Will this be like the moving sidewalks everywhere that were promised in the '70s?
Quote:
Originally posted by kim kap sol
It's inevitable...one day huge ass monitors will be cheap enough that everyone will have 50" monitors in every room of the house. You'll be able to watch TV, movies, all through your computer which will have a resolution independent UI that will allow you to be anywhere in the room and use the computer as if it was sitting 3 feet in front of you.
The biggest problem regarding resolution independence and OS X is that OS X doesn't have a resolution independent cursor or title bar. Those are the "big" things. Then there are all the little things, like the tiny text in so many web graphics and raster interface elements. Even if we get a big cursor or use a third party hack to make one, it's still difficult to hit tiny buttons like the traffic light buttions. Still, I think we might see advancements in this regard as early as OS 10.5. We might even get a large cursor in Tiger, due to the popularity of the 30" display.
I was watching a video from WWDC (I don't remember where to find it, but it was free for non-ADC members) and they briefly showed some tools for developing resolution independent applications in Tiger. The person used the tool to say how big they wanted the next application to open (in percent size compared to the normal windows) and the next app they launched would be the different size. It changed all the buttons /and/ the title bar. If you switched between applications, the title bar would change size to match the application. Resolution independence is coming, so we may not see bigger screens, just higher resolution ones. That'll be nice because the 30" still isn't big enough to show full, un-scaled images from my digital camera.
According to this article we will not only be seeing bigger screens, but much cheaper prices. It is talking about LCD TVs, but I see no reason this won't apply to computer monitors as well.
The most exciting technology to wait for? OLED. Plain and simple. It will revolutionize all screens. The biggest impact will be on laptops. I cant wait.
I bet they're going to make monitors in place of wall paper. If you've seen the way LCDs work, they're kind of like that already (when you take out the light source).
yes.. as i posted above OLED's will make this possible. Your wall can serve as a screen...or a light source with way brighter possibilities than conventional lights and all at very low power usage. And all in a thin piece of plastic like material.
For those without subscriptions to the NYT here is the relevant parts of the article. 20 inch displays at $299 sounds good to me. Should help Apple significantly lower the price on iMacs too.
As for OLEDs, there has been a lot of promise and little delivered for years now. I am tired of waiting for huge displays that will roll up and are dirt cheap when all we get are a few phones and digicams. Seems they have had major problems with longevity and scaling up to bigger screens.
Quote:
Signs of a Glut and Lower Prices on Thin TV's
By ERIC A. TAUB
While hanging a television on the living- room wall may have captured the imagination of American consumers, it has yet to empty many pocketbooks.
That may soon change as a glut of liquid crystal display flat-panel televisions, called L.C.D.'s, enter the market, a result of a boom in new factories. According to several manufacturers and analysts, the prices for L.C.D. flat-panel TV's will drop in the new year, falling by as much as 30 percent by the end of 2005. The prices of plasma flat-panel TV's are also expected to fall significantly.
Manufacturers, like the makers of other consumer electronics, are investing heavily to expand their production capacity, hoping to capture market share. Earnings, they reason, will come later, although until recently, these sets had proved highly profitable. In the first three quarters of 2004, the LG.Philips LCD Company made $1.4 billion in profits from L.C.D. televisions, although the company reported a drop in earnings in the third quarter from the year-earlier period. Another manufacturer, AU Optronics, made $900 million in the three quarters, according to DisplaySearch, a technology research company.
This windfall has given them the cash to build next-generation plants capable of creating even larger screens at lower per-unit costs. Each new generation L.C.D. plant costs $1 billion to $3 billion.
Next year, AU Optronics and another L.C.D. maker, C.P.T., both based in Taiwan, will complete new plants for making 32- and 37-inch displays. To cut construction costs, Sony and Samsung are in a $2 billion joint venture to build the world's first L.C.D. plant designed to produce eight 40-inch or six 46-inch displays cut from one large piece of glass.
"The plant building boom is due to a herd mentality as big sales numbers have been forecast," said Chris Chinnock, president of Insight Media and editor of the Microdisplay Report, an industry newsletter. "We've seen this cycle of shortfall, investment and oversupply for 10 years. Everyone sees the opportunity at the bottom of the trough and thinks they can do better than their competitors."
