It's not that dramatic. 1920 x 1200 to 1920 x 1080 assuming they stayed at the current width. A whole 120 Pixels in height would be lost. If they did go from 16:10 to 16:9 they would probably also up the resolution given the rumors of larger displays.
I don't know about the "probably". The idea behind these 16:9 displays, from what I've seen so far, is that they mimic the 1920 x 1080 of the format. It's a going backward sort of thing.
After all, most movies aren't 16:9 at all, but more like 20:9. So how far are we going to go with this?
120 pixels is a lot. It can easily be ten lines of text, or more, at smaller sizes.
It's a very big difference when looking at an entire page. It's often the difference between an accurate representation of the page, and a garbled mess.
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I swear the drama queens in here are something else. Given a larger screen size and a higher resolution you'd still have the same real estate with more width and possibly more height depending on how much of a bump in resolution they went with. It also isn't necessary to display a video in the exact width or height of the video's output image. They can shrink it by any arbitrary amount to fit various toolbars and widgets. Most video editing software already does this to make room for various editing tools. You should also know that a standard 11x17 page @ 93 PPI (the current Pixel density on my 08 iMac) is only 1581 x 1023 and already below the current 1920x1200 resolution. Your 8 1/2 x 11 pages are being scaled to fit your screen already, and they could easily be scaled to fit your screen on a widescreen monitor as can any text, graphics, video or any other media your displaying from the web, locally, playing from a dvd player, or whatever.
I agree that a true wide screen wouldn't be ideal, but I'm not going to start crying that the world will crumble if they go from 16:10 to 16:9.
At this point it's all only rumor.
You're making assumptions you don't know will be true. Cost is still a factor, last I looked. Larger monitors with more pixels will still cost more. That's what will be required.
I'm not comparing a 24" with a smaller model, because that's not really in question. But if it were, then that smaller model would have the same problem, except it might possibly be worse because it already is less than ideal.
Scales to fit means more than one thing. If you read my post completely, then you know that I'm saying that on my screen an 8.5" x 11" page is 8.5" x 11" ON MY MONITOR. The scaling is, as I mentioned, 100%. So when I compare the page to the monitor page,it's exactly the same.
If you've done publishing or graphics, you know that seeing different sized pages gives different impact to the various elements on that page, which is why 100% scaling is considered to be ideal.
I don't know about the "probably". The idea behind these 16:9 displays, from what I've seen so far, is that they mimic the 1920 x 1080 of the format. It's a going backward sort of thing.
After all, most movies aren't 16:9 at all, but more like 20:9. So how far are we going to go with this?
120 pixels is a lot. It can easily be ten lines of text, or more, at smaller sizes.
It's a very big difference when looking at an entire page. It's often the difference between an accurate representation of the page, and a garbled mess.
You're making assumptions you don't know will be true. Cost is still a factor, last I looked. Larger monitors with more pixels will still cost more. That's what will be required.
I'm not comparing a 24" with a smaller model, because that's not really in question. But if it were, then that smaller model would have the same problem, except it might possibly be worse because it already is less than ideal.
Scales to fit means more than one thing. If you read my post completely, then you know that I'm saying that on my screen an 8.5" x 11" page is 8.5" x 11" ON MY MONITOR. The scaling is, as I mentioned, 100%. So when I compare the page to the monitor page,it's exactly the same.
If you've done publishing or graphics, you know that seeing different sized pages gives different impact to the various elements on that page, which is why 100% scaling is considered to be ideal.
Actually it's an inch and a half. About 3-5 lines of text at typical font sizes. Negligible.
I make no assumptions. You implying that just because it's larger it will cost more. PC Components and electronics components in general become cheaper with wider adoption. It's happening as we type. You are the one making assumptions. LCD technology gets cheaper every year. It's also reasonable to expect that a 26" display at a higher resolution will cost the same as 24" display used to which may be why they are looking at larger displays. Who knows? We weren't even discussing cost.
If you were in publishing you would know that a piece of 'paper' as displayed on your monitor has no bearing on how it would look on real paper. It is all about pixels per inch, and the current iMac monitor has about a 93 PPI rating meaning your 8.5x11 'paper' @ 93 PPI is actually being upscaled if your using the 24" display and it's filling your screen.
