Apple's latest Lion update continues preparations for Retina display Macs - Page 2

Quote:

Originally Posted by Tallest Skil 

 

That happened twice. Once for the Intel transition and once for the case redesign. Not "always".

Uh, those are the only two major overhauls the MBP has ever had. So yes, "always." I know you want them to keep the 17" and think they should care more about keeping it in pace with the rest of the line than they do about introducing retina displays, but that's wishful thinking, dude. Everything -- past history, months worth of rumors now, its marketshare vis a vis the other MacBooks -- is pointing to it, at best, taking a back seat to the smaller retina MBPs, if it is retained at all.

Quote:

Originally Posted by brianus 
Everything -- past history, months worth of rumors now, its marketshare vis a vis the other MacBooks -- is pointing to it, at best, taking a back seat to the smaller retina MBPs, if it is retained at all.

Think what you will. Not 'everything' points to that. And how is a single rumor "months worth of rumors"?

I'm not just talking about the rumor they'd drop it. I'm also talking about the fact that the 17" is almost never mentioned in any of the several rumors regarding the retina MBPs that we've seen since December. There was also a rumor a few months back that the 17" would indeed follow the 15" by a few months. Also, you had made the point that we are a long way away from 17" retina panels (I assume you have some source for that), arguing, wrongly, that that meant they wouldn't update any of the line until they could do the 17". Quite the contrary -- they will omit the 17" because it just doesn't matter as much, as their singular focus on smaller devices and HiDPI over the past six months makes clear. Is there any evidence of any kind arguing against that interpretation?

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Originally Posted by MacBook Pro 

Many people are familiar with Moore's Law but few are familiar with the counterpoint, Wirth's Law.

 

I asked about Aunt Minnie because an "Aunt Minnie" is a medical imaging (aka Radiology) term for a finding (disease or condition) so obvious the late, great Ray Charles could see the finding.  The term is analogous to a physician telling you that your arm is broken when your ulna is sticking 6 inches out to the side.  "Aunt Minnie" is also a popular website for Radiology professionals.  The association is that there is someone with a nom de plume "paxman" on the aforementioned website.  "PACS" (sometimes misspelled "PAX") is a term associated with Radiology as "Picture Archiving and Communications System" (aka "PACS") is, typically, a client-server application for management, storage and remote viewing of medical images (CT, MR, Ultrasound, X-rays (radiographs)) etc.

Well OK, clearly I am not that Paxman :)  

Quote:

Originally Posted by ltcommander.data 

I wonder where the disproportionate file-size increase comes from? Are they using different/less compression in addition to increased resolution?

 

I'm going to have to show myself an old man by pointing out how ridiculous this seems.  1Mb for an icon!  I would have been able to fit 20 of them on my first hard drive!

Isn't technology great!

Quote:

Originally Posted by paxman 

Thanks for info - I have observed the Wirth / Reiser truth repeatedly for years. The MBA was the first major step forward. The SSD's make these machine wickedly fast at anything that involves the HD - e.g. opening apps. 

 

I'm actually hugely underwhelmed by the SSD in my new MBA.  I can't say the apps seem to open appreciably faster, and it's startup time from sleep is crap - absolutely no better than my previous hard drive based MBP.

I'm actually starting to wonder if there is something wrong with it, and will be going to the Genius Bar when I can.

Quote:

Originally Posted by BillyLavoie 

The 27" iMac has a resolution of 2560 x 1440, a retina 27" iMac would be 5120 x 2880. With some things like coverflow you will need bigger than 512x512 (or 256x256 on non retina macs), that's why right now the standard maximum resolution for icons on OSX is 512x512

The 27" iMac's resolution is based on doubling 720P HD resolution though, isn't it?

I wonder if the "retina" iMac will double 1080P HD resolution, and run at 3840 x 2160.  That's well within the capabilities of most high-end graphics cards, and in theory it should be easier for them to get display panels manufactured in a double-HD resolution.

Very nice.

Retina, HiDPI, 4K... Whatever the term it'll be great.

I'm struggling every day working with 2K and 4K animation on normal resolution monitors.

It'd save me a lot of time with a HiDPI display and OS.

Did a little search, and it appears a lot of HiDPI displays are coming (or at least being announced) this year. So it's definitely within reach.

Quote:

Originally Posted by wizard69 
You ever notice that these idiots, posting such crap usually have far less than 20 posts to their name?

Best to nip it in the bud, isn't it?