Bharath Rajagopalan, general manager for TCL-Thomson Electronics, owner of the RCA brand, said: "L.C.D. production is becoming a commodity game. There is an inordinate amount of competition and price erosion."
Ross Young, president of DisplaySearch, predicts that there will be a 53 percent increase in capacity during 2005, and he says that will put a lot of pressure on pricing. A 42-inch L.C.D. set that costs close to $4,500 today will be $3,100 next year, and $2,250 in 2006, he says.
Tasso Koken, vice president and general merchandise manager for Sears home electronics, predicts that in 18 months, a 20-inch L.C.D. TV from a well-known manufacturer will be under $299, down from $700 to $800 today. "The 2005 price drops in L.C.D. will make the 2004 reductions look like a walk in the park," he said.
How the hell would you find your cursor on a 45 inch monitor?
make the cursor bigger, or the resolution lower.
BTW I heard someone talk about resolution independence.. that's something only analog displays can do.
LCDs, plasmas, and eventually *LED screens all are limited to a small number of resolutions and certainly refresh rates.
CRTs are only limited by bandwidth and dot pitch really. There are a vast multitude of possible resolutions between the max and minimum resolutions that it can display. Generally this is limited by the video card.
There is no need to get that big. Are you just bored or something? Have you seen the size of the 30" in person yet? DOOOD we are talking overkill. Especially when for what Apple will charge you'll be able to get a pioneer 55" HD Plasma for less, and plug that in.
I absolutely agree. I saw the 30" in CompUSA last week and it is freaking EEEEEnormis. Although I would love to have one I had a really hard time understanding anyones need to use the dual 30" option and therfore do not understand a need for a larger display unless you are using it for your home television.
Just saw the 30" at the store. I find it's already far too big, and I don't say a thing like this lightly. You can only focus on so big an area. When you reach a certain size (can't say how big that is, probably has personal variation) it's more efficient to have virtual desktops so your eyes don't need to wander so far. Even if you have "active work area" and then some static, monitor-like desktop space, I'm thinking they might better reside in individual screens.
Are there virtual desktops for OS X, btw?
More resolution is always nice though, since the resolution independence is coming.
4. keep your ocular prescription the same for a few more years
5. ???
6. PROFIT!!
I don't own a 21" CRT monitor so I can press my face up against it and fog up the glass, I have it so I can put it on 1280x1024 and have my head literally 3 feet away and still be able to see perfectly.
At 30", it also doubles as a good-sized television.
Just saw the 30" at the store. I find it's already far too big, and I don't say a thing like this lightly. You can only focus on so big an area. When you reach a certain size (can't say how big that is, probably has personal variation) it's more efficient to have virtual desktops so your eyes don't need to wander so far. Even if you have "active work area" and then some static, monitor-like desktop space, I'm thinking they might better reside in individual screens.
Are there virtual desktops for OS X, btw?
More resolution is always nice though, since the resolution independence is coming.
Well if you make detailed digital maps of areas, a 30" is great. So, it depends on what you use your computer for...
BTW I heard someone talk about resolution independence.. that's something only analog displays can do.
No, it has nothing to do with the display. It has to do with the size of objects rendered on screen being independent of hardware pixel size. Screens would function exactly like printers, where the size of a letter rendered in PostScript is independent of the resolution of the printer. A printer with twice the resolution doesn't print text at half the size, right? It prints text at the same size, but twice the resolution (i.e., accuracy).
Once you had resolution independence, you could scale the size of the interface on screen without resorting to the resolution-changing tricks you need now (and, for that matter, without the sort of manual fiddling that Windows requires). So for a huge display, you could simply scale everything up to 200% or 300% and use the monitor from 5 or 6 feet away. This would, actually, be a major ergonomic enhancement, since the human eye is not designed to focus on nearby objects for extended periods, and since low resolutions and antialiased displays provoke eyestrain.
No, it has nothing to do with the display. It has to do with the size of objects rendered on screen being independent of hardware pixel size. Screens would function exactly like printers, where the size of a letter rendered in PostScript is independent of the resolution of the printer. A printer with twice the resolution doesn't print text at half the size, right? It prints text at the same size, but twice the resolution (i.e., accuracy).
