you all are making some really kick ass points. but also think beyond. think Core Image
...
when i said think beyond, think 2D and 3D GPU-leveraged user interface rendering for sweet, smooth flowing next-generation UI...
Core Image is entirely 2D stuff and it's about processing images. The UI is rendered by Quartz so Quartz Extreme applies here.
But why we got to the resolution independent UI here?
Because we are discussing the hi-res PowerBook rumor. The main point was that apple will not put a hi-res PowerBook without resolution independent UI in place because it cares about user experience.
Download Opera and play with the View - Zoom menu. This will give you a good idea what happens. I am not aware of any other browser capable of zooming window contents. Forget Mozilla "resolution independence", it stands for "font size"!
One more try here also ;-) Thought my point was clear stated and telling from your post it seems we are not that far away:
My point is that none of the browsers (well, apparently with the exception of Opera - never used it though) supports "zooming" yet. And most Internet sites are not "zoom"-friendly either because of the reasons mentioned in my post.
To be fully usefull, res-independance must scale all displayable elements to a certain the desired size to make up for the higher resolution. This can either be a lossy undertaking (zooming bitmaps) or a lossless quality-enhancing one (scaling vector graphics and fonts).
Elements that are relative in size (e.g. fonts) will be scaled, no problem. But what will happen to elements that are of a fixed absolute size (bitmaps, tables etc.)?
And the intermediate (until the web is res-independent OS friendly) solution in my opinion is that elements absolut in size are zoomed according to the desired size and the relative ones are scaled.
I would love a WUXGA powerbook. I currently have a G5, two powerbooks, 3 iPods, etc... and one high end Windows laptop with a 15'' WUXGA screen. I LOVE it because I've changed XP to scale text, UI elements, etc... to 120 DPI from the native 96 DPI. Most places that don't know about DPI I just increase the font size - including the web.
So what does this do for me? A lot. The most important is text. I'm a developer so I look at text all day long. Having the text at a much crisper and higher resolution - yet the same size as on a 96DPI display - is so much easier on the eyes.
Here is another example - VGA Pocket PCs. These are PDAs. Normal Pocket PCs have 3.5-4'' QVGA screens (240x320) 96 DPI internally. VGA Pocket PCs have a 3.5-4'' VGA screen (480x640) 192 DPI internally. Everything is resolution scaled. On QVGA they use 16 pixel icons, on VGA they use 32 pixel icons. Everything is so much crisper and readable. Yes, one can also make the text smaller and still be readable (some people do this), but I love the fact that it looks like I'm reading from a printed sheet of paper and not a jagged computer screen.
The same applies on my WUXGA+ screen on my laptop. Sure its nice to sometimes be able to see a lot more on screen, but primarily its that everything is so much clearer and far less headache inducing when working for long hours.
To be fully usefull, res-independance must scale all displayable elements to a certain the desired size to make up for the higher resolution. This can either be a lossy undertaking (zooming bitmaps) or a lossless quality-enhancing one (scaling vector graphics and fonts).
bingo. most definitely. lossy strategies will be a definite no-no for apple. no way is lossy scaling gonna be used... lossless will be the way to go
Elements that are relative in size (e.g. fonts) will be scaled, no problem. But what will happen to elements that are of a fixed absolute size (bitmaps, tables etc.)?
fixed size bitmaps will have to tile without being scaled ala web backgrounds. otherwise, fixed size bitmaps get the boot
And the intermediate (until the web is res-independent OS friendly) solution in my opinion is that elements absolut in size are zoomed according to the desired size and the relative ones are scaled.
yes, good intermediate strategy. the objective for a full strategy for res-independence would be full relative scaling without artifacts. otherwise it would not be an apple solution. think web standards separation of structure and content, but going into full vector-based, scalable, lossless, artifact-free GUI. otherwise apple won't really bother...
some great thinking going on here, i love UI stuff type discussions, although working in the area is a whole nother thing /end transmission /yo we out
Why are discussions about screen resolutions always held by near-blind moles?
There are some people out there for which a 100-dpi screen is just an arrangement of clearly separated individual pixels.
There needs to be an option to get a screen where the pixels are actually small enough to begin melding into a continuous image. (My 10.4" 1280x768 Sony TR1 comes quite close.)
Unfortunately, Steve Jobs (or whoever gets to decide about screen resolutions at Apple) seems to be one of the moles.
Clearly, resolution independence would be nice -- then I could choose smaller fonts for everything on my Mac... (Right now, I can scale down for most text, but characters tend to get hard to read if less than 3 pixels wide.)
Where's the PowerBook for the (non-blind) rest of us?
Where's the PowerBook for the (non-blind) rest of us?
