When will Apple adopt 16:9 screens? - Page 2

512 icons would do me fine.

I'm willing to beta test a 4k monitor if any vendors are reading this thread

I guess that depends on your standards. You haven't elaborated on what you mean, but a 30" screen with a 150ppi resolution without adjusting the user interface is really pushing the usability for a lot of people. And 12 point text would probably be the equivalent to about 6 points on the actual screen, given that OS X still apparently equates 1 typography point to being the size of one pixel.

I'm willing to beta test a Red Scarlet 3K if any vendors are reading this thread

Heh. Scary but unlikely.

Having used a 16:9 screen on a notebook, I'm not liking the aspect ratio for computer use, 16:10 is short enough as it is. What 16:9 really does is make the screen shorter, not necessarily wider. Less information on the screen and more scrolling, and for what? To make movies fit the screen better without letterbox bars? I have a machine to watch movies on, and that's a home theater with an image measured in feet, not inches. My parents watch movies on their computer less than 5% of the time, the rest of the time, they have to deal with a shorter screen because the world apparently has to normalize on one aspect ratio for every kind of device. I do watch videos on my MBP from time to time, but it's not the main use of the machine. Besides, I watch a lot 4:3 TV shows too, and shortening the screen makes that image smaller.

Looks like.

16:9 is fine for movies, and I prefer it for gaming (peripheral vision!), but for every day computer use I prefer 16:10. I don't particularly care if the iMac is transitioned to 16:9 displays, but please, keep the MBP 16:10. 16:9 simply isn't as pleasant to use on a laptop screen.

You can cross another off of the "Apple will never" list.

Apple is a full blown consumer company now. With every new product and software release they're proving time and time again that they are a consumer and not a professional products company.

This is truly sad for someone like myself who use their hardware daily to make a living, but time's up for the pros. Hopefully they'll stay on top of their towers and not let them slip too far behind...

Quicktime amateur X is enough to show that 16x9 will be the future of apple displays...which will all be glossy so you can see if anyone is sneaking up behind you.

So far they've only adopted 16:9 on the iMac, which is not a "Pro" machine anyway. Many people like to watch TV and movies on their iMac screens so I think it's a good move for them.

I can't see what's inherently un-pro about 16:9 anyway. It seems unlikely the laptops will go 16:9. They've just re-released the iBook and that didn't go 16:9. I think it would make the laptops too narrow and not give them enough palm rest. Plus there is a whole ecosystem of accessories (bags etc) suited to the current sizes that have been around for years. The 15" MBP's dimensions basically haven't changed since the 15" PowerBook debut.

It'll be interesting to see what happens to the top-of-the-line 30" Cinema Display...

So I read through it. What a bunch of laughs.

As one can see once a screen exceeds a certain size and pixel count arguing about ratios becomes a bit silly. The iMac can now display 1080P HD in a window if you are in editing mode or it can blow the image up to full screen size. Not a bad deal if you ask me.

Screen ratios are only an issue if you don't have enough pixels to display common formats and the associated tools. Once you move beyound that, that is have the ability to display common formats pixel for pixel in a window the screen ratio doesn't mean much. Sure it is easier on the electronics when blowing an image up to have nice multiples in pixel counts but do you really want to edit on a system that is doing so.

Frankly I'm happy to see Apple becoming agressive with screens and iMac design in general.


Dave

That's true, but going through the discussion, only one person said "Apple will never", and said person claimed some special, unprovable connection to someone in Cupertino, for all we know, it was just a bit of hot air (maybe the contact was imaginary), simply someone that wasn't actually in the loop or the contact was lying.


My concern was about notebooks, and the thread starter specifically mentions notebooks, and if you didn't notice, the MacBook still sticks with 16:10.

But even looking at my 30" display, the width is fine, I don't see why I would want it to be a shorter display in order to make it fit a shorter aspect ratio designed for video. I wouldn't even mind if it was a bit taller, say 1.5:1.

I will say that it is nice Apple went beyond 1920x1200 on a consumer display. But if I were in the market for a 1920 display, I would go for the 1200 pixel tall one over the 1080 one, as both are roughly the same price anyways. I might watch video on a given computer screen as much as 25% of the time, no reason to make it shorter just to fit an arbitrary media format without black bars.

$2000 is pretty Pro.

$2000 is expensive, it is not necessarily "pro". These are two different concepts.

And for some of our favorite other-industry examples:

• A Leica M9 is expensive, but not "pro". A Nikon D3 or Canon 1D is "pro"
• A ferrari is expensive, but not "pro". An 18-wheeler is pro.

Getting back to computers, all iMacs are targeted for the (relatively affluent) homes or schools. Of course some businesses might find them useful and buy lots of them, but equating expensive with pro is wrong.

Why? Because Apple didn't apply that branding to them?

Because offices, especially ones with cubicles prefer smaller screens, many even keep using 4:3 or 5:4 screens - saving desk space is important.

Because graphic designers, video editors and even pro photoshoppers prefer dual screens, each screen being not quite so big. Yes, you can connect a secondary screen to an iMac, but it looks weird.