So am I wrong in thinking LCDs have a limited number of cells and thus a limited resolution?
That would go against everything i know about LCDs
*looks at his graphing calculator* nope, doesn't seem like this thing is resolution independent
So am I wrong in thinking LCDs have a limited number of cells and thus a limited resolution?
No, you're wrong in focusing on the hardware. Resolution independence makes that aspect of the hardware irrelevant to sizing and scaling.
This isn't about whether the size of the hardware pixel changes. It's about whether the OS' rendering engine uses the hardware pixel as a ruler at all.
I'll put it this way: A resolution independent UI attached to a CRT would display widgets and text at exactly the same size no matter what you set the resolution to. You'd change the size of the UI elements by scaling it within the OS; if you set the scale to 200% (like you would on a copier, or a printer), then everything would appear twice its former size whether the CRT was set to 640x480 or 1280x960.
The only difference with an LCD is that they only have one native resolution. So a resolution independent UI would simply obviate the need to ever have it simulate a lower resolution. You could set the scale over 100%, and the elements on screen would be scaled up larger, but still rendered at full native resolution. If you've ever worked with vector art, in e.g. Freehand or Illustrator, you've seen this.
In other words, display resolution would finally be resolution, in the sense that the word applies in every other context: The degree of precision with which a thing is captured or reproduced.
I think it can be expressed simpler still in terms of benefit to the user:
Now, before resolution independence, if you have a 15.2" screen that does 1280x864, that's about right. You can comfortably see everything on the screen.
If the resolution of that 15.2" screen was doubled to 2560x1728 and size remained the same, you wouldn't be able to see the menus, the text, etc. They would be too small.
However, put in resolution independence in the OS, still with the high resolution display. You get the same picture that you got in 1280x864 but sharper. Lots sharper. It now makes sense to get as much resolution as you can, irrespective of screen size, right up to how much detail your eyes can distinguish.
Ah, I got it. I thought resolution independence was something else.
lemme see if I got this right:
So RI has all the gui components be vector art and scaling them in different ways instead of basically pictures overlayed on a frame.
Modern monitors, as you said, would have to simulate a lower resolution for some components while running a higher one.
Basically like running a monitor on 1600x1200 and the components on the screen taking up the same length and width (in inches or CM), but being larger in terms of pixels.
Heh, sounds cool.. always did bug me how my menubar just kept getting smaller as my computers got faster :,(
Quote:
Originally posted by Amorph
In other words, display resolution would finally be resolution, in the sense that the word applies in every other context: The degree of precision with which a thing is captured or reproduced.
I think Mac screens will go high res sooner than most of us expect when resolution independence is done. The parts exist, or will exist (everyone remembers the ridiculous resolution Dell laptops, and it's easier to put any tech on the desktop).
edit: this can give Apple a much needed competetive advantage in screens. Now Apple faces hard competition with HP, Benq (and Dell branded Benq). When they can offer high res screens that by nature suck on Windows, rock on OS X, they have a genuine advantage instead of the past years' anticompetetive ADC crap.
I wonder, will resolution independence work right with all apps from the start? If some of the apps control pixel placing directly..
Without a compositor like Quartz it would be obvious those apps are not going to work right. Now, I don't know. Any devs present who can make a good guess?
I wonder, will resolution independence work right with all apps from the start? If some of the apps control pixel placing directly..
There's an approximately 0% chance of that. The Aqua Human Interface Guidelines specify the distances between GUI elements in terms of pixels, and Interface Builder implements those guidelines literally.
You could simulate compatibility by defining a logical pixel size (like the W3C has done for the web) that's independent of actual hardware pixel size. But that brings anti-aliasing back in, which is suboptimal. The better approach is what Apple is doing: rolling out the technology early so that developers have time to make the necessary adjustments to their applications (which, in the best case, might be able to be handled sensibly by importing the .nib files into a new release of IB—just assume 100ppi, calculate distances accordingly in real-world terms, and write those back into the nib. Done.). Then, after the dev community has had 18-24 months to get their apps updated, you roll out a release of the OS that claims resolution independence, and means it.
