Apple to begin production of Thunderbolt MacBook Airs next month - Page 6

This is precisely the problem, everything looks smaller. Because of that it is extremely common for people to blow up whatever they are working on to a scale that mimics existing sizes on other machines. One common example here is in the viewing of PDFs. A maybe less common but similar example is CAD drawings. Comfortable viewing requires that the text and other elements of the document be large enough for comfortable extended viewing.

You believe you can but this is certainly not true for many users. Honestly I don't even believe you do so for extended length of time. Who knows some people are comfortable with a screen ten inches from their nose. In the end though people are actually fitting less stuff on those screens not more.

I don't buy your logic here. You need to be able to use that screen in a regular manner. Your argument goes out the door when you spend anytime with a document zoomed to the same size you would see on another Mac.

By the I'm not dismissing the utility of ultra compact laptops like the AIRs. I was actually contemplating getting one before the iPad came out. But it wouldn't be replacing my Mac Book Pro. It is simply an issue of usability.

The MBA 11 inch is good to use with a magnifier glass.It is just to small to view say 6-7 hours a day and bad for your eyes.

In one aspect your question is impossible to answer because viable means different things to different people. Such a machine might meet your needs fine. It is telling though that Apple didn't bother with ATOM in any machine it has built to date, so one can say ATOM apparently doesn't meet Apples needs.

Frankly AMDs little Zacate based Fusion chip is a far better attempt at meeting market needs than anything Intel offers in it's ATOM line up. Even then Zacate does not effectively compete with Core 2 Duo and certainly not with Sandy Bridge. However that doesn't prevent companies from selling laptops and motherboards based around the chip. This part of the Fusion line up is acceptable to some in these Mini devices, it goes back to one expectations.

back to ATOM and Intel, sad to say that Intel really screwed up marketing of this product. They put far to many restrictions upon how and where manufactures could implement the chip. As an engineering effort ATOM isn't bad but it is pretty clear Intel was protecting it's high end turf with this chips design. First off there should have been more wrapped into the SoC than Intel has done to date. Second it does look like Intel was a bit lazy with ATOMs design, especially when you look at a photomicrograph of an ATOM and a Zacate side by side. Interestingly people have reported significant success with Zacate in Home Theater PC implementations, the same can not be said for ATOM.

This post probably sounds terribly negative with respect to ATOM. It really should not as it is a nice idea buried by corporate fiefdoms. AMD is literally showing Intel how to do it right. In any event I don't expect to see Apple use ATOM at all, at least not fro the next couple of years. ARM does nearly as good as ATOM and offers up real engineering advantages.

Different strokes for different folks. If you do any software development or database work, you need all the pixels you can get (whether they're 10 inches from your face or otherwise). The MBA has a great resolution in my opinion for a 13" machine but I definitely understand that there are people who need to see things blown up from that. This is all very simple: Either offer resolution independence or offer those of us who want real estate the option of having real estate. The latter is the much easier option, and Apple should be giving people more choice on all models, not just the 15" money pit.

1) RI isn't very simple. Apple has been trying since at least Leopard, when it first touted it as a feature of the OS and quietly removed it some time later but well before launcch.

2) I see no evidence of RI progress in Lion. What we have seen is double resolution images and and other clues indicating Apple will offer HiDPI displays sometime after Lion launches. This is a good thing.

3) What matters is getting more pixels per inch and having the OS be usable when that arrives. Having it be infinitely and minutely scalable using vector graphics means nothing if the complexity and cost to processing is negatively affected. My 13" MBP has 115ppi, I'll be happy to but again if they offer 230ppi.

I'm not disagreeing with you, but offering people either a low-res or a high-res display is a very simple solution to the problem. Apple does this already on the 15" and already has 13" displays of differing resolutions across product lines. This is a no-brainer.

They offer a little bit higher resolution display for the 15" and 17" MBPs. The 13" MBA also falls in the PPI range of those premium options. The problem I and others have is it makes the elements too small on the screen for what is overall an insignificant resolution change.

What I want is the double-resolution HiDPI display that will effectively be "Retina Display" qua lit from a normal viewing distance without have the UI elements so small to be usable.

