What the vendors will ask themselves is if they really need it.

Some older apps don't support it nicely, but pretty much every major program made in the past 5-7 years handles it fine.

I think OEMs haven't offered them more because the consumers weren't asking for it. Unlike a phone or tablet, where you're using it 1-2 feet from your eyes, most PC monitors and laptops are at least 3 feet from your eyes. 96dpi is fine for that distance. HDTVs are even worse: a 1080p 50" TV is only 44dpi, but it's okay because most people are watching 6-10 feet away.

So, while Apple has that beautiful hardware, OSX is still not as good as Windows 7 (and 8) handling different resolutions.

He said he is switching to Mac for the display resolution.

In my current line of work, I actually blow up 1px to 200x200 to make sure everything is pixel perfect. So, I suppose I will just press ctrl+ few more times.

13 hours ago, PaoloM wrote

Especially seeing as Mountain Lion doesn't really have a concept of a universal "retina-like" resolution. Regular apps are just pixel-doubled (like iPhone apps on an iPad) and you have to write special code to use the high resolution. Think about it as addressing a special graphics card that has special drivers per application.

So, while Apple has that beautiful hardware, OSX is still not as good as Windows 7 (and 8) handling different resolutions.

I don't think that's strictly true.

If you have used ObjectiveC/Cocoa to write the application, then the special code is little more than adding high-res artwork and any custom UI elements you've written to the bundle and letting the OS pick the right set. This is why quite a few apps were made 'retina-ready' before the new Macbook was launched; that, and the fact that Apple has been brow-beating its developer community to use relative positioning on layouts for years. The notable exceptions will be apps that don't use the Cocoa frameworks the way Apple intended or don't use it at all: Adobe CS (though they are aiming to fix this as soon as possible) and Google Chrome (Google is already working on it apparently).

When the user picks a particular screen resolution, OSX will actually render the screen at the next higher supported resolution and then scale the UI elements and artwork for that resolution downward on the fly, rather than trying to scale existing artwork upward. And from the folk who have looked at it already, the effect is quite stunning. You basically get a pin-sharp UI at non-native resolutions. A rather interesting take on the resolution independence problem. When it comes to supporting higher resolutions in the future (if there is a need), the developer supplies more artwork and the operating system works out the details. RI has been an obsession of Apple's for years, and I don't think they're quite done with it yet.

Now when I select non-native resolutions on my Win7 box, the effect is not all that pleasing, so I'll be interested to see what the same trick looks like on the new Macbook. 

For me though, this wasn't the most interesting news from the WWDC. If I were an IT pundit then I'd pay a lot more attention to what Apple has planned for Passbook. With all the excitement over the new laptop, the maps, the crap upgrade for the Mac Pro; the IT press missed that Cook mentioned Cupertino has 400 million active credit cards on file – and he felt the need to mention it twice.

4 hours ago, Ray7 wrote

Cook mentioned Cupertino has 400 million active credit cards on file – and he felt the need to mention it twice.

Isn't that fairly meaningless though? IIRC every owner of an iDevice (at least iPod, iPhone,iPad) has to activate it with a credit card before they can use it, regardless as to whether or not they subscribe to anything Apple provides. I'm annoyed enough when a company that had good cause to require my card details (I paid for something) stores them indefinitely - let alone when they don't really need them in the first place. Yet another reason to hate that company.

2 hours ago, GoddersUK wrote

*snip*

Isn't that fairly meaningless though? IIRC every owner of an iDevice (at least iPod, iPhone,iPad) has to activate it with a credit card before they can use it, regardless as to whether or not they subscribe to anything Apple provides. I'm annoyed enough when a company that had good cause to require my card details (I paid for something) stores them indefinitely - let alone when they don't really need them in the first place. Yet another reason to hate that company.

Mmmm, no. You need an account to activate the device, but you don't need to give them your card details until you actually buy something. And since he stressed the word 'active' then I imagine they discount cards that aren't in regular use (depending on how Apple defines 'regular').

Personal information may be kept for no longer than is necessary and must be kept up to date. 

Data may only be used for the specific purposes for which it was collected.

I suspect active simply means that the expiry date on Apple's file hasn't lapsed. 

13 hours ago, giovanni wrote

Being one who really likes high quality images and graphics, I like the concept of retina displays, but what is the cost in term of file size, bandwidth and battery life? I would like to know.