The one area where hardware resolution adjustment might remain useful is gaming, where the whole point of using lower resolutions is to lower the amount of work done per frame. Piping the game through a resolution-independent rendering layer wouldn't completely moot that goal, but it wouldn't help.
Comments
Originally posted by kim kap sol
It's inevitable...one day huge ass monitors will be cheap enough that everyone will have 50" monitors in every room of the house. You'll be able to watch TV, movies, all through your computer which will have a resolution independent UI that will allow you to be anywhere in the room and use the computer as if it was sitting 3 feet in front of you.
I say 15 years.
Originally posted by midwinter
Could someone explain resolution independence?
Originally posted by tonton
The biggest problem regarding resolution independence and OS X is that OS X doesn't have a resolution independent cursor or title bar. Those are the "big" things. Then there are all the little things, like the tiny text in so many web graphics and raster interface elements. Even if we get a big cursor or use a third party hack to make one, it's still difficult to hit tiny buttons like the traffic light buttions. Still, I think we might see advancements in this regard as early as OS 10.5. We might even get a large cursor in Tiger, due to the popularity of the 30" display.
I was watching a video from WWDC (I don't remember where to find it, but it was free for non-ADC members) and they briefly showed some tools for developing resolution independent applications in Tiger. The person used the tool to say how big they wanted the next application to open (in percent size compared to the normal windows) and the next app they launched would be the different size. It changed all the buttons /and/ the title bar. If you switched between applications, the title bar would change size to match the application. Resolution independence is coming, so we may not see bigger screens, just higher resolution ones. That'll be nice because the 30" still isn't big enough to show full, un-scaled images from my digital camera.
The most exciting technology to wait for? OLED. Plain and simple. It will revolutionize all screens. The biggest impact will be on laptops. I cant wait.
Originally posted by slughead
I bet they're going to make monitors in place of wall paper. If you've seen the way LCDs work, they're kind of like that already (when you take out the light source).
yes.. as i posted above OLED's will make this possible. Your wall can serve as a screen...or a light source with way brighter possibilities than conventional lights and all at very low power usage. And all in a thin piece of plastic like material.
As for OLEDs, there has been a lot of promise and little delivered for years now. I am tired of waiting for huge displays that will roll up and are dirt cheap when all we get are a few phones and digicams. Seems they have had major problems with longevity and scaling up to bigger screens.
Signs of a Glut and Lower Prices on Thin TV's
By ERIC A. TAUB
While hanging a television on the living- room wall may have captured the imagination of American consumers, it has yet to empty many pocketbooks.
That may soon change as a glut of liquid crystal display flat-panel televisions, called L.C.D.'s, enter the market, a result of a boom in new factories. According to several manufacturers and analysts, the prices for L.C.D. flat-panel TV's will drop in the new year, falling by as much as 30 percent by the end of 2005. The prices of plasma flat-panel TV's are also expected to fall significantly.
Manufacturers, like the makers of other consumer electronics, are investing heavily to expand their production capacity, hoping to capture market share. Earnings, they reason, will come later, although until recently, these sets had proved highly profitable. In the first three quarters of 2004, the LG.Philips LCD Company made $1.4 billion in profits from L.C.D. televisions, although the company reported a drop in earnings in the third quarter from the year-earlier period. Another manufacturer, AU Optronics, made $900 million in the three quarters, according to DisplaySearch, a technology research company.
This windfall has given them the cash to build next-generation plants capable of creating even larger screens at lower per-unit costs. Each new generation L.C.D. plant costs $1 billion to $3 billion.
Next year, AU Optronics and another L.C.D. maker, C.P.T., both based in Taiwan, will complete new plants for making 32- and 37-inch displays. To cut construction costs, Sony and Samsung are in a $2 billion joint venture to build the world's first L.C.D. plant designed to produce eight 40-inch or six 46-inch displays cut from one large piece of glass.
