Linus Torvalds Advocates For 2560x1600 Standard Laptop Displays 661
beeudoublez points out a Google+ post by Linus Torvalds arguing that today's standard laptop display resolution is unreasonably low. He said, "...with even a $399 tablet doing 2560x1600 pixel displays, can we please just make that the new standard laptop resolution? Even at 11"? Please. Stop with the 'retina' crap, just call it 'reasonable resolution.' The fact that laptops stagnated ten years ago (and even regressed, in many cases) at around half that in both directions is just sad. I still don't want big luggable laptops, but that 1366x768 is so last century."
Agree 100% (Score:5, Informative)
My 7 year old laptop had a 1920x1200 resolution and when I bought a new one a few months ago I had to look all over just to find one that had a 1920x1080 resolution.
Re:Agree 100% (Score:5, Interesting)
My 7 year old laptop had a 1920x1200 resolution and when I bought a new one a few months ago I had to look all over just to find one that had a 1920x1080 resolution.
We share the same gripe. This was posted from my 8½ year old laptop, which also has WUXGA (1920x1200) resolution. I'm holding out on replacing it until I can get something with more pixels. Shortscreen FHD (1920x1080) is a step downwards, while I want to go upwards in pixels. Luckily, Xubuntu 12.04 runs fine on this old hardware.
Re:Agree 100% (Score:5, Informative)
And my 24/28" monitors weren't anything special, under $500 a few years ago.
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I, too have a 28" 1920x1200... I had been looking for a better quality one (one which can letterbox 1920x1080 so that my PS3 isn't vertically stretched) but I gave up after realizing I can't even find something *as good* as the one I have. When this goes I'll probably do something weird like use a 1080p TV as my primary display and an old 20" widescreen rotated 90 degrees for web browsing / document viewing...
Triple head vs. 3D (Score:3)
Yeah, thanks for making me feel bad for breaking not one but two of my nice 1920x1200 LCDs.
OTOH, 1920x1080 is getting cheap enough that you could grab 2 or even 3 for the price of one WUXGA display. Which makes me want to work and/or play three screens...
http://techreport.com/review/23217/triple-screen-gaming-on-today-graphics-cards [techreport.com]
But since I'm a cheapskate, I just picked up a handful of cheap 19" - 21" CRTs from craigslist for between $5 - $20 each.
For laptops, I would just as soon try to set up
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Whats so weird about using a HDTV as a monitor? I've been using my 40" 1080P Bravia for a few yeas now after I got it on sale. Almost all GFX cards and newer notebooks ( including many netbooks ) output directly to HDMI so it makes it stupid easy to connect to pretty much any random TV made in the last what, something like 5-6 years?
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I've got a 25.5" monitor (a Samsung T260HD) and an Acer monitor (the Sammy was discontinued when I replaced my other screen). Both are 1920x1200. I've been looking into displays again to upgrade to 3D for gaming, and they max out at 1080p. Even if I want to drop $1K on a monitor, if you want 3D 1080p is as good as it gets. as far as I'm concerned that's a downgrade. I need the vertical screen estate for actual work.
Re:Agree 100% (Score:4, Informative)
Yay for Yamakasi and Crossover. Why isn't any of the big boys importing them yet? I'm a little hesitant to buy on eBay with questionable warranty.
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Heck I have a 20" 1600x1200 monitor and it's great. Crazy to think to get larger screen which only hash out same resolution 7 years !
Dell U2412M (Score:3)
1920x1200, $369 regular price (but it goes on sale periodically)
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Shortscreen FHD (1920x1080) is a step downwards
No no, it's "HDTV", an upgrade! That's what happened, people wanted "HD" because it was an upgrade for their TV and thus computer displays went down to meet their expectations.
Re: (Score:3)
That's more resolution than my large screen lcd computer monitor at home...
The problem really is that the applications haven't caught up really and don't know how to deal with huge screen area, whereas on phones all the applications are brand new.
I actually use the higher resolution to shove in more windows rather than have the same number of windows smoothed to a degree where no human eye can detect the pixels anymore.
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Sorry, I can't accept their EULA.
Re:Agree 100% (Score:5, Informative)
There's just one reason why that wouldn't be very helpful:
Retina display MacBook Pro does not play nicely with Linux ... [geek.com]
Re:Agree 100% (Score:5, Interesting)
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No it didn't. The electronics would show a picture when fed such a signal, but the phosphor wasn't adequate to show all the pixels. I had a monitor in 1991 which would take 1600x1200 interlaced. The displayed picture wasn't worth a damn *and* it gave you headaches. It worked best 768x1024. Yeah, I've *always* written rows x columns. Just yesterday I learned that the qub
Re:Agree 100% (Score:4, Interesting)
I'm still discovering what my 1998 vintage, 21" Compaq P1210 can do. The last version of Mint, I discovered it doesn't top out at 1600x1200 - a new resolution of 1792x1344 came up in the drivers, and it seems to work. I think the phosphor can show that many pixels, because fonts got smaller but still readable.