The whole all-in-one package is for home use. Businesses require continuity above all else, so a faulty monitor can be swapped out quickly, as could a hard drive in a faulty computer. Only a faulty hard drive would cause any kind of discontinuity. With an iMac, any malfunction means the whole package is out of service, and replacing the hard disk? Well, I'd say that it's like pulling teeth, but a mouth opens more easily than the back of an iMac.

It's a consumer machine, though an expensive one.

And yet, somehow I have two 20" widescreen monitors on my desk.


Is "looks weird" actually a criterion here? Has no designer really figured that hey, they could swap two one-page monitors for one two-page monitor? I doubt that.


Business has been losing that battle for 30 years. Remember when they required PCI ethernet cards so they could quickly swap them out when they got chatty? Those were the days.

If you require continuity, you keep user data on the network, keep some up-to-date iMacs on standby, and swap them in for any non-functional iMac. Total user downtime: About 1 minute, regardless of what the problem is. Repairing the machine might not be quick or easy, but since production is humming along it doesn't really matter. The real issue here is that Apple doesn't have a service program as robust as Dell's. If they had overnight off-site and same-day on-site service (available for a price, of course) nobody would be talking about this.


A consumer machine with an 8-bit screen with incredibly high resolution and the capacity for an i7 and 16GB of RAM is purely a consumer machine? Ah, no. It is certainly not the Ultimate Professional Workstation, but it can do heavy lifting and therefore there will be people using them for heavy lifting.

Heck, I know designers who are stuck at work on 6-bit Dell monitors. The iMac's display might not be the best possible, but it beats the pants off a lot of what's actually out there.

In portrait or landscape? A 20" screen seems pretty short to me in landscape, but too tall in landscape. I'm guessing you have a setup that's only a thousand pixels tall, and three times wider than it is tall.


Having an entire machine that's ready to swap in "within a minute" would require the expense of keeping an entire spare machine, and I'm pretty sure in most cases, active licenses for all the software that's on it. Then that's not counting the time to move the user's account over.

Apple's order volumes are probably enough that the cost to custom order whatever they want is negligible compared to off the shelf parts. Also, since the iMac update, Apple has also since introduced new devices with square and 4:3 screens, and updated notebooks too, still keeping the 16:10 screen, even though their unibody manufacturing system makes it easy to change machine form factors.

I have never seen a laptop with a 16x9 screen that looked right, they all look too wide. I think that the 16x10 screen on the MacBook Pro is the ideal. I don't want an HD screen on a 15" laptop, the resolution would have to be very high to get enough vertical space above the dock and below the menu bar. And high resolution doesn't work well with a 15" display, the eye strain is simply too much for me.

For the love of all that's good and Holy, I hope that Apple keeps the 16x10 screen on the MacBook Pro. It is one of the key factors for the success of the line, and its a big feature that makes the MacBook Pro desirable above the PC fray.

I'm with you Teamswitcher - those 16x9 laptops just look weird.
I hope they don't change but well, I fear the worst .... heck if Apple need to differentiate themselves from the other guys then keep the 16x10 dammit !!!!

i initially, for about an hour, had the same sentiment. afterwards i became accustomed to the aspect ratio. in fact, i'm typing this on a notebook with a 16:9 screen. it also helps that i love home theatre setups (and theatrical presentation) so widescreen is alright to me.

No matter how right your point is, it's not going to stop the inevitable. As sad as that it.

I don't think it's set in stone. If Apple decides going 16:9 is the way to be competitive, then that's where they will go. If Apple decides that staying 16:10 is best for them, then I see nothing that would prevent them from doing so. Panel manufacturers trip over each other trying to get an Apple contract, a run of a million panels is well worth a special run, I wouldn't be surprised if that exceeds the run volumes of off the shelf panels. The biggest technical drawback that I see is you get less surface area, and therefore less volume to pack things. This means less space for batteries, something has to go. Once Apple drops the internal optical drive, then you can add battery and make the computer smaller.

They have made it clear they are going 16:9. Watch this space. My guess it the new MacBook Air will be the first.

Where have they made it clear?

They need IPS displays in the laptops. They can put on a higher resolution 16:9 screen and exceed the resolution of the current 13" for example 1422 x 800. If they go higher than that, they would need to have resolution independence figured out like in a new operating system.

1600x900 would be higher than the current 1440x900 for the 15".

I don't know if they need IPS, but I sure want it. I don't need a new computer, but an IPS screen in a notebook computer might be enough to get me to upgrade. Otherwise, I'm quite happy with my mid-'07 15", it's not the current style, but it still looks fine and works fine.

Desktops and notebooks have different needs though. The iMac was made 16:9 last year (when they switched to i5/i7), but a year later when Apple switched the MacBook Pros to i5 and i7, they still stuck with 16:10 screens. That would have been the ideal time to make the switch since they're making major changes to the circuit boards too. If they do switch aspect ratios next revision, they'll have to change the case and likely need to change the circuit boards yet again.

I didn't expect today's "split" with the Air, first, that there would be two sizes of the Air model, and that the update would offer both 16:9 and 16:10 models. I would have expected completely sticking with 16:10 or a total switch to 16:9 on every updated notebook.

Apple adopts 16:9 screens now.

Well, with the launch of the 27" Cinema Display, but today was their third computer with 16:9.