I think the answer to that is 'huge'. Here's an image of the inside of the new Macbook:

Beautifully put together, but if I'm not mistaken, almost half the internal space is taken up by the custom battery cells. That (and the removal of the hard drive and optical disk) is what it takes to keep this machine running for seven hours without a recharge.

Does make you think.

14 hours ago, GoddersUK wrote

@Ray7: I don't own an iDevice myself but that's not what I have heard from owners or read in the media (I've seen several stories like that). (Although apparently that's changed now.) I'd be interested to know how the policy of requiring someone to use a card to buy an iDevice and then holding their card details on file would stand up to UK data protection legislation which requires that (I know they did this in the UK too...)

Even if Apple was prepared to break UK law in such a blatantly obvious way, I don't think it would make much difference here: an active iAccount needs an id and an email address to set up, neither of which is asked for in the shop. (They can send you a receipt through email, but this doesn't tie you to an account and it's not compulsory). The credit card alone isn't enough for them to secretly set up an online store account for you.

And I have bought an iPod Touch and an iPad fairly recently from our local Apple Store

I suspect active simply means that the expiry date on Apple's file hasn't lapsed. 

Well, they apparently have one of the most active online shops in the UK so I suspect 'active' means that it has seen card activity in the last three months. 

http://www.anandtech.com/show/6008/windows-8-on-the-retina-display-macbook-pro

6 hours ago, Ray7 wrote

*snip*

I think the answer to that is 'huge'. Here's an image of the inside of the new Macbook:

Beautifully put together, but if I'm not mistaken, almost half the internal space is taken up by the custom battery cells. That (and the removal of the hard drive and optical disk) is what it takes to keep this machine running for seven hours without a recharge.

Does make you think.

 

That many batteries can't come cheap, either....

The biggest limitation I see is that most of the web today contains low resolution raster images which make this technology superfluous. I wonder what will happen.

32 minutes ago, giovanni wrote

The biggest limitation I see is that most of the web today contains low resolution raster images which make this technology superfluous. I wonder what will happen.

Probably the same thing when TV went HD....channels and programs slowly came over. Now we have shows like The Simpsons and Family Guy being done in HD.

Which reminds me that Star Trek:TNG is coming out in HD soon on BlueRay

A lot of people praise the size and the ability to read documents without using a magnifying glasses.

34 minutes ago, Harlequin wrote

Which reminds me that Star Trek:TNG is coming out in HD soon on BlueRay

Thank you! I had forgotten. Is it true they went back to the original film master? Hopefully the sets don't look too cheesy in HD. I saw a TOS episode in HD and couldn't stop staring at the cheap cardboard everywhere.

4 hours ago, giovanni wrote

The biggest limitation I see is that most of the web today contains low resolution raster images which make this technology superfluous. I wonder what will happen.

Well, the few designers I know are pretty excited about everything except the bandwidth implications. It's a great step forward, I'm told. :-/

Turns out that they're shaped to stop the fans generating noise at a constant, annoying pitch. 

Nice touch. 

I have a 1920x1080 LCD. I have to have Text Size at Medium because Large breaks in damn near everything. I also have to CTRL+ most web-pages/images because the initial display is tiny (even with the browser's size turned up).   

Operating Systems and software just aren't designed for resolutions this high. I think a lot of people who claim they can read normal fonts on 1920x1080 resolution must have super-human vision or only spend 20 minutes in front of the computer at a time.  

Honestly computing was better when everything was 1024x768, the only things that benefit from the resolution boom are movies and games. 

15 minutes ago, ManipUni wrote

I'm not excited by these displays - all it means is that fonts are even more unreadable and even more stuff breaks than before.

But apple just doubled the specs in both dimensions. Fonts are exactly the same size as on old MacBooks, except sharper. I'd argue that makes them more readable. It's like how the iPhone 4's screen resolution was quadrupled but everything was still the same size. It's just sharper.

Also, I have no problems reading text on my 27" 1920x1080 display at home and 24" 1920x1200 display at work. And I have regular eyes for a 30-year-old. My laptop is a different matter though, that's 1920x1080 at 13", so I have to run that at high DPI. It breaks some things, but overall it works well enough.

I can read it fine, but it gives me eye-strain and headaches after just a few hours.    

I assume the new display will have fonts at 1/2 the size in real terms than the old one because they've doubled the resolution in both directions. 

32 minutes ago, ManipUni wrote

@Sven Groot: Grats for you?    

I can read it fine, but it gives me eye-strain and headaches after just a few hours.    