Now, in 1998 when it was made, I don't think you could get 1600x1200; quite the futureproofed product.
Also, I have to keep it; it doubles as a catwarmer [cuug.ab.ca]
Re:Agree 100% (Score:4, Funny)
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Yes, I'm sure Linux is thrilled by the direction Apple is trying to push the softare industry.
Re:Agree 100% (Score:5, Insightful)
My 7 year old laptop had a 1920x1200 resolution and when I bought a new one a few months ago I had to look all over just to find one that had a 1920x1080 resolution.
Which is precisely why I went to a macbook. Apple isn't perfect, but goddamn they make sexy hardware.
Re:Agree 100% (Score:4, Informative)
Fair enough. I don't think many here would begrudge you buying Apple for the hardware. The quality and design are clearly very high. All the problems I hear about Apple are about it's walled garden (purely a software issue).
...and it's only iOS where you have to jailbreak to climb over the walls; for OS X you aren't obliged to run App Store apps (or even apps from "registered developers", although the Gatekeeper default setting requires that you control+click those and select "Open" to launch binaries downloaded from a network not signed by a registered developer - compile the binary yourself, or download it with something that doesn't slap a quarantine extended attribute on it, and that's not an issue, though).
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Unfortunately, the next Slashdot article will be about a design patent that Apple has on laptops with a high resolution.
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The race for "HD" televisions has ruined computer monitor selection. It's like most computer users didn't realize their computer monitors were higher-resolution than their new flat TVs, or they didn't realize the importance. It's utter crap what is available out there. Most of the available monitors seem to be 1920x1080; it's hard to find one with even 1200 rows, for example.
I will not be surprised when manufacturers bring back higher-resolution displays and couch them in MP-speak. We'll have 2MP displays
Re:Agree 100% (Score:4, Insightful)
The 16:9 format is cheaper to produce simply because it's the most produced screen format for the television market. Once that was standardized it was inevitable that the computer monitor market would follow rather than have the manufacturers produce a better screen at lower quantities for the computer industry.
Re:Agree 100% (Score:4, Informative)
It also doesn't help that monitors are sold by the diagonal of the screen, and by making them wider they can make the monitor smaller (by surface area) while still selling it at the same "size" (by diagonal measurement) as the old models.
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My 1080p 17" laptop shipped with scaling set to 125%.
Most things worked. Chrome didn't listen to it - it actually broke antialiasing, it looked like. Firefox scaled text but not images. A few programs had weirdness with the toolbars - they scaled up the text, but not graphics, so things kind of looked ugly. But everything else worked fine.
I still ended up disabling it, because I regularly plug in to a 22" 1080p monitor and a similar-DPI 1280x1024 monitor (or something like that). And 1080p on a 17" isn't th
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Definitely : ) The fonts look really good: http://www.freetype.org/freetype2/index.html [freetype.org]
Amen! (Score:4, Funny)
Go Linus!
Re:Amen! (Score:5, Informative)
While you're at it... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:While you're at it... (Score:5, Insightful)
How about 4K standard desktop resolution for 22" monitors? All this DPI fighting needs to leak over into desktops eventually.
Can your average onboard video card drive monitors at that resolution?
Re:While you're at it... (Score:5, Insightful)
If you can afford such a monitor, you also can afford a separate graphics card.
Re:While you're at it... (Score:5, Informative)
It's a shame you've been modded down. The answer is no, unfortunately. More so, there's also no current display cable standard capable of transmitting the resolutions needed for desktop monitors to be doubled up.
A few of examples:
The Intel HD {2000 | 2500 | 3000 | 4000} you'll find on pretty much all intel CPUs of late, and hence in 90% of desktop computers sold just now has a maximum framebuffer and texture size of 4096x4096. The road map for haswell and broadwell does not indicate this increasing. So for 27" monitors, where you'd want at least 5120x2880, that's simply not good enough.
Similarly, HDMI maxes out currently at 2560x1600, DVI at the same, and even Display Port at 3840x2160, so again – not good enough.
Re:While you're at it... (Score:5, Informative)
3840x2160 *IS* what most people call 4k resolution. So I think you've answered your own question, just flip no to yes.