"The plant building boom is due to a herd mentality as big sales numbers have been forecast," said Chris Chinnock, president of Insight Media and editor of the Microdisplay Report, an industry newsletter. "We've seen this cycle of shortfall, investment and oversupply for 10 years. Everyone sees the opportunity at the bottom of the trough and thinks they can do better than their competitors."
Bharath Rajagopalan, general manager for TCL-Thomson Electronics, owner of the RCA brand, said: "L.C.D. production is becoming a commodity game. There is an inordinate amount of competition and price erosion."
Ross Young, president of DisplaySearch, predicts that there will be a 53 percent increase in capacity during 2005, and he says that will put a lot of pressure on pricing. A 42-inch L.C.D. set that costs close to $4,500 today will be $3,100 next year, and $2,250 in 2006, he says.
Tasso Koken, vice president and general merchandise manager for Sears home electronics, predicts that in 18 months, a 20-inch L.C.D. TV from a well-known manufacturer will be under $299, down from $700 to $800 today. "The 2005 price drops in L.C.D. will make the 2004 reductions look like a walk in the park," he said.
Originally posted by SoopaDrive
How the hell would you find your cursor on a 45 inch monitor?
make the cursor bigger, or the resolution lower.
BTW I heard someone talk about resolution independence.. that's something only analog displays can do.
LCDs, plasmas, and eventually *LED screens all are limited to a small number of resolutions and certainly refresh rates.
CRTs are only limited by bandwidth and dot pitch really. There are a vast multitude of possible resolutions between the max and minimum resolutions that it can display. Generally this is limited by the video card.
Originally posted by onlooker
There is no need to get that big. Are you just bored or something? Have you seen the size of the 30" in person yet? DOOOD we are talking overkill. Especially when for what Apple will charge you'll be able to get a pioneer 55" HD Plasma for less, and plug that in.
I absolutely agree. I saw the 30" in CompUSA last week and it is freaking EEEEEnormis. Although I would love to have one I had a really hard time understanding anyones need to use the dual 30" option and therfore do not understand a need for a larger display unless you are using it for your home television.
Are there virtual desktops for OS X, btw?
More resolution is always nice though, since the resolution independence is coming.
1. Buy 30" monitor
2. Put it on 1600x1200
3. sit 4 feet away
4. keep your ocular prescription the same for a few more years
5. ???
6. PROFIT!!
I don't own a 21" CRT monitor so I can press my face up against it and fog up the glass, I have it so I can put it on 1280x1024 and have my head literally 3 feet away and still be able to see perfectly.
At 30", it also doubles as a good-sized television.
Originally posted by Gon
Just saw the 30" at the store. I find it's already far too big, and I don't say a thing like this lightly. You can only focus on so big an area. When you reach a certain size (can't say how big that is, probably has personal variation) it's more efficient to have virtual desktops so your eyes don't need to wander so far. Even if you have "active work area" and then some static, monitor-like desktop space, I'm thinking they might better reside in individual screens.
Are there virtual desktops for OS X, btw?
More resolution is always nice though, since the resolution independence is coming.
Well if you make detailed digital maps of areas, a 30" is great. So, it depends on what you use your computer for...
Originally posted by slughead
BTW I heard someone talk about resolution independence.. that's something only analog displays can do.
No, it has nothing to do with the display. It has to do with the size of objects rendered on screen being independent of hardware pixel size. Screens would function exactly like printers, where the size of a letter rendered in PostScript is independent of the resolution of the printer. A printer with twice the resolution doesn't print text at half the size, right? It prints text at the same size, but twice the resolution (i.e., accuracy).
Once you had resolution independence, you could scale the size of the interface on screen without resorting to the resolution-changing tricks you need now (and, for that matter, without the sort of manual fiddling that Windows requires). So for a huge display, you could simply scale everything up to 200% or 300% and use the monitor from 5 or 6 feet away. This would, actually, be a major ergonomic enhancement, since the human eye is not designed to focus on nearby objects for extended periods, and since low resolutions and antialiased displays provoke eyestrain.
Originally posted by Amorph
No, it has nothing to do with the display. It has to do with the size of objects rendered on screen being independent of hardware pixel size. Screens would function exactly like printers, where the size of a letter rendered in PostScript is independent of the resolution of the printer. A printer with twice the resolution doesn't print text at half the size, right? It prints text at the same size, but twice the resolution (i.e., accuracy).