List of Mac display PPIs:

• 11.6" MBA — 135.09 ppi
• 13.3" MBA — 127.68 ppi
• 13.3" MB — 113.49 ppi
• 13.3" MBP — 113.49 ppi
• 15.4" MBP — 110.27 ppi
• 15.4" MBP — 128.65 ppi
• 17.0" MBP — 133.19 ppi
• 21.5" iMac — 102.46 ppi
• 27.0" iMac — 108.79 ppi
• 27.0" LED Display — 108.79 ppi

What there is some evidence of is doubling the number of pixels per axis. So a 13" MBP will be 227 ppi but the Menu Bar and Dock items, for example, will still take up the same physical dimensions, but simply use 4x as many pixels. That's the change that needs to happen, not simple a handful of pixels that make Macs harder to use.

This is one area that MS has excelled with Windows by creating a faux-RI intermediary layer. It allows for much better scaling so you users aren't sacrificing their usability .with smaller objects if they get a slightly higher resolution display. Apple's way behind here so I hope these double resolution displays appear with all refreshes after Lion launches. :fingers crossed:

yes whether it's faux or real I love the Resolution Independence of Windows 7. It zooms what matters...text and window controls. Icons look ugly though in the task bar.

It isn't like Apple doesn't understand resolution independence and it's importance - iOS does a credible job of that. So I'm not sure what they are waiting on. It would be nice if it came with a massive jump in monitor resolution.

1) iOS is a fixed display size for the specific UIs which is not the same as RI and surely easier to build when you aren't worried about a single UI that has to look and feel right on a 11" to 30" display (or greater if you consider their competitor's displays).

2) When Apple released the iPhone 4 with the Retina Display there was good amount of the code rewritten for the double resolution. That was not RI but good planning. Even with the SDK coming out in March(?) it still took many months for most of my apps to be updated to take advantage of the resolution.

3) Unfortunately I see no evidence of RI advancement in Lion since it was first added a Leopard feature in 2005 and then quietly dropped.

Actually what iOS does is the definition of resolution independence. Fonts and graphics get drawn to the same size no matter what the pixels per inch count is. The physical size of the screen doesn't matter one bit with RI as placement of glyphs and UI elements are consistent no matter what.

Any code rewriting by developers was due to their own ignorance. Apple repeatedly told developers not to expect the same screen resolutions in the future. Practically whacked them over the head. IOS was designed from day one with the expectation that screen resolutions would increase.

The use of bitmaps is a separate issue. That requires new artwork if you want to maintain quality.

Yeah I realize that is the case. On the other hand it isn't something Apple had to worry about before. Right now Apple couldn't move to a pixel doubled machine if it had to. On Mac OS everything would shrink to the point of being unusable.

This is why I'm interested in RI on OS/X, they only have a short time before such screens are available on laptops. So I suspect they are doing something, if not for Lion a mid stream update.

It's kind of like Christmas


If that happens with iOS which wasn't even on the map until 2008, just imagine how it will be with Mac OS. I've used the Ri in Leopard and SL many times seeing if that is an option for those with poorer vision. It's simply not good enough even for the light users I know with very specific usage needs. It's sad they couldn't get this working because it's great in the places it does work.


I content that higher DPI display have been needed for awhile but the lack of the Mac OS RI or an intermediary level mimicking RI have kept the standard at around 110ppi. The high-res displays are still not that high but even those made them a non-option for my needs. My eyes are good but it was still too small for liking. I think what they couldn't do is get the fractional scaling right so they held off until they could double the resolution, like they successfully did with the iPhone. I hope they demo Lion with HiDPI displays. I can't imagine going another cycle of Mac OS without it.

Last I knew all they had was the ability to scale things up.

Interestingly my iPhone impresses me with it's resolution. My old MBP isn't bad though, the big mistake I made was buying a matte screen which just isn't as sharp.

Apple just needs to get back to the days when an inch long element drawn on screen actual meant that an element was an inch long.

In any event I've have the need to get some nap time in before the big show.

Good companion with MBP the MBA 13 inch not 11 inch to small for me.

Not that they didn't make sure that we where on notice not to expect anything. Obviously though an AIR update has to be near.

While this isn't a software thread, the features expected to come in Mac OS and iPad will likely drive even more sales towards Apple. I'm rather impressed. However they discounted good hardware design in the keynote. This is a mistake I believe because they are bleeding edge hardware wise. People buy Apple hardware to run Windows and Linux, that is saying something right there.