Amen to that. Whenever I see high-res Dell notebooks, I cannot help salivating about the crisp, small letters. Going back to my trusty old Titanium is positively depressing, as I can make out the black pixel borders at 40cm distance and type is both mushy (thanks to Apples antialiasing strategy) and jaggy at once.
However, some misconceptions have arisen concerning resolution independence.
First: there is no need to have integer multipliers. OpenGL is perfectly able to do a good job of fractional scaling as might be evident by Expose, the "suck" effect when minimizing windows, or the smooth icon wave in the dock.
Second: the higher the native pixel density of the display, the better the outcome, so the dreaded "squintronic" displays would make a 800x600 desktop look much better than a native 800x600 display.
Third: there is absolutely no need to move to a vector-UI or vector-based web to get a decent quality. Photos can be upscaled quite nicely without loss of perceptable quality provided the display has a high pixel density. The higher pixel density downscales the image to the eye again, counteracting any artefacts of the upscaling. Of course, the image will not look better on the high-res display (but text does).
But more likely, the manual references an undelivered display option that was planned with the last round of PowerBook G4 updates, but canned just prior to the product line update released earlier this month.
It could also be that someone at Apple bothered to test the PB 17" for HD and found it lacking.
A friend of mine bought a Sony Prosumer HD camera lately. A few days ago he came round to my place, and we watched some MPEG clips he'd filmed with it on my PB 17" 1.33 GHz (1 GB RAM, 10.3.8 ). What plays back without a problem on PCs (of course) and on his dual 2.5GHz G5 showed somewhere between 1/2 and 2/3 image rate on my powerbook, using VLC 0.8.1. Playing back those clips, the CPU was maxed out, and the fan came on after a short while.
So, having a HD-capable PB would be really nice (even if I'd much rather have 1440 in the 15" and 1650 in the 17"), but somehow I'm not sure that the PowerBook with its current architecture can really handle HD that well.
I was doing fine on this thread until I asked "what will I be viewing on my super hi-res pixelated screen?" It is all a matter of content available... For readers of Japanese it does make the characters a lot prettier and DVDs look nice, but until I get a TV option that can replace my old Sony, I think I have enough for today. Me, I just but a 23" for my home desk. Maybe when the new HD PBs appear, whether G5 or not, I could spring for a 30"
Two words and three initials: "Resolution Independant GUI"
More pixels means not smaller text, but higher-quality with the ability to display more detail.
You can't effectively do RI GUI at pixel densities like 133 ppi. The pixels just aren't small enough to get good RI performance, but they're too small for non-RI use, at least for most people. As far as I'm concerned, the whole range of pixel densities from around 110ppi to 200 ppi isn't very useful.
Resolution independent UI could be especially helpful if the computer was aware of the size of the display, and therefore aware of scale.
I am an architect and often find myself putting a ruler to the LCD to measure a wall, or trace off an image on screen to a paper.
If the mac was able to tell me which scale it was displaying it could make the combination of physical drawings and digital ones much easier. And much of the printing in the office would be unnecessary.
This could be helpful in many situations. Designing packaging you could quickly compare it to its physical content. You could make sure the address card was the right size to fit the pocket of the suitcase. And more far reaching implications I can´t see right now.
Where's the PowerBook for the (non-blind) rest of us?
I hope the highest resolution displays are a BTO only.
I'd gladly welcome an improvement from where we are today, but wouldn't want to be "stuck" or pay a premium for a PB I'd need a magnifying glass to use.
These resolutions work great on Dell, Sony, HP, and other laptop makers just fine, not to mention they are using beautiful LCDs unlike my outdated powerbook one...
I'll buy a powerbook on the 19th though
Quote:
Originally posted by Matsu
There's some good in this, although I'm not a fan of insano resolutions, recent improvements in browsers and OS, will make them more tolerable. You can deal with just about everything in OS and Apps these days, provided your devs are smart enough to realize more people have less than perfect vision than not. Web sites remain the number one offender, with the highest proportion of idiotic design/miniscule text/bad navigation/UI than any other category of electronica.
Still 1920x1200 might work at 17", 1680x1050 might be OK at 15.4" (though Apple would have to change the screen up). Though really I think that 1680x1050 and 1440x900 would be more appropriate bumps for 17 and 15 respectively, I can see why 17" buyers would want 1920, either you bump it to be HD capable, or don't bother making me squint!
As for the 12", I have the 12, you really don't want it getting any denser than where it's at. For more than XGA, look at 16:10 14" panels. I think this may be the ideal laptop screen. I used one (a compaq) side by side wiith my PB. It's a great screen size. No taller, just a tad wider. Apple could make a book that's the same weight, a little thinner, and just less than two inches wider. That could take a 1280x800 screen with reasonable comfort.