Yes, there are many competing 4k resolutions, but 3840x2160 is the most common of them, being given the moniker "4k UHD".
Re:While you're at it... (Score:5, Informative)
Not sure what you were trying to say. Yes, people often assume 4k means vertical resolution, when it usually refers to horizontal. I believe I've said that.
Other than you restating the obvious, as I said before, 3840x2160 is the most prevalent 4k resolution, not the 4096x3072 you gave. 4k by 3k would be an aspect ratio of 4:3, where 3840x2160 is 16:9. The ITU, which typically sets the standards approved 3840x2160 as well. The first 4k LCD tv, is also 3840x2160. I've never heard of any device that does 4096x3072 so I have no idea why you think that is the reference resolution. There ARE some 4096x2160, but I suspect those will disappear in time as well.
Re:While you're at it... (Score:4, Interesting)
Intel has shown Ivy Bridge running 4K over two DP cables. Video acceleration also works. Haswell has been promised to do 4K over one cable, I hope 3840x2160x60 fps over DisplayPort and not just 3840x2160x24 fps over HDMI 1.4 or maybe HDMI 2.0 will show up - but we'll know in half a year or so. Here's a clip [youtube.com] of Haswell decoding a 200 Mbps 4K video stream in hardware, 1% CPU. So by this time next year, mainstream CPUs will be able to do it. Meanwhile people have tested it for gaming, top end cards in CF/SLI will give you okay frame rates. It is also rumored that the PS4 will support 4K video output - not unlikely since Sony also sells 4K TVs now - with that not being said that games will be in 4K resolution, just like the PS3 plays 720p games and outputs 1080p BluRay.
The huge elephant in the closet is of course still the cost of 4K displays. The "Retina" screens add a hefty premium to the 13-15" MBPs, I suspect for a >20 inch 4K monitor you are looking at least $1000 extra, even if Apple plans to make up for it on volume. Remember current 4K monitors are way over $10k, though they're only for special use in industry/medical/military which of course means a huge sticker price. That said, no doubt a $34,999 Eizo monitor is overpriced when you can get LGs 84" 4K TV for $16,999 but still it's a good stretch down to normal consumer prices.
Re:While you're at it... (Score:4, Insightful)
The "Retina" screens add a hefty premium to the 13-15" MBPs
But the "better than Retina" screen in the Nexus 10 doesn't. It is actually very cheap for a high end 10" tablet. So the conclusion must be that the large Retina display price premium is just Apple's profit margin, not inherent to the technology.
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Guess you don't go to the cinema much if you think 24hz is barbaric... but then, why would you, with all those high quality youtube features to watch?
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Can your average onboard video card drive monitors at that resolution?
Most of the silicon supports it, even if the connections might not. Intel's Ivy Bridge supports 4K output [anandtech.com], but this requires dual-DisplayPort. Haswell will support it through a single port.
The early adopters for 4K will probably be using at least midrange graphics cards, which do this resolution just fine (though of course the framerate on Crysis may be less than stellar). By the time the monitors are widely available, standard integrat
Re:While you're at it... (Score:5, Informative)
How about 4K standard desktop resolution for 22" monitors? All this DPI fighting needs to leak over into desktops eventually.
It's called the IBM T221, with a 3840 x 2400 resolution, 22" size and it's been around since 2001, although the $5,000+ price when new put some people off ($600 to $900 on a certain auction site). Sharp currently makes a 3840 x 2160 panel (no electronics) for around the same price in sample quantities. Remember, if each pixel has 3 transistors (one per color) you're looking at 27.6 MILLION PARTS per panel, right now that means a lot of defects and a large price to cover the costs.
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The problem with the T221 is that it has a very low refresh rate (so you can't play most video games on it, even older 2D stuff in emulators). Having to use multiple connections and having to buy used monitors off of eBay will also be a deterrent to many buyers. I'd like to try one but I am not sure I'd feel comfortable shelling out $600-$900 for a business-used monitor that in some cases has screen burn-in (according to the descriptions). We need to get smaller and much cheaper 4K TVs in the mass market, t
Bring back 4:3 aspect ratio+full-layout keyboards (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Bring back 4:3 aspect ratio+full-layout keyboar (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Bring back 4:3 aspect ratio+full-layout keyboar (Score:4, Insightful)
The problem is that they are not indeed "full" keyboards. Some have the 10-key on the side, but they still move around things like the directional arrows and other special keys (or remove them entirely).