Wow, this is interesting. Some icons are being refreshed apparently. New automator icon:

Personally love the changes. Less reflective, sleeker, simpler. Only Apple would put this much effort redesigning an icon for something most mac users will probably never, ever use. 

Quote:

Originally Posted by wizard69 
A Samsung employee maybe?

Well, we've had plenty of Adobe employees on here in the past, sockpuppeting their crap every time a thread about Flash starts… 

But they were always slightly more discreet about it than this. Thought that could be just the difference between Samsung and Adobe employees.

Heaven knows Samsung isn't known for being discreet about lying, stealing, and copying…

Quote:

Originally Posted by Slurpy 

Wow, this is interesting. Some icons are being refreshed apparently. New automator icon:

 

 

Personally love the changes. Less reflective, sleeker, simpler. Only Apple would put this much effort redesigning an icon for something most mac users will probably never, ever use. 

 

Ah, good, they pushed that out, then! It showed up in ML DP 3 first, I believe, and I certainly like it better than the original. Our computers are glossy enough; drop it from the interface and give us delicious textured matte designs… 

Search the internet for "HiDPI display" and you'll find a bunch that has been announced in 2012. Panasonic has one 20" for instance. Maybe they're the one you're thinking about?

Quote:

Originally Posted by wizard69 

At least one company has already announced high resolution LCD screens! It is only a question of production quanities for Apples machines. I'm actually surprised that you missed the news, come to think of it Appleinsider never reported on this development either. Of the top of my head I can't remember which company this was, but it isn't likely to be one of Apples suppliers.

Nice. Give me a 13" MBP without an optical drive, an SSD for fast booting, a HDD for storage, and a retina display and I'm all set for a hardware update.
 

in regards to the text edit icon...

zapf chancery sucks. 

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Originally Posted by rpsx 
in regards to the text edit icon...

zapf chancery sucks. 

I'm sorry you feel that way. Maybe this will make you feel better.

Quote:

Originally Posted by paxman 

I love the idea of Retina Display Macs but..... there is always a 'but'.... Every time we get more speed and storage there are 'improvements' to the system which means that the potential performance hike virtually disappear. It is inevitable and I wouldn't want it otherwise but I remember a friend who had a PC laptop on which he ran DOS, way after Windows appeared. He was a writer and didn't require all the candy. I thought he was nuts but I remember being impressed with the speed of his computer. Starting up and closing in the blink of an eye was impressive. That's pretty much all... but I'd love a system which could respond to my every command in a couple of milliseconds. I have spent a lot of time watching icons bounce and beach balls spin over the years. I can't even remember what I was looking at while MacOS was 'thinking' in the old days - pre beach ball.

Dude, get an SSD!  The delays you're describing are almost all due to the limits of HDD, and an SSD abolishes those limits.  Once you've used one, you will never go back to HDDs.  Just remember that not all SSDs are equally fast.  For a Mac, Sandforce or Samsung drives are a good bet, since they do their own garbage collection and don't need TRIM as badly as the Indilinx drives.  My boot drive in my Mac Pro is a striped RAID of two 2nd generation Sandforce drives (OCZ Vertex 3).  When I use a computer, even a Mac Pro, without an SSD now, it's agony.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Junkyard Dawg 

Dude, get an SSD!  The delays you're describing are almost all due to the limits of HDD, and an SSD abolishes those limits.  Once you've used one, you will never go back to HDDs.  Just remember that not all SSDs are equally fast.  For a Mac, Sandforce or Samsung drives are a good bet, since they do their own garbage collection and don't need TRIM as badly as the Indilinx drives.  My boot drive in my Mac Pro is a striped RAID of two 2nd generation Sandforce drives (OCZ Vertex 3).  When I use a computer, even a Mac Pro, without an SSD now, it's agony.

Do you know if there is a way I can test the SSD in my MBA to see if it's functioning correctly then?  It genuinely seems absolutely no faster than the HDD in my old MBP.

Quote:

Originally Posted by paxman 

I love the idea of Retina Display Macs but..... there is always a 'but'.... Every time we get more speed and storage there are 'improvements' to the system which means that the potential performance hike virtually disappear. It is inevitable and I wouldn't want it otherwise but I remember a friend who had a PC laptop on which he ran DOS, way after Windows appeared. He was a writer and didn't require all the candy. I thought he was nuts but I remember being impressed with the speed of his computer. Starting up and closing in the blink of an eye was impressive. That's pretty much all... but I'd love a system which could respond to my every command in a couple of milliseconds. I have spent a lot of time watching icons bounce and beach balls spin over the years. I can't even remember what I was looking at while MacOS was 'thinking' in the old days - pre beach ball.