I assume the new display will have fonts at 1/2 the size in real terms than the old one because they've doubled the resolution in both directions. 

Not sure I follow you. They have doubled the resolution but will be displaying them at the same size. As Sven Groot says, they will appear the same size but will be much sharper, which will make them easier to work with over long periods.  If you change to a non native resolution, then the OS should still give you a display which looks sharp enough to be native still. 

It still looks like overkill to me, but better to  aim higher if you can. 

4 hours ago, ManipUni wrote

I assume the new display will have fonts at 1/2 the size in real terms than the old one because they've doubled the resolution in both directions. 

Then you are assuming wrong. They've doubled the resolution, but are also basically using 200% DPI settings. Everything will be the same size as before, but sharper.

I've owned an iPhone 3G (pre-retina display) and currently own an iPhone 4 (with retina display). The latter has double the resolution of the former, but everything is still the same size. And the difference in clarity, especially for text, is stunning. If screen-reading currently causes eye-strain for you, then increasing the resolution (without altering the physical font size) will only improve that.

Text actually benefits far more from high-DPI than movies or games.

When I heard the term for the first time, I thought they have made some sort projector that beams the picture directly onto the eye. Then I found out that they increased the dots on the screen..

Now that hosting an mp3 on a server is podcasting, increasing the resolution is "retina display" and adding comments on a site is web 2.0, - it doesn't surprise me that uploading your documents to a 99 cent hoster is called cloud computing nowadys.

Maybe I should write a Metro IRC client and and call it "Caster", and every hapless * who uses it would be "wordcasting" when typing, and "cloudcasting" when sending files. IRC itself would be never mentioned in the app, the network would be called retina-net 2, and the servers "retina-clouds" ("retina 2" because it all works in f*cking REAL TIME - Just as your eye movements! w00t!).

But I think you take it too far. Podcasting is a thing. When people talk about podcasts they're talking about a kind of programming delivered in a particular way. It is the modern replacement of radio shows. Streaming is used to broadly describe the delivery of MP3 (music) over the wire.    

Web 2.0 typically means using AJAX/JSON to deliver contents to pages in-line without requiring reloading the page. It is particularly useful for operations like error checking and real-time updates of content (where the loss of the back-button isn't relevant anyway).   

Cloud is an over-used term: but it is largely driven by a very real shift in technology and trends. The problem "cloud" has is that it is sometimes use to describe the storage of data on a third party server but other times used to describe the operation of servers as VMs. As I said it is over-used. 

4 minutes ago, ManipUni wrote

Web 2.0 typically means using AJAX/JSON to deliver contents to pages in-line without requiring reloading the page.

Just what I said. Take a decade old tech (since when was the xmlhttprequest object available? IE 5?). and hype it with a BS term.

You're also clearly wrong. The hypists define just about everything as web 2.0 nowadays. From bullying on facebook to writing comments about huge knockers on youporn.

@Sven Groot: That would be great if OS X and Windows could do that, but they cannot. At least not without introducing issues. 

True in the general case yeah (although I'm mostly fine running at 120DPI on my laptop, there's only one or two applications that I use that don't work right).

But apple doubled the resolution, which makes it simple. Apps that explicitly state that they support the high resolution get to use it. Apps that don't simply get scaled 200%. That's how the iPhone did it. That's how the iPad did it. And that's how OSX is now also doing it.

It means that for some time, you mostly get apps with slightly fuzzy graphics (at worst, they look the same as they did on the lower resolution display), although the text will still be super-sharp in almost all applications. But over time, more and more will support the high resolution.

Safari will do the same for the web, and simply apply a 200% zoom level to all pages. I assume there's some way for pages to provide high-res graphics if they want, though that I don't know about.

3 hours ago, wastingtimewithforums wrote

*snip*

You're also clearly wrong.

How can someone be wrong about a term that is still evolving to what will eventually be a definition?

I think there are personal and external factors which make one more strongly susceptible to the computer display eye strain. Important such factors I believe are: slower ability to accommodate/focus (needs constant practise preferably before it becomes slow), indoor air quality, lack or excess of some things in the body that the eye uses.

However, those who are suscept, report that different display technologies have large effect on the strain. eg. If you configured the room and the lcd, crt, oled & eink displays in the room to display text as similarly as you could, I suspect that the suscept persons still would find the eink and a regular book least eye straining, assuming ambient light was say scattered/indirect cloudy day light.