Damn it, Torvolds! (Score:5, Insightful)
I realize that this is a lost cause and all; but why would you endorse a 16:10(at least it's not bloody 16:9...) rather than a 4:3 for a laptop? For a tablet, sure, where you can change the orientation and turn your sprawling rectangle into a nice, readable, page-width reading surface; but a laptop, where the keyboard keeps you from doing that?
If virtually all laptop displays are going to be laid out as though they are used for nothing but watching movies it would be nice if they at least threw in some additional pixels; but do we have to give up the shape that is better for dealing with text in a reasonably sized package? Absurdly wide desktop screens are fine, because you can just make them larger, and treat them as multiple page-sized screens when needed; but laptops have space constraints to deal with...
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Very simple – because I have a code editor that's not retarded, and doesn't require me to display only one column of text. Instead, I can have 2 or 3 documents open side by side, each showing 3-4 methods at once, on one 16:10, 2560x1600 panel.
Re:Damn it, Torvolds! (Score:5, Interesting)
I prefer 16:10 monitors to 4:3 (old-school) or 16:9 ("widescreen HD modern crap").
4:3 works fine for a single-window app, but it's hard to do two side-by-side windows. Even some fullscreen apps don't work well with it. I prefer my text editors to have a lot of horizontal space for text - I threw the 80 columns rule out a decade ago.
Meanwhile, 16:9 is a bit condensed for productivity stuff. For movies and games, 16:9 works fine. But so does 16:10. Movies you can just blackbar, and games look fine on 16:10.
So I find 16:10 to be a good compromise for aspect ratio. It's wide enough to do widescreen movies and side-by-side windows, but not so wide that a fullscreen editor feels stretched. I currently put up with 16:9, since 1920x1080 is about half the cost of 1920x1200, but my ideal setup would be 16:10.
Also, for the mathematically inclined, 16:10 is a close approximation of the golden ratio.
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Because standardized aspect ratios are generally a good thing.
Why? Other than watching videos, aspect aspect ratio should never be worried about when designing software or content.
For one it makes for cheaper screens, if the fabs are just creating them the same across all devices.
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Because standardized aspect ratios are generally a good thing.
Why? Other than watching videos, aspect aspect ratio should never be worried about when designing software or content.
For one it makes for cheaper screens, if the fabs are just creating them the same across all devices.
But that's exactly the logic that's gotten us into the steaming pile of shit that is the selection from which we have to choose today when purchasing a laptop!
Not that you're wrong, but they say history repeats itself.
What about CRTs vs LCDs? (Score:4, Insightful)
It was years before LCDs even had something available in a store approaching the higher-res CRT monitors, much less at a reasonable price.
Yet they phased all the CRTs out well before they had reached that point.
Who makes decisions like this, and the re: the laptop resolutions? How can we make them ~rue~ those choices?
Re:What about CRTs vs LCDs? (Score:4, Insightful)
Who makes decisions like this, and the re: the laptop resolutions? How can we make them ~rue~ those choices?
1. The people who think they have the right totell you that you are using too much energy and pass laws to stop you.
2. We can't. They're too happy forcing you to be green to notice that you are unhappy being artificially technologically limited.
Re:Wow. Do you actually believe that? (Score:5, Insightful)
It's not a troll, it's the fundamental concept of Internet Libertarianism: any time the free market has decided that your preferences aren't widespread enough to be worth catering to, it was actually a secret cabal of statists.
Never mind that CRT monitors take up eight times the store shelf space of LCDs, or that the overwhelming majority of consumers genuinely prefer an LCD flat panel over a CRT, regardless if the CRT has better picture quality, or that every laptop manufacturer other than Apple has been on a cost-cutting race to the bottom for a decade now and that naturally includes the cheapest screens that will fit the size envelope. Oh, no, it's the environmentalists' fault that you can't buy CRT monitors at WalMart anymore, with their dastardly voluntary EnergyStar conspiracy.
Re:What about CRTs vs LCDs? (Score:5, Insightful)
Right, it was years before LCDs matched CRTs for their ability as laptop displays... wait.
Re:What about CRTs vs LCDs? (Score:4, Informative)
LCDs still suck. They just suck less then they used to. I want BLACK backgrounds, not grey. I want an excellent color gamut. You can get passable color gamut but you still can't get much above 1000:1 real contrast ratios. Those million to one ratios are full on to full off, where the monitor turns down the backlight on the black test. Do an ANSI checkerboard test and you're around 1000:1 on the very best ones.
I don't mind the lack of deflection distortions though.
1366x768 last century? (Score:5, Insightful)
1366x768 is the bastardised "720p HD Ready" TV panel. Its cheap and everyone produces them.