This is also a concern I have I have found on my windows 7 OS that when I go into my catalyst control Center for my AMD Radeon 5770 HD and choose LCD overdrive it puts my machine in the standard windows visual configuration and takes away all the fancy gloss, swoosh movements, pop-up windows in the task bar, transparent effects, and switches to basic colors and plain text. It isn't nearly as pretty but when I am multitasking many hungry programs it is noticeably faster but not nearly as enjoyable. My point is, I didn't realize the visual effects of the OS had that much load on the processes and memory... so if these do (of course I am talking about windows here because I haven't bought my new Mac "YET") So I wonder if they do put these High res displays on the new machines if like the post above says we will lose much of it's benefit on purely visual improvements? I'm asking this to help me decide if I want the new one or opt for a sale priced machine that they have now.

Quote:

Originally Posted by ltcommander.data 

I wonder where the disproportionate file-size increase comes from? Are they using different/less compression in addition to increased resolution?

 

Continued HiDPI work on Lion would seem to indicate the Mountain Lion isn't shipping next month as one recent report suggested. If Apple were to release new Retina Macs soon and Mountain Lion were coming next month, you'd think they'd just launch them on 10.8. Further HiDPI work in Lion suggests Mountain Lion is still a ways off and Retina Macs will have to ship with Lion.

Not necessarily. Might just be that a decree went out to all teams that they need to start including larger icons as of now. The current (Lion) version of certain apps may well be the version that ships with Mountain Lion, too.

.tsooJ

Quote:

Originally Posted by PaulMJohnson 

 

Do you know if there is a way I can test the SSD in my MBA to see if it's functioning correctly then?  It genuinely seems absolutely no faster than the HDD in my old MBP.

You have to remember that the speed of an SSD will also rely on the power of the processor in the machine. Tp out it simply, why throw 230MB/s at a processor that takes forever and a day to processes just one chunk of that data?

I have a Lenovo G575 laptop I use for Windows development. That has a pretty nice OCZ Vertex 60GB SSD in it but it only has a 1.3GHz AMD E300 CPU. That computer boots and loads applications just as fast as my MacBook Pro (sandy bridge i7) with a conventional hard disk. I can't tell the difference between the two in terms of disk access speed.

If you have a C2D MacBook Air, then there's your problem! :)

Quote:

Originally Posted by not1lost 

 

This is also a concern I have I have found on my windows 7 OS that when I go into my catalyst control Center for my AMD Radeon 5770 HD and choose LCD overdrive it puts my machine in the standard windows visual configuration and takes away all the fancy gloss, swoosh movements, pop-up windows in the task bar, transparent effects, and switches to basic colors and plain text. It isn't nearly as pretty but when I am multitasking many hungry programs it is noticeably faster but not nearly as enjoyable. My point is, I didn't realize the visual effects of the OS had that much load on the processes and memory... so if these do (of course I am talking about windows here because I haven't bought my new Mac "YET") So I wonder if they do put these High res displays on the new machines if like the post above says we will lose much of it's benefit on purely visual improvements? I'm asking this to help me decide if I want the new one or opt for a sale priced machine that they have now.

Given the speed of modern processors (especially Ivy), its not the load on the CPU that you have to worry about, but the amount of RAM it will use.

However, I don't think it will have much of an impact on MacOSX as it does with Windows. You have to remember that the Aero interface in Windows piles on as many visual effects as possible and all of them need to be rendered in real time by the GPU. OSX just pushes some raster graphics to the screen and calls it a day.

Quote:

Originally Posted by benanderson89 

You have to remember that the speed of an SSD will also rely on the power of the processor in the machine. Tp out it simply, why throw 230MB/s at a processor that takes forever and a day to processes just one chunk of that data?

I have a Lenovo G575 laptop I use for Windows development. That has a pretty nice OCZ Vertex 60GB SSD in it but it only has a 1.3GHz AMD E300 CPU. That computer boots and loads applications just as fast as my MacBook Pro (sandy bridge i7) with a conventional hard disk. I can't tell the difference between the two in terms of disk access speed.

 

If you have a C2D MacBook Air, then there's your problem! :)

There's the rub, it's a Core i5!.  The 1.7GHz one.  Should be powerful enough, surely?