Surprising, considering that the greatest explication of the importance of GCD has come from one of their own, John Siracusa.
Thread pooling is almost as old as BSD UNIX. In fact, there are ideas in GCD that go back to batch programming in the 1960s. The simple genius of GCD, as Siracusa observed, is that it puts the thread pool at the operating system level rather than the application level. This frees up applications from having to manage a thread pool, check for the number of available cores, and so on and on, only to have your attempts thwarted by other applications similarly trying to squeeze performance out of the same hardware. There is a clean, simple API for feeding code to GCD, which takes care of everything else and uses its centrality to ensure that the hardware is used efficiently in a way that no application in a multitasking environment possibly can. If that code contains Core Image calls, those can run on CPU or GPU cores, depending on availability. And it's all completely transparent to the application developer.
Windows has APIs that make it easier to manage thread pools, which is great; but it's still a per-application solution. It can't wring as much performance out of the hardware as GCD can as long as there is even one other non-trivial process running concurrently.
GCD does not solve threading in the general case. The attempts at comprehensive solutions, like PARLOG, are hardly better than the problem, because threading is tricky and involves a lot of judgment calls and edge cases. GCD pretty much sidesteps the hardest problem--what to thread,---and simply ensures that once you know what to thread, it will take care of all the details with an efficiency that is impossible within the application space, and spare the developer some extra work in the process. Developers usually like that.
But the takeaway point is that GCD is not some mind-blowing new technological shiny thing. At root, it has one small but crucial improvement on everyone else: It moves the thread pool and the management and allocation code into a space where it can consider the entire context it's running in--hardware, applications, everything--when deciding what to allocate where. It's refinement, not revolution, but that doesn't make it any less significant. It accomplishes what it is meant to, which is to offer a simpler API which offers better performance.
(Anyone who thinks that technology really embraces revolutionary change is welcome to explain to me why the idioms and syntax of the C programming language, codified in 1973, are still in nearly universal use 36 years later on all platforms despite great leaps forward in linguistics and parsers and compilers and run-time environments, and despite decades of research by many of our brightest minds. In fact, any truly revolutionary ideas will come under a relentless assault, and only those that survive this mob attack will have any chance of taking hold.)
Nice post. Even though we may have different opinions on this topic I can understand your points clearly.
I'm not a programmer so I can't speak as to the significance of GCD. It sounds like a programming breakthrough to people like me who have a superficial understanding of programming.
As you probably know Apple have open sourced GCD. Here's the thread at Ars on the subject. While the general tone of the discussion doesn't 'slam' GCD as a useless tool, it isn't considered a breakthrough either.
Nice post. Even though we may have different opinions on this topic I can understand your points clearly.
I'm not a programmer so I can't speak as to the significance of GCD. It sounds like a programming breakthrough to people like me who have a superficial understanding of programming.
As you probably know Apple have open sourced GCD. here's the thread at Ars on the subject. While the general tone of the discussion doesn't 'slam' GCD as a useless tool, it isn't considered a breakthrough either.
Thanks for posting this. I was curious about this article after someone (you?) mentioned it above.
Actually it's an inch and a half. About 3-5 lines of text at typical font sizes. Negligible.
I make no assumptions. You implying that just because it's larger it will cost more. PC Components and electronics components in general become cheaper with wider adoption. It's happening as we type. You are the one making assumptions. LCD technology gets cheaper every year. It's also reasonable to expect that a 26" display at a higher resolution will cost the same as 24" display used to which may be why they are looking at larger displays. Who knows? We weren't even discussing cost.
If you were in publishing you would know that a piece of 'paper' as displayed on your monitor has no bearing on how it would look on real paper. It is all about pixels per inch, and the current iMac monitor has about a 93 PPI rating meaning your 8.5x11 'paper' @ 93 PPI is actually being upscaled if your using the 24" display and it's filling your screen.
No, it's about ten lines, often more, as text is often ten points, not twelve as you're imagining. There is often smaller text as well, sometimes down to eight point, or even six in some Ads.
Cost is relative, as bigger monitors get cheaper, so do smaller models.