Comments
you all are making some really kick ass points. but also think beyond. think Core Image
to make resolution independence work, you definitely gotta drop bitmaps. unless you design the bitmaps to tile accordingly like web page backgrounds
when i said think beyond, think 2D and 3D GPU-leveraged user interface rendering for sweet, smooth flowing next-generation UI...
Mac Os 10.5 or even 10.4.x could be using 3D in the UI much more intensely than just the cube-user-switching effect...
think also third party productivity devices using core image 3D stuff for user interface/ streamlined productivity stuff...
think minority report style but in 3d
whoa...my brain just melted
Originally posted by sunilraman
you all are making some really kick ass points. but also think beyond. think Core Image
...
when i said think beyond, think 2D and 3D GPU-leveraged user interface rendering for sweet, smooth flowing next-generation UI...
Core Image is entirely 2D stuff and it's about processing images. The UI is rendered by Quartz so Quartz Extreme applies here.
But why we got to the resolution independent UI here?
Because we are discussing the hi-res PowerBook rumor. The main point was that apple will not put a hi-res PowerBook without resolution independent UI in place because it cares about user experience.
Originally posted by T'hain Esh Kelch
Does a higher resolution mean higher power use?
As far as I know, no, because power is mainly consumed by the backlight.
Originally posted by shadow
Just one more try...
Download Opera and play with the View - Zoom menu. This will give you a good idea what happens. I am not aware of any other browser capable of zooming window contents. Forget Mozilla "resolution independence", it stands for "font size"!
One more try here also ;-) Thought my point was clear stated and telling from your post it seems we are not that far away:
My point is that none of the browsers (well, apparently with the exception of Opera - never used it though) supports "zooming" yet. And most Internet sites are not "zoom"-friendly either because of the reasons mentioned in my post.
To be fully usefull, res-independance must scale all displayable elements to a certain the desired size to make up for the higher resolution. This can either be a lossy undertaking (zooming bitmaps) or a lossless quality-enhancing one (scaling vector graphics and fonts).
Elements that are relative in size (e.g. fonts) will be scaled, no problem. But what will happen to elements that are of a fixed absolute size (bitmaps, tables etc.)?
And the intermediate (until the web is res-independent OS friendly) solution in my opinion is that elements absolut in size are zoomed according to the desired size and the relative ones are scaled.
Originally posted by gregmightdothat
As far as I know, no, because power is mainly consumed by the backlight.
In theory, a higher resolutions requires more power:
- more video-RAM needed
- more GPU work to be done
- more transistors to be controlled
One can argue how much more power this will consume, but in theory it should be more than with a lower res.
So what does this do for me? A lot. The most important is text. I'm a developer so I look at text all day long. Having the text at a much crisper and higher resolution - yet the same size as on a 96DPI display - is so much easier on the eyes.
Here is another example - VGA Pocket PCs. These are PDAs. Normal Pocket PCs have 3.5-4'' QVGA screens (240x320) 96 DPI internally. VGA Pocket PCs have a 3.5-4'' VGA screen (480x640) 192 DPI internally. Everything is resolution scaled. On QVGA they use 16 pixel icons, on VGA they use 32 pixel icons. Everything is so much crisper and readable. Yes, one can also make the text smaller and still be readable (some people do this), but I love the fact that it looks like I'm reading from a printed sheet of paper and not a jagged computer screen.
The same applies on my WUXGA+ screen on my laptop. Sure its nice to sometimes be able to see a lot more on screen, but primarily its that everything is so much clearer and far less headache inducing when working for long hours.
my comments in italics
To be fully usefull, res-independance must scale all displayable elements to a certain the desired size to make up for the higher resolution. This can either be a lossy undertaking (zooming bitmaps) or a lossless quality-enhancing one (scaling vector graphics and fonts).
bingo. most definitely. lossy strategies will be a definite no-no for apple. no way is lossy scaling gonna be used... lossless will be the way to go
Elements that are relative in size (e.g. fonts) will be scaled, no problem. But what will happen to elements that are of a fixed absolute size (bitmaps, tables etc.)?
fixed size bitmaps will have to tile without being scaled ala web backgrounds. otherwise, fixed size bitmaps get the boot
And the intermediate (until the web is res-independent OS friendly) solution in my opinion is that elements absolut in size are zoomed according to the desired size and the relative ones are scaled.
yes, good intermediate strategy. the objective for a full strategy for res-independence would be full relative scaling without artifacts. otherwise it would not be an apple solution. think web standards separation of structure and content, but going into full vector-based, scalable, lossless, artifact-free GUI. otherwise apple won't really bother...
some great thinking going on here, i love UI stuff type discussions, although working in the area is a whole nother thing
There are some people out there for which a 100-dpi screen is just an arrangement of clearly separated individual pixels.
