post by robin_reala »

wmf wrote: post #25
dangrossman wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Was there any factory capable of producing 15" panels with 220+ LEDs per inch ten years ago?

IBM (now Sony) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_T220/T221_LCD_monitors (BTW, LCD != LED.)

The T220s were very nice monitors, but they just tipped over the 200dpi mark, not the 220+ one.

Re: The Retina War is upon us.

#90

Post by idspispopd »

ori_b wrote: post #35

The solution is what it always was. Design in units like 'em's, don't override the user defaults, and let the page scale however the end user wants. This not only accomodates the retina/non-retina split, it lets users with bad eyesight increase the font size and still be able to read things. Images? That's a bit harder, but it's not the end of the world. Vector images are useful here, but for higher detail raster ima…

I agree, designing in pixels has always been the wrong way to go about it. It is only needed when there is a restriction in the number of pixels available to work with(such as displays that have large pixels.)

The beauty of high pixel density screens is that we can literally output our vectors/high resolution rasters to the output size and not have to worry about massaging individual pixels for the best clarity. The advent of high pixel density screens allows us to exclusively think in terms of the end size on screen, instead of being bogged down with pixels dimensions. This high density makes design easier, not harder. Also the concept of different pixel densities is not new, screens have always had different pixel densities.

The reliable thing about 'retina' screens is that we can think of the pixel problem as 'solved' and just prepare artwork to pass the retina test, instead of trying to match it perfectly for every higher pixel density out there. (A level of accuracy that won't be easily seen by the user.) The same thing is done in print everyday, 300 dpi, 600 dpi, 800 dpi, it doesn't matter, past a certain point the end user isn't going to casually notice the extra detail.

Designers that have been working in print would see the analogy to various print device resolutions which are each measured in lines per inch. Again the approach is to think in terms of the final dimensions, and not get bogged down with the individual device resolutions.

I understand that designing for 1x can be problematic, but it's the same workflow as designing for any foreign pixel ratio/pixel density (such as non square pixels used in certain types of film.) It's just another step in the work flow and testing often on a device is useful way for the designer gets the hang of it.

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