I don't think its a coincidence that Samsung stopped producing high res panels for Apple just before a new range of high res Android devices were announced.
Samsung and LG seem to be the only ones with the capability/capacity to do it in volume right now. Low res panels are cheap because everyone can do it.
There is high-res light at the end of the tunnel! (Score:5, Informative)
The problem with laptop and desktop LCDs, is that they adhere to the 1080p TV display spec, probably to shave cents of some controller somewhere, or to share a production line. Apparently it's vital that the hundreds of millions of computer displays made each year have everything in common with the non-existent 15" TV market, or whatever the fuck.
Luckily, there's a lot of progress on making 4K resolution [wikipedia.org] the new standard for video, which means that it should trickle "down" to computer displays. Despite the name, the new standard will have 3840 x 2160 resolution, but that is still notably higher than what Linus is asking for, providing 183 dpi even on a 24" display!
If you can't wait, there's going to be affordable 4K TVs appearing soon with HDMI input. Just replace the monitor on you desk with a TV mounted on the wall behind your desk. You'll probably need a new video card, but the good thing is that most OS-es now hardware accelerate desktop composition, so the result should be silky smooth. You might even be able to get 120Hz going, but don't hold your breath: display connectors haven't caught up with the required bandwidth. Your 3D card might be able to generate a 48-bit 8.3 megapixel image at 120Hz, but that's almost 50 Gbps, and there is no PC video standard that will carry that.
Next, the operating system vendors need to get their heads out of their asses and finish implementing proper multi-resolution support instead of the half-assed job they've been getting away with for decades because of the persistent assumption that higher-resolution = bigger-surface-area!
Put your money where your mouth is, and buy one. (Score:4, Interesting)
You know what drives changes like this. People showing they will pay a premium to have it.
By a 2880x1800 or 2560x1600 Retina Macbook, when they sell in numbers, competitors will follow.
You know why there is a 2560x1600 Tablet. Because Apple sold shipping containers full of Retina iPads (2048x1536) and Google took notice and decided to one up them.
Putting your money where your mouth is, trumps whining on a blog every time.
Re:Put your money where your mouth is, and buy one (Score:5, Insightful)
By a 2880x1800 or 2560x1600 Retina Macbook, when they sell in numbers, competitors will follow.
So you're suggesting that Mr Linux buy a laptop on which .... Linux barely runs, and has no idea how to handle the display resolution? And cannot switch between the integrated and discrete graphics? And which needs a binary blob to even use the b43 wifi?
How would that make him more productive?
Re:Put your money where your mouth is, and buy one (Score:4, Insightful)
If Linus Torvalds can't get together the necessary people to get Linux to run decently on the rMBP, there is something very wrong with the world.
The race to the bottom (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem has been that the PC market was so commoditized that the amount of money made is so little. Everyone cries for the sub-$500 laptop, so manufacturers comply, leading to cutting of corners everywhere - LCDs are expensive (especially high-res ones), GPUs, etc. CPUs, RAM and hard drives are cheap, so you can get ones with the best gigas for marketing.
The only reaosn we have manufacturers going for higher quality displays is because of well, Apple. Since Apple refuses to participate in the low end ("Macs are overpriced!") it means Apple hsa to constantly refine their PCs to make it worth the money.
E.g., use of full metal bodies, high res displays, SSDs, etc. They do this to separate themselves from the rest of the pack.
Heck, once you promise better margins to manufacturers, they start spending that money on R&D - see the ultrabook line. They all cost around the price of a Macbook Air, or easily double or triple what the low end laptops sell for. As a result, we get them with all sorts of different screen resolutions.
Basically in the race to produce the cheapest laptop, they've left the premium market to Apple, who appeals to those who like a laptop with clean lines, "exotic" materials and other things.
Oh, and Apple invested a lot of money making high-res displays - it's not as easy to build a 15" 2880x1800 screen as it is a 15" 1366x768 screen. First off, more pixels mean more transistors and greater chance of dead pixels, lowering yield. Second, being able to address those transistors and ensure the pixels are all good is a lot harder with the smaller pixel size. So Apple's pretty much owning all the R&D on that (especially with Sharp in financial trouble).
Re:The race to the bottom (Score:4, Informative)
Did Apple really do the high DPI display R&D? I thought they bought the displays from Samsung and LG (and maybe others), and that those displays varied in quality, suggesting that each manufacturer has their own process rather than just doing what uncle Apple tells them to.
When he says "Apple invested a lot of money" into the process he means exactly that - Samsung and LG didn't just drop the cash on the R&D for those panels, even though they did the work. They did the work because Apple cut them a hefty cheque.