What we used to think of as a reasonable cost for a 1280 x 1024 31" monitor, $3,000, 20 years ago, is now considered, even with inflation taken into account, to be the price for a high end monitor. As expectations change, so does the willingness to spend. When Apple's first HQ LCD 23" monitor came out, its $4,000 was considered to be low for such a thing, but now people are complaining about a 30" for less half that.
Big monitors will always cost more, and for most people, and unfortunately today, even for businesses that should know better, cost is a primary concern. So if going to a larger monitor with more horizontal resolution in order to get a proper vertical size is required, then that will cost more, and people won't be happy abut it.
I was in publishing and photography for almost 40 years, so yes, I know what it looks like. Since you've shown that you don't know that the industry has been moving to "soft proofing" for the past ten years, I'm not so certain how much you know.
More often, what you see on your, professional, properly calibrated monitor, is what you go to press with. The approved image on yours is sent to the printer to view on his, and you go to press. More rarely are "proofs" being used. 3M, Kodak, Agfa and others are discontinuing their proofing systems, and with digital printing systems, and even with ink presses, press proofs are becoming a thing of the past.
When I print at home, I've got a 5,000k Graphlite viewing box, just as I used to use at my lab. My Eizo monitor is calibrated with my i1 X-Rite equipment, and I use calibrated profiles for my Canon IPF5100 printer.
What I see on my monitor VERY closely matches my print.
I'm well aware that 90 to 100 ppi monitors are not at the rez of a sheet of printed paper. The fact that you would think to say that is puzzling. It doesn't matter. For proofing, it's considered to be fine, and it is.
Nice post. Even though we may have different opinions on this topic I can understand your points clearly.
I'm not a programmer so I can't speak as to the significance of GCD. It sounds like a programming breakthrough to people like me who have a superficial understanding of programming.
As you probably know Apple have open sourced GCD. Here's the thread at Ars on the subject. While the general tone of the discussion doesn't 'slam' GCD as a useless tool, it isn't considered a breakthrough either.
I read that thread, and the people complaining about it obviously don't understand it.
No, it's about ten lines, often more, as text is often ten points, not twelve as you're imagining. There is often smaller text as well, sometimes down to eight point, or even six in some Ads.
Cost is relative, as bigger monitors get cheaper, so do smaller models.
What we used to think of as a reasonable cost for a 1280 x 1024 31" monitor, $3,000, 20 years ago, is now considered, even with inflation taken into account, to be the price for a high end monitor. As expectations change, so does the willingness to spend. When Apple's first HQ LCD 23" monitor came out, its $4,000 was considered to be low for such a thing, but now people are complaining about a 30" for less half that.
Big monitors will always cost more, and for most people, and unfortunately today, even for businesses that should know better, cost is a primary concern. So if going to a larger monitor with more horizontal resolution in order to get a proper vertical size is required, then that will cost more, and people won't be happy abut it.
I was in publishing and photography for almost 40 years, so yes, I know what it looks like. Since you've shown that you don't know that the industry has been moving to "soft proofing" for the past ten years, I'm not so certain how much you know.
More often, what you see on your, professional, properly calibrated monitor, is what you go to press with. The approved image on yours is sent to the printer to view on his, and you go to press. More rarely are "proofs" being used. 3M, Kodak, Agfa and others are discontinuing their proofing systems, and with digital printing systems, and even with ink presses, press proofs are becoming a thing of the past.
When I print at home, I've got a 5,000k Graphlite viewing box, just as I used to use at my lab. My Eizo monitor is calibrated with my i1 X-Rite equipment, and I use calibrated profiles for my Canon IPF5100 printer.
What I see on my monitor VERY closely matches my print.
I'm well aware that 90 to 100 ppi monitors are not at the rez of a sheet of printed paper. The fact that you would think to say that is puzzling. It doesn't matter. For proofing, it's considered to be fine, and it is.
It is relevant because the complaint was that you simply couldn't see two 'sheets' of 8.5x11 documents side by side in a 16:9 aspect on a 1920x1080 resolution, which is not true. Scaled to 100% at 72DPI you can acutally stack 3 of them side by side plus some at 100%, even at 16:10. Oh, and the default size on my iMac 24 in Firefox was 16. I believe it's 14 or 16 on Safari as well.