So am I wrong in thinking LCDs have a limited number of cells and thus a limited resolution?
That would go against everything i know about LCDs
*looks at his graphing calculator* nope, doesn't seem like this thing is resolution independent
Originally posted by slughead
So am I wrong in thinking LCDs have a limited number of cells and thus a limited resolution?
No, you're wrong in focusing on the hardware. Resolution independence makes that aspect of the hardware irrelevant to sizing and scaling.
This isn't about whether the size of the hardware pixel changes. It's about whether the OS' rendering engine uses the hardware pixel as a ruler at all.
I'll put it this way: A resolution independent UI attached to a CRT would display widgets and text at exactly the same size no matter what you set the resolution to. You'd change the size of the UI elements by scaling it within the OS; if you set the scale to 200% (like you would on a copier, or a printer), then everything would appear twice its former size whether the CRT was set to 640x480 or 1280x960.
The only difference with an LCD is that they only have one native resolution. So a resolution independent UI would simply obviate the need to ever have it simulate a lower resolution. You could set the scale over 100%, and the elements on screen would be scaled up larger, but still rendered at full native resolution. If you've ever worked with vector art, in e.g. Freehand or Illustrator, you've seen this.
In other words, display resolution would finally be resolution, in the sense that the word applies in every other context: The degree of precision with which a thing is captured or reproduced.
Now, before resolution independence, if you have a 15.2" screen that does 1280x864, that's about right. You can comfortably see everything on the screen.
If the resolution of that 15.2" screen was doubled to 2560x1728 and size remained the same, you wouldn't be able to see the menus, the text, etc. They would be too small.
However, put in resolution independence in the OS, still with the high resolution display. You get the same picture that you got in 1280x864 but sharper. Lots sharper. It now makes sense to get as much resolution as you can, irrespective of screen size, right up to how much detail your eyes can distinguish.
lemme see if I got this right:
So RI has all the gui components be vector art and scaling them in different ways instead of basically pictures overlayed on a frame.
Modern monitors, as you said, would have to simulate a lower resolution for some components while running a higher one.
Basically like running a monitor on 1600x1200 and the components on the screen taking up the same length and width (in inches or CM), but being larger in terms of pixels.
Heh, sounds cool.. always did bug me how my menubar just kept getting smaller as my computers got faster :,(
Originally posted by Amorph
In other words, display resolution would finally be resolution, in the sense that the word applies in every other context: The degree of precision with which a thing is captured or reproduced.
edit: this can give Apple a much needed competetive advantage in screens. Now Apple faces hard competition with HP, Benq (and Dell branded Benq). When they can offer high res screens that by nature suck on Windows, rock on OS X, they have a genuine advantage instead of the past years' anticompetetive ADC crap.
I wonder, will resolution independence work right with all apps from the start? If some of the apps control pixel placing directly..
Without a compositor like Quartz it would be obvious those apps are not going to work right. Now, I don't know. Any devs present who can make a good guess?
Originally posted by Gon
I wonder, will resolution independence work right with all apps from the start? If some of the apps control pixel placing directly..
There's an approximately 0% chance of that. The Aqua Human Interface Guidelines specify the distances between GUI elements in terms of pixels, and Interface Builder implements those guidelines literally.
You could simulate compatibility by defining a logical pixel size (like the W3C has done for the web) that's independent of actual hardware pixel size. But that brings anti-aliasing back in, which is suboptimal. The better approach is what Apple is doing: rolling out the technology early so that developers have time to make the necessary adjustments to their applications (which, in the best case, might be able to be handled sensibly by importing the .nib files into a new release of IB—just assume 100ppi, calculate distances accordingly in real-world terms, and write those back into the nib. Done.). Then, after the dev community has had 18-24 months to get their apps updated, you roll out a release of the OS that claims resolution independence, and means it.
The one area where hardware resolution adjustment might remain useful is gaming, where the whole point of using lower resolutions is to lower the amount of work done per frame. Piping the game through a resolution-independent rendering layer wouldn't completely moot that goal, but it wouldn't help.