See also, ARM CPUs made by Samsung - Apple gave them a huge bundle of setup cash to improve their facilities to get the A6 line of CPUs rolling.
The point is that *even though Apple itself is not doing the actual work of lifting the pick, swinging it at the rock, collecting the coal*, they are still driving the market for those technologies that no other vendor is willing to pay for. Samsung will make high DPI panels for anyone who wants them - Apple is not special in that respect - but they were the first ones willing to pay for the R&D. Once that expensive R&D is paid for though, the "build to a price, race to the bottom" vendors will come knocking.
Re:Problem (Score:4, Funny)
^^^ Score -1, completely fucking wrong.
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I suggest you go pick up a low end laptop at about lets say 500 dollars. Hook it up to a display that can run 2560x1600 and tell me how it works out for you playing a game on the native resolution vs the 2560x1600
Gaming versus using the laptop for lots of other pixel-intensive things is apples to oranges. Good 2D performance is much easier to achieve.
Some examples of important, primarily 2D activities are web browsing, reading, and...software development. That last one just might interest Linux a bit. ;-)
Aside from all that, you could always run your game at 1/2 resolution (1280x800) and be just as well off as with a crappy display.
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As someone who actually developed some software for iOS I can safely say you don't know what you are talking about.
The only things that MAGICALLY get blown up is older software that doesn't understand the new resolutions. That is why there are apps marked "For iPad" originally. Because the screen resolution was different, it had a different set of resources. Most of the newer apps work by having different sets of resources based on the hardware it is run on and uses the appropriate one.
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MacBooks do not run iOS ... yet.
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Apple doesnt have retina displays.
Samsung, LG, and Sharp do.
Apple packages/resells retina displays, developed by others.
These are already available in cheap Chinese tablets, in the new android tablet, Linus has a good point.
Re:Complainer (Score:5, Insightful)
Jesus, split those hairs a little more. Did Samsung, LG, and Sharp bother producing these displays before Apple dumped cash into their laps? No.
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Do tell!
I hear all these amazing things about having the latest, high end hardware in the Cheap Chinese Tablets yet I can never find any that are more than GPL-violation propagating garbage.
Re:Complainer (Score:5, Informative)
Re:2560x1600 should be good for anyone! (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually, 2560x1920 would be better. But apparently more people use their laptops to watch videos than to do work.
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Can you smell the irony, of posting this "bring back 4:3" crap on a site whose layout takes full advantage of widescreen.
Re:2560x1600 should be good for anyone! (Score:5, Insightful)
It's not hipsterish, it's just annoying when you can only read a tiny amount of vertical lines for one file and there's tons of wasted space to the right unless you have two files side by side. Even then most setups I've seen have had multiple displays so the need to shove everything into one screen isn't necessary.
Re:2560x1600 should be good for anyone! (Score:5, Funny)
Yeah, just use your laptop sideways. Kids these days, you have to tell them everything.
Re:2560x1600 should be good for anyone! (Score:4, Insightful)
Linus is talking about laptops. You know, the topic of this discussion.
Re:2560x1600 should be good for anyone! (Score:5, Informative)
Linus is talking about laptops. You know, the topic of this discussion.
And he's not bitching about screen real estate, he's bitching about pixel density, as per TFGPP:
Re:2560x1600 should be good for anyone! (Score:5, Insightful)
Recommending an annoyingly-to-uselessly narrow display is not an improvement over using an annoyingly-to-uselessly short display.
In even the simplest non-power-user case of playing Facebook games, many of them don't even fit onscreen vertically on a 1366x768 laptop. Just the bog-standard stock layout of Windows taskbar on the bottom of the screen, and default maximised browser layout does not leave enough room for many games' meager display assumption, and sometimes fullscreening the browser (a rarely used hidden feature) doesn't even get it all.
Plus, laptop displays have been actively shrinking in the vertical dimension. The "standard" laptop res nowadays is a widescreen version of the circa 1990 1024x768, but the prior low/mid-range standard res at least used to be 800 pixels tall, with 1280x800. And yes, those 40 or so rows matter when you're highly constrained in that dimension.
Of course, the ThinkPad had a 2048x1536 15" option, but that's really not fair as it's a pretty exclusive upgrade. But it shows that the tech for decent-resolution portable displays has been around forever.
