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Pixel Perfect

daringfireball.net

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Re: Pixel Perfect

#91

Post by Synaesthesia »

reitzensteinm wrote: post #78
lloeki wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Still, we're talking about a Xeon here, not your typical desktop-variant Core Something. It was a powerhouse.

The benchmarks were lightly threaded, for which Xeons basically offer no advantage - they let you have more cores in a machine, and that's about all. For rendering and encoding, the 12 core 2010 Mac Pros would still slaughter a retina MBP. No competition. There are many impressive things about the retina MBP, but CPU performance is not one of them.

I would say the CPU performance is very impressive, sure a 12 core will beat it at rendering, but the single threaded performance is amazing, and the super fast SSD makes it basically the fastest Mac ever in general usage.

Re: Pixel Perfect

#92

Post by seanalltogether »

FrankBooth wrote: post #13
heretohelp wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let me just be straight up. I'm normally an Apple skeptic and I work primarily on Linux. That said, I don't think anybody else would've bothered to make retina display available to the general public until Apple forced their hand and made it available themselves...

That said, I don't think anybody else would've bothered to make retina display available to the general public until Apple forced their hand and made it available themselves... The technology was coming, it was just a matter of time. Apple are in the unique position of controlling both the hardware and the software, which makes it far easier for them release this in a nice way where the OS and much of the software wo…

It's been a matter of time for 10 years now.

Re: Pixel Perfect

#93

Post by iaskwhy »

reedlaw wrote: post #66
panacea wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Un-anti-aliased (aliased?) Verdana at a certain size (11 or 12 point? Can't recall) was the very best pixellated optimised font for the web when Gruber designed his blog. He hasn't redesigned since.

His blog is nearly unreadable on my non-retina display. I can only imagine how small the font looks on a Macbook Pro.

You can change it via a link at the bottom to http://daringfireball.net/preferences/

Re: Pixel Perfect

#94

Post by tathagata »

chj wrote: post #86
sbierwagen wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's pure marketing. There's no objective, measurable difference.

I remember reading a post several days ago, mentioning that particular font face could help a paper score higher.

This is from very long back. In school, I once passed an exam on grace marks given because of my graceful handwriting (this was writing in the 'Devanagari' script, which even naturally allows for more calligraphy than the Roman script).

Re: Pixel Perfect

#95

Post by doe88 »

ghshephard wrote: post #83
bitcartel wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

+1 How many of these blogger/journalists have broken real stories? Future of Mac Pro anybody? Sure, they like to name drop and whisper about 'informed sources' but the truth is they have nothing of substance to report. Everything is gossip, speculation, or parroting of press releases.

I don't think Gruber would ever claim that he's a journalist. Nor that he's in the business to break stories. He brings a certain wit, and skill at writing, to observe all things Apple. His article are traditionally read by those who love the platform - it's unclear to me why people who aren't enthusiasts for the Apple platform would read his blog - as that is the audience his articles are targeted at. Back when he s…

  Nor that he's in the business to break stories.
Indeed. I think this write is what it seems to be his review of rMBP. So he waited more than one month and half before delivering his take on the new laptop. Hardly seeking to break stories.

Re: Pixel Perfect

#96

Post by mturmon »

kenjackson wrote: post #55

I'm probably just blind, but I have trouble seeing the difference in display quality based on resolution. And I don't think I'm alone. When I was at the Apple Store after they launched the new iPad, there were several people who confused the iPad 2 for the new iPad. And even after being shown they were looking at the wrong one didn't go, "Oh... this one looks much better!", rather I heard from multiple people a line…

You are of course not truly alone, but you must be unusual.

As an example, consider the upvote/downvote arrows on this site. They have very fuzzy boundaries on my laptop (128 ppi). It almost looks smudged. They are perfectly clear on my new iPad (264 ppi).

This is not surprising, it's 2x the resolution in each direction.

Re: Pixel Perfect

#97

Post by mturmon »

SCdF wrote: post #15

So more pixels is great. Is it really that great? I feel like there are people who look at their devices and people who look at what's displayed on their devices. For me, text is text is text. I'm looking at it, not so I can enjoy how crisp it is (or isn't), but so I can consume those words and get them inside my head. I find (I've played around with high DPI devices) that while they do look nice, the niceness is qui…

Don't forget about data visualization. The dense display is great for time series work (even a small, 1000-point time series can overwhelm a standard-density laptop display), or for image analysis.

Of course, the great-looking text is certainly a plus as well.

Re: Pixel Perfect

#98

Post by klausa »

delackner wrote: post #73
cageface wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I started reading him in the mid-2010's but his utter lack of objectivity lost him a place in my RSS aggregator long ago. If I want to read perceptive analysis of Apple products I prefer to read real, objective journalists like John Siracusa.

You are welcome to your opinion, but on your suggestion I just went and looked at John Siracusa's blog and for this entire year we have: 1: a discussion about various ways you can read his Mountain Lion Review. 2: How to cook pasta. 3: summer movies. 4: summary of 2011. That's it. He writes also on Ars. In 2012, he has posted a single article, his review of Mountain Lion. Might I ask, and I am being completely sincer…

John Siracusa has weekly podcast on 5by5 network, Hypercritical[1]. That's where most of his "perceptive analysis of apple products" come from.

[1] http://5by5.tv/hypercritical

Re: Pixel Perfect

#99

Post by ZeroGravitas »

mturmon wrote: post #96
kenjackson wrote: post #55

I'm probably just blind, but I have trouble seeing the difference in display quality based on resolution. And I don't think I'm alone. When I was at the Apple Store after they launched the new iPad, there were several people who confused the iPad 2 for the new iPad. And even after being shown they were looking at the wrong one didn't go, "Oh... this one looks much better!", rather I heard from multiple people a line…

You are of course not truly alone , but you must be unusual. As an example, consider the upvote/downvote arrows on this site. They have very fuzzy boundaries on my laptop (128 ppi). It almost looks smudged. They are perfectly clear on my new iPad (264 ppi). This is not surprising, it's 2x the resolution in each direction.

It surprises me. The upvotes and downvotes are gif images, so all you're seeing is a blown up gif. I'm just in the process of replacing similar triangular gifs with near identical looking Unicode characters precisely so that it will look better on mobile devices that make more use of zoom. And in my experience (on iphone, iPad and Android phones and tablets, though admittedly not the new retina MBP) the current gifs look pretty bad when blown up.

I think you've fallen for a placebo and somehow prefer the blurry resized images to the "pixel-perfect" originals.

Re: Pixel Perfect

#100

Post by ZeroGravitas »

danbee wrote: post #88
kenjackson wrote: post #55

I'm probably just blind, but I have trouble seeing the difference in display quality based on resolution. And I don't think I'm alone. When I was at the Apple Store after they launched the new iPad, there were several people who confused the iPad 2 for the new iPad. And even after being shown they were looking at the wrong one didn't go, "Oh... this one looks much better!", rather I heard from multiple people a line…

Your eye sight must be terrible. The retina iPad is a vast improvement over the iPad 2 for me.

Note that the whole point of the "retina" branding is that at a certain distance you will no longer see any improvement as you move further back. If those people were standing sufficiently far back (as you might when looking at a store display iPad) then the retina effect will kick in.
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