There needs to be an option to get a screen where the pixels are actually small enough to begin melding into a continuous image. (My 10.4" 1280x768 Sony TR1 comes quite close.)
Unfortunately, Steve Jobs (or whoever gets to decide about screen resolutions at Apple) seems to be one of the moles.
Clearly, resolution independence would be nice -- then I could choose smaller fonts for everything on my Mac... (Right now, I can scale down for most text, but characters tend to get hard to read if less than 3 pixels wide.)
Where's the PowerBook for the (non-blind) rest of us?
Originally posted by FritzW
Where's the PowerBook for the (non-blind) rest of us?
Amen to that. Whenever I see high-res Dell notebooks, I cannot help salivating about the crisp, small letters. Going back to my trusty old Titanium is positively depressing, as I can make out the black pixel borders at 40cm distance and type is both mushy (thanks to Apples antialiasing strategy) and jaggy at once.
However, some misconceptions have arisen concerning resolution independence.
First: there is no need to have integer multipliers. OpenGL is perfectly able to do a good job of fractional scaling as might be evident by Expose, the "suck" effect when minimizing windows, or the smooth icon wave in the dock.
Second: the higher the native pixel density of the display, the better the outcome, so the dreaded "squintronic" displays would make a 800x600 desktop look much better than a native 800x600 display.
Third: there is absolutely no need to move to a vector-UI or vector-based web to get a decent quality. Photos can be upscaled quite nicely without loss of perceptable quality provided the display has a high pixel density. The higher pixel density downscales the image to the eye again, counteracting any artefacts of the upscaling. Of course, the image will not look better on the high-res display (but text does).
Originally posted by AppleInsider
But more likely, the manual references an undelivered display option that was planned with the last round of PowerBook G4 updates, but canned just prior to the product line update released earlier this month.
It could also be that someone at Apple bothered to test the PB 17" for HD and found it lacking.
A friend of mine bought a Sony Prosumer HD camera lately. A few days ago he came round to my place, and we watched some MPEG clips he'd filmed with it on my PB 17" 1.33 GHz (1 GB RAM, 10.3.8 ). What plays back without a problem on PCs (of course) and on his dual 2.5GHz G5 showed somewhere between 1/2 and 2/3 image rate on my powerbook, using VLC 0.8.1. Playing back those clips, the CPU was maxed out, and the fan came on after a short while.
So, having a HD-capable PB would be really nice (even if I'd much rather have 1440 in the 15" and 1650 in the 17"), but somehow I'm not sure that the PowerBook with its current architecture can really handle HD that well.
Originally posted by Spytap
Two words and three initials: "Resolution Independant GUI"
More pixels means not smaller text, but higher-quality with the ability to display more detail.
You can't effectively do RI GUI at pixel densities like 133 ppi. The pixels just aren't small enough to get good RI performance, but they're too small for non-RI use, at least for most people. As far as I'm concerned, the whole range of pixel densities from around 110ppi to 200 ppi isn't very useful.
I am an architect and often find myself putting a ruler to the LCD to measure a wall, or trace off an image on screen to a paper.
If the mac was able to tell me which scale it was displaying it could make the combination of physical drawings and digital ones much easier. And much of the printing in the office would be unnecessary.
This could be helpful in many situations. Designing packaging you could quickly compare it to its physical content. You could make sure the address card was the right size to fit the pocket of the suitcase. And more far reaching implications I can´t see right now.
Originally posted by FritzW
Where's the PowerBook for the (non-blind) rest of us?
I hope the highest resolution displays are a BTO only.
I'd gladly welcome an improvement from where we are today, but wouldn't want to be "stuck" or pay a premium for a PB I'd need a magnifying glass to use.
The blind
I'll buy a powerbook on the 19th though
Originally posted by Matsu
There's some good in this, although I'm not a fan of insano resolutions, recent improvements in browsers and OS, will make them more tolerable. You can deal with just about everything in OS and Apps these days, provided your devs are smart enough to realize more people have less than perfect vision than not. Web sites remain the number one offender, with the highest proportion of idiotic design/miniscule text/bad navigation/UI than any other category of electronica.
Still 1920x1200 might work at 17", 1680x1050 might be OK at 15.4" (though Apple would have to change the screen up). Though really I think that 1680x1050 and 1440x900 would be more appropriate bumps for 17 and 15 respectively, I can see why 17" buyers would want 1920, either you bump it to be HD capable, or don't bother making me squint!
As for the 12", I have the 12, you really don't want it getting any denser than where it's at. For more than XGA, look at 16:10 14" panels. I think this may be the ideal laptop screen. I used one (a compaq) side by side wiith my PB. It's a great screen size. No taller, just a tad wider. Apple could make a book that's the same weight, a little thinner, and just less than two inches wider. That could take a 1280x800 screen with reasonable comfort.