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You could, but you SHOULDN'T
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That doesn't really help. It helps with indentation, in that you can keep indenting and having lines of code that are the right width. But it doesn't actually get _more code on the screen_ in a useful way, because once the actual line of text, sans indentation, gets too wide, it's hard to grok it at a glance. What gets more code usefully on the screen is more vertical lines of resolution. However, there's a limit to this—if I turn my 1080p display on its side, I can get a really huge number of
Re:2560x1600 should be good for anyone! (Score:4, Interesting)
The real solution to this is to go back to 80x25 screens, and better short-term memory. You think I'm joking, but I'm not.
I've been developing my own OS from scratch and right now I'm limiting myself to the 80x25 or 80x50ish modes for the primordial in-OS development environment. I agree that 25 lines is about all I need to see at a time. I could do with a bit more horizontal area, but horizontal scrolling makes up for the lack of columns nicely.
The language I've created to build the OS with runs as either compiled or interpreted code, making it easy to create, test, and add new modules in real-time. To this end I use the upper 25 rows for program output / display, and the lower rows for the debugger and "immediate" mode code editor. It's sort of like a limited tiling WM, or GNU screen-ish interface. I used to develop code in DOS based applications decades ago, and initially thought that modern graphical environments were far better suited to development. Naturally, I thought I'd be really cramped for space but it actually has worked out to be more comfortable in comparison. I've got noticeably less eyestrain than when I do my "day job" work in a modern IDE. It seems that what you say is true: 80x25 rows or so is all one really needs with a scrolling display. However, I supplement my short term memory with the additional pane.
Now reconsidering my stance against using console based editors in favor of IDEs for development on "proper" OSs as well...
Re:2560x1600 should be good for anyone! (Score:4, Insightful)
I'll let you know next time I want to do a three-way code merge. Don't hold your breath.
Call me old-fashioned, but I still use a laptop for word processing. I've already moved my task bar/dock (depending on OS) to the left side, and I've been trying to get used to putting my button bars and such over there too, but these cinemascope-shaped displays still leave big white margins on either side, and just a couple paragraphs of text letterboxed in the middle. Web browsing produces the same wasted space on most sites. And don't get me started about trying to use a tablet for drawing... it's like working on miniature legal-format paper. This has nothing to do with being "hipsterish" (I'm old enough that I can't even do hipster fashion ironically), but simple practicality for lots of standard computer uses. I just thank the legacy of Jobs that at least the iPad is still 4:3.
I'd be quite happy with 1920x1440 in a small laptop, or 2560x2048 on a larger one, instead of this silly 1440x900.
Re:2560x1600 should be good for anyone! (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:2560x1600 should be good for anyone! (Score:4, Informative)
2560x1600 isn't even "movie" widescreen, which is 16:9, it's 16:10. I like 16:10 a lot more than 16:9, and I wish it had become the standard for computer monitor instead of 16:9. So it could be worse...
Re:2560x1600 should be good for anyone! (Score:5, Insightful)
Widescreen movies in a theater are actually 2.35:1. A proper DVD conversion will show black bars even on a 16:9 "widescreen" HDTV.
I second the desire for 16:10 monitors; that little bit of extra vertical space really makes all the difference!
Re:2560x1600 should be good for anyone! (Score:4, Interesting)
This is why I love my Dell 2408WFP - it's getting on a bit now, and the color management isn't as good as it should be (but I have a Huey for that), but it's 16:10 with a resolution of 1920x1200 - absolutely wonderful. I never maximise anything, and mostly have several cascaded portrait shaped windows displayed across it.
Back to topic. I think what Linus actually means is that he wants a higher resolution so that there are no jaggies on fonts, and scrollbars and widgets look sharper. The actual perceived font size (in inches etc.) would be the same - so all these comments about tiny fonts, and 8 way code diffs, are completely missing the point.
Think of it this way, you watch the same movie on a 720p screen, and then on a 1080p screen - do you see more of the movie picture on the latter? No. It's just _sharper_.
-Jar
Re:2560x1600 should be good for anyone! (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:2560x1600 should be good for anyone! (Score:5, Funny)
Actually, the reason I bought a glossy display instead of matte is that I enjoy chewing cud, and have a fuzzy coat. The guy was just being literal. Deal with it.
(And may I say that you humans really ought to think about those of us of the cloven-hoofed persuasion when designing keyboards? Do you have any _idea_ how hard it is to type on these things without articulable fingers?)
Re: (Score:3)
Do you do anything other than watch movies or play games?
A 4:3 monitor gives a height/width ratio of ~1.3:1
A 16:9 ratio is ~1.7:1
A sheet of A4 paper has a ratio of ~1.4:1.