This whole argument about cost is irrelevant. You seem to be the only one working that angle. People are fine with a larger option for screen size like 26" or 30". Hell we even agree that 16:10 would be better than 16:9, but stating they will lose too much real estate to properly display two docs side by side if silly.
It is relevant because the complaint was that you simply couldn't see two 'sheets' of 8.5x11 documents side by side in a 16:9 resolution on a 1920x1080 resolution, which is not true. Scaled to 100% at 72DPI you can acutally stack 3 of them side by side plus some at 100%, even at 16:10.
I have no idea what you're talking about, and I'm not sure you do either.
Do you know what 100% scale means?
It doesn't mean what you seem to think it means. It doesn't mean that the computer thinks it's at 100%.
It means that an 8.5" x 11" sheet is exactly 8.5" x 11" on the monitor.
A 16:10 monitor has a screen that's about 12.625" high. After you take the room for the menu bar at the top the top of the screen, the program's menu bar and the border, you have a bit more than 11" left for the display of the sheet. Only on a 24" monitor is 100% in the program, 100% to the actual sheet. For smaller monitors, 100% is smaller than the actual sheet.
I have no idea what you're talking about, and I'm not sure you do either.
Do you know what 100% scale means?
It doesn't mean what you seem to think it means. It doesn't mean that the computer thinks it's at 100%.
It means that an 8.5" x 11" sheet is exactly 8.5" x 11" on the monitor.
A 16:10 monitor has a screen that's about 12.625" high. After you take the room for the menu bar at the top the top of the screen, the program's menu bar and the border, you have a bit more than 11" left for the display of the sheet. Only on a 24" monitor is 100% in the program, 100% to the actual sheet. For smaller monitors, 100% is smaller than the actual sheet.
This is what matters.
Aspect ratio has NOTHING to do with the height of a monitor in inches. It only describes the width to height ratio. Nothing more.
I actually have a 16:9 24" display on my Mini. It's 12 inches high on the actual display area. More than enough to preview an 8.5x11 document with menu bar.
Yeah, I definitely think the iMac is what Apple want you to buy because it's always featured on the compare pages. If you go to the Mini compare, it has an iMac, if you go to the Mac Pro compare, it has an iMac. If you go to the iMac compare, it has neither the Mini nor Mac Pro.
It's about control and probably profit. They control every single component you get including the display when you get an iMac - it's near impossible to even replace your own hard drive.
That aspect I don't like about it but it would be easier to look past if the design was better. No chin, no glossy and that would remove a significant barrier towards liking it. Clarksfield processors would be great and a more powerful NVidia graphics chip or the Radeon 4830.
If they put e-IPS into the lowest one instead of TN, that would help too but probably wouldn't be cost-effective.
I really want them to put in a hard drive slot at the bottom similar to what you get for Ram so they can be easily removed/upgraded. 2 x 2.5" slots would be nice as it will accommodate SSD drives in RAID or a small SSD for boot and a 2.5" drive for storage.
Apple only go up to 1TB BTO in the iMac anyway so 2 x 500GB 2.5" is the same storage and because you can put them in RAID-0, it can be faster or in RAID-1 more secure.
I would agree as long as they have enough space for three platter 12.5mm drives. Sooner or later the 2.5" form factor will be the norm as SSDs become cheaper and more common.
16:9 displays are becoming more and more prevalent in notebooks and computer monitors because of cost. LCD panel makers want to standardize on 16:9. This will drive the cost down of fabrication. I would be shocked if the new iMac, new MacBook, and I can only presume new MacBook Pros, don't switch to this ratio with the very soon-to-be-announced redesign.
16:9 displays are becoming more and more prevalent in notebooks and computer monitors because of cost. LCD panel makers want to standardize on 16:9. This will drive the cost down of fabrication. I would be shocked if the new iMac, new MacBook, and I can only presume new MacBook Pros, don't switch to this ratio with the very soon-to-be-announced redesign.
I would be shocked if they do it this soon (Apple likes 16:10 displays and they're usually slow to adopt new display tech), but sooner or later 16:10 are going to be pretty hard to find.
- IF the 21.5" is 1920x1080, then it's a improvement vs the current 20" (1680x1050)
- AFAIK, 25/26" displays are "just" 1920x1080, and are not an improvement vs the current 24" (1920x1200)
- I've seen some 27" displays capable of 2048x1152 (Samsung), that would be a small improvement vs the current 24"
Most of the time 16:9 is not an improvement vs 16:10. Like it has been said many times in this forum, with 16:10 in the 24", for example, you can display all of the 16:9 footage and have room for some tools in the bottom, that's better for video editing. Of course, a 27" or 30" (2560x1600) display would be even better.
They would standardise the iMac on 16:9 at 1920x1080 and not any higher resolution, if they go to 16:9. Because of video content and so on for TV shows especially. Of course, if there was BluRay they would "have to" put in a 16:9 1080p format screen. Though, 16:9 doesn't help with movies anyway because they're wider than 16:9. So you're getting less vertical pixels than 1080 anyway...
I think this 16:9 could be done on the next refresh, in other words, possibly within a few weeks time. Less chance if no BluRay incorporated into the iMac, higher chance if it is. My prediction.
I would be shocked if they do it this soon (Apple likes 16:10 displays and they're usually slow to adopt new display tech), but sooner or later 16:10 are going to be pretty hard to find.
The cost of 16:9 screens is staggeringly cheaper than 16:10 screens. In the PC world, anything 19" and up on the cheaper side is predominantly 16:9.
It could be a cost saving on components that Apple simply would not be able to resist.
If Apple were to do something truly radical in regards to it's Mighty Mouse -- it would take it out behind the barn and shoot it. A more radical solution to the iMac line, and to production streamlining, would be to replace those keyboards with laptop-style keyboards with trackpad built-in instead, even going so far as to include backlighting. This would allow Apple to focus and save on a single engineering format, as well as to put their attentions squarely onto gesture-based computing, which is where it needs to be as things move into a multi-touch world.
The cost of 16:9 screens is staggeringly cheaper than 16:10 screens. In the PC world, anything 19" and up on the cheaper side is predominantly 16:9.
It could be a cost saving on components that Apple simply would not be able to resist.
That depends on what they want to emphasize. 16:9 is cheap because HD video is 16:9. If you're viewing HD video, it's perfect. If you're authoring video, it's not. You'd like some space for the editing interface. Apple, of course, has skin in that game.
Apple has been using unorthodox screen sizes since the Titanium Powerbook's odd 3:2 ratio. If they cost more? Apple's a premium brand. If Apple does adopt 16:9 it will be on the consumer machines only. The professional machines can soak the extra cost, especially in the quantities that Apple orders displays.
I don't care if it stays 16:10 or goes 16:9. Matters not to me. But it does matter a lot to others. Apple has hopefully learned from the matte vs. glossy on its pro notebooks to what professionals want. Then maybe they haven't. It wouldn't surprise me if they went 16:9 as a cost saving measure and to standardize on that. I would be shocked if they did some and not all. It may start next week or so with the newly designed MacBooks and iMacs, but eventually to the pro lines. Think SD card slot on everything, so too, shall 16:9 displays. Just my hunch.
The cost of 16:9 screens is staggeringly cheaper than 16:10 screens. In the PC world, anything 19" and up on the cheaper side is predominantly 16:9.
It could be a cost saving on components that Apple simply would not be able to resist.
The one problem is that while they're prevalent in in the TN ranks, you don't see a lot of IPS displays with a 16:9 panel yet. The only one can think is the brand new 23" from NEC. It does come with a pretty considerable price decrease versus 16:9 IPS screen though. Then again, its lower resolution than the new 23" TN screens.
Comments
It's not that dramatic. 1920 x 1200 to 1920 x 1080 assuming they stayed at the current width. A whole 120 Pixels in height would be lost. If they did go from 16:10 to 16:9 they would probably also up the resolution given the rumors of larger displays.
I don't know about the "probably". The idea behind these 16:9 displays, from what I've seen so far, is that they mimic the 1920 x 1080 of the format. It's a going backward sort of thing.
After all, most movies aren't 16:9 at all, but more like 20:9. So how far are we going to go with this?
120 pixels is a lot. It can easily be ten lines of text, or more, at smaller sizes.
It's a very big difference when looking at an entire page. It's often the difference between an accurate representation of the page, and a garbled mess.
I swear the drama queens in here are something else. Given a larger screen size and a higher resolution you'd still have the same real estate with more width and possibly more height depending on how much of a bump in resolution they went with. It also isn't necessary to display a video in the exact width or height of the video's output image. They can shrink it by any arbitrary amount to fit various toolbars and widgets. Most video editing software already does this to make room for various editing tools. You should also know that a standard 11x17 page @ 93 PPI (the current Pixel density on my 08 iMac) is only 1581 x 1023 and already below the current 1920x1200 resolution. Your 8 1/2 x 11 pages are being scaled to fit your screen already, and they could easily be scaled to fit your screen on a widescreen monitor as can any text, graphics, video or any other media your displaying from the web, locally, playing from a dvd player, or whatever.
I agree that a true wide screen wouldn't be ideal, but I'm not going to start crying that the world will crumble if they go from 16:10 to 16:9.
At this point it's all only rumor.
You're making assumptions you don't know will be true. Cost is still a factor, last I looked. Larger monitors with more pixels will still cost more. That's what will be required.
I'm not comparing a 24" with a smaller model, because that's not really in question. But if it were, then that smaller model would have the same problem, except it might possibly be worse because it already is less than ideal.
Scales to fit means more than one thing. If you read my post completely, then you know that I'm saying that on my screen an 8.5" x 11" page is 8.5" x 11" ON MY MONITOR. The scaling is, as I mentioned, 100%. So when I compare the page to the monitor page,it's exactly the same.
If you've done publishing or graphics, you know that seeing different sized pages gives different impact to the various elements on that page, which is why 100% scaling is considered to be ideal.
I don't know about the "probably". The idea behind these 16:9 displays, from what I've seen so far, is that they mimic the 1920 x 1080 of the format. It's a going backward sort of thing.
After all, most movies aren't 16:9 at all, but more like 20:9. So how far are we going to go with this?
120 pixels is a lot. It can easily be ten lines of text, or more, at smaller sizes.
It's a very big difference when looking at an entire page. It's often the difference between an accurate representation of the page, and a garbled mess.
You're making assumptions you don't know will be true. Cost is still a factor, last I looked. Larger monitors with more pixels will still cost more. That's what will be required.
I'm not comparing a 24" with a smaller model, because that's not really in question. But if it were, then that smaller model would have the same problem, except it might possibly be worse because it already is less than ideal.
Scales to fit means more than one thing. If you read my post completely, then you know that I'm saying that on my screen an 8.5" x 11" page is 8.5" x 11" ON MY MONITOR. The scaling is, as I mentioned, 100%. So when I compare the page to the monitor page,it's exactly the same.
If you've done publishing or graphics, you know that seeing different sized pages gives different impact to the various elements on that page, which is why 100% scaling is considered to be ideal.
Actually it's an inch and a half. About 3-5 lines of text at typical font sizes. Negligible.
I make no assumptions. You implying that just because it's larger it will cost more. PC Components and electronics components in general become cheaper with wider adoption. It's happening as we type. You are the one making assumptions. LCD technology gets cheaper every year. It's also reasonable to expect that a 26" display at a higher resolution will cost the same as 24" display used to which may be why they are looking at larger displays. Who knows? We weren't even discussing cost.
If you were in publishing you would know that a piece of 'paper' as displayed on your monitor has no bearing on how it would look on real paper. It is all about pixels per inch, and the current iMac monitor has about a 93 PPI rating meaning your 8.5x11 'paper' @ 93 PPI is actually being upscaled if your using the 24" display and it's filling your screen.
Surprising, considering that the greatest explication of the importance of GCD has come from one of their own, John Siracusa.
Thread pooling is almost as old as BSD UNIX. In fact, there are ideas in GCD that go back to batch programming in the 1960s. The simple genius of GCD, as Siracusa observed, is that it puts the thread pool at the operating system level rather than the application level. This frees up applications from having to manage a thread pool, check for the number of available cores, and so on and on, only to have your attempts thwarted by other applications similarly trying to squeeze performance out of the same hardware. There is a clean, simple API for feeding code to GCD, which takes care of everything else and