The Retina War is upon us. • Hacker News Board

Re: The Retina War is upon us.

#91

Post by SwellJoe » Tue, Jul 17, 2012, 3:15 PM UTC

wonderzombie wrote: post #85

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 reso…

The first display I browsed the web on was 640x400 (an Amiga) at 14" (but it was a 5:4 display, so it was bigger in surface area than a 14" 16:9 or 1.85:1 widescreen display, closer to 15" or 16" today). I'm currently browsing the web on a 15" 1080P display.

(640 * 400) / (1920 * 1080) = 0.123

As I mentioned, we have "gone retina" a few times since the beginning of the web.

And, it's not that I don't like it. Of course I like it. I just explained that I went out of my way to obtain a 1080P laptop. I once went to great lengths (custom cable, huge and complicated custom X configuration file) to hook up a massive 75 lb workstation monitor to my PC because I wanted a really high resolution display. It's just that I think it is ridiculous to freak out about something that follows the natural progression of technology that we've been following for decades.

Re: The Retina War is upon us.

#92

Post by SwellJoe » Tue, Jul 17, 2012, 3:17 PM UTC

ramblerman wrote: post #88

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.

You're exhibiting a severe lack of historical context.

My first display for browsing the web was 14" at 640x400. I currently browse on a 15" 1080P display.

Re: The Retina War is upon us.

#93

Post by SwellJoe » Tue, Jul 17, 2012, 3:33 PM UTC

zokier wrote: post #87

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…

My first display for browsing the web was 640x400 at 14". My current display is 1920x1080 at 15" widescreen. That's a more than 8-fold increase in pixel count, and dramatically larger than the difference between current displays and "Retina". Yes, it's a big step in one go...the strong brand of "HD" and "1080P", and the cost of increasing density, seems to have caused the market to pause at that setting for a while. But, this is the natural progression of computer displays toward higher resolution. It is not a miracle.

"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."

My guess is you never worked on games, video, or graphics software, during the switch from CRT to LCD. The way these display types behave is quite different. Colors are different. The speed at which pixels change state is (or was) vastly different. If you cared about how your software looked, and it tickled any of these differences, you tested on both and you tried to find a happy middle ground.

The change from 5:4 to 16:9 was also somewhat serious for developers.

I'm not saying a doubling of display resolution isn't awesome (it is!). Just that it is not a "sky is falling!" situation, and it's overly dramatic to act like it is. We've seen all of this before; or at least, those of us who've been around for a little while have seen all this before. Those who are too young to remember it should probably look to the past for guidance rather than acting like this is an unprecedented historical moment requiring heroic efforts to overcome.

Re: The Retina War is upon us.

#94

Post by FireBeyond » Tue, Jul 17, 2012, 6:41 PM UTC

2muchcoffeeman wrote: post #75

Swizec wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just so you know, a whole bunch of laptops have been coming with "retina" displays for years now. They'd call it a "Full HD" laptop so it doesn't sound as shiny, but it's still a 15 or 17 inch screen with a 1920x1080 resolution.

To put it into better perspective, put the resolutions into google: (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. Apple is definitely the first to put a display of this density into a consumer produc…

No, definitely not. IBM sold a 22" 3840x2400 (205ppi) LCD monitor over a decade ago.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_T220/T221_LCD_monitors

Panasonic has also launched a 20" 3840x2160 IPS LCD display, too.

Re: The Retina War is upon us.

#95

Post by FireBeyond » Tue, Jul 17, 2012, 6:57 PM UTC

robin_reala wrote: post #89

wmf wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

So basically 15 ppi, then - your comment reads as someone trying to exaggerate the difference - the T220 was 205 ppi, and some of Apple's Retina devices are 221 ppi, a grand difference of merely 7% - well, seven per cent and eleven years.

Re: The Retina War is upon us.

#96

Post by ScottBurson » Tue, Jul 17, 2012, 8:25 PM UTC

rorrr wrote: post #78

ScottBurson wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

These screens are insanely expensive, and wouldn't make much sense. Nobody is looking at 27" monitors from such a small distance to distinguish between retina and simply good resolution. Plus, I don't think there are affordable video cards to drive resolutions like 5120x2880.

Well, you make a good point. For comparison, my 17" MBP is at 133 ppi (1920x1200), while the base 15" is 110 ppi, and so the Retina 15" is 220 ppi. If you wanted the 17" screen to be around 220 ppi, you could go with 3072x1920, which would noticeably easier to make and to drive than 3840x2400. Given that full-size screens are usually viewed from farther away than laptop screens, I think it's fair to offer this as a "Retina" resolution for a 24" 8:5 screen.

Similarly, the 27" 16:9 screen could come in at maybe 3584x2016.