The 4:3 monitor - used in portrait mode - shows a clean, full-sized sheet of A4 - just nice for DTP, layout, etc. Some of us still do work that results in A4-sized hard copy. Works for A3, A5, and A6, too.
Re: (Score:3)
yeah, and US letter (1.294:1) too. i posted this same complaint here months ago. alas, no one gives a shit.
Re:2560x1600 should be good for anyone! (Score:5, Interesting)
Do you do anything other than watch movies or play games?
A 4:3 monitor gives a height/width ratio of ~1.3:1
A 16:9 ratio is ~1.7:1
A sheet of A4 paper has a ratio of ~1.4:1.
The 4:3 monitor - used in portrait mode - shows a clean, full-sized sheet of A4 - just nice for DTP, layout, etc. Some of us still do work that results in A4-sized hard copy. Works for A3, A5, and A6, too.
A 16:10 display is two A4 pages side by side. 2560x1600 is 16:10, not 16:9
Also for those of us who work on spreadsheets and diagrams, 16:10 allows us to do A4 and A3 diagrams in landscape mode.
For writing documents, if you want to write one page at a time 16:10 is good as half the page takes up the whole screen, but then again in almost all office packages you have borders of whitespace around the page.
Re:2560x1600 should be good for anyone! (Score:5, Interesting)
Buy a Nexus 10, install Ubuntu on it, and use an external keyboard. Bonus: you can use it in portrait mode for hacking code, and landscape mode for watching movies. Now if only they'd release the Nexus 13...
Re:2560x1600 should be good for anyone! (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes! This!
I bought a laptop a couple years ago (2010) and didn't even think to look at screen resolution. It's a fairly high-spec Dell otherwise - i7 (when i7 was brand new), 8G, etc etc, so I assumed it would be comparable to my old one at least, maybe better. Spent $1200.
It's this shit 1366x768. I've been mad since I got it and realized how low res it is.
My prior laptop, also a Dell, had a "WUXGA" resolution. 1920 x 1200. I bought it in 2005. Spent $2200.
I don't have the money to blow on another laptop. I have, however, done some window-shopping, and it's darn frustrating. It's not even a search option on most sites, and there don't seem to be many laptops that have higher than 1366x768 anyhow. It was expensive in 2005, but it was an option at least. You can barely even buy it today, because of the commoditization of these screens.
So don't say "buy it if you want it" because you almost can't.
Re:Vote with your wallet (Score:5, Insightful)
Praising what Apple done ... do you mean the "building really nice hardware part" or the "doing all they can to destroy the notion of open personal computing part". It is nice hardware, but funding one also funds the other, unfortunately.
Re: (Score:3)
I mean the iOS part and the Mac marketplace, both locked to a single provider. Also the proprietary extension to open protocols (XMPP, ePub, SIP), and proprietary connectors.
Re:And when it comes to the display (Score:5, Insightful)
You totally missed the point.
The Retina display macbook was delivered with an updated OSX which could take advantage of the added resolution, without making everything unusably small. Coordinating those things to offer a desktop OS with a USABLE high resolution screen is, in fact, something to commended.
I have a 30" cinema display. It looks great under Windows where I can adjust the DPI. However, when you do adjust the DPI, there are an assortment of compatibility problems. Even big ticket apps, like Adobe Photoshop/Dreamweaver don't work right. You'll have dialog boxes pop up with missing controls. There are some "compatibility options" which can fix it, but then you're left with blurry applications. Or you leave the DPI alone and deal with uncomfortably tiny text and icons.
Re:And when it comes to the display (Score:5, Insightful)
. . . because they deliver technology that has been possible, but unavailable from other vendors. Duh. ;)
Re:Vote with your wallet (Score:5, Insightful)
Apple now offers you two laptops with that res and higher. Yet instead of praising what apple has done, he says "stop with the retina crap".
He's praising the hardware and condemning the marketing term Apple applies to it.
(emphasis mine).
Re: (Score:3)
As long as everyone and their dog have high resolution screens now, we're doomed to see screen real estate dwindle back to the 80'ties level as designers keep inflating fonts, icons and white space to keep Joe Public with something that looks like the 800x600 he's used to. I miss the day when only enthusiasts had high resolution monitors and we actually got more space.
That's what the DPI setting is for. The handful of enthusiasts with 20/10 vision can keep all their precious screen space, and everyone els
Re: (Score:3)
I believe most of the monitor's power drain comes from the back light. For a given screen size, the back light should be the same regardless of the resolution so I expect little impact on battery life.
Re: (Score:3)
The GPU will have to work harder to drive the display, which would probably account for most of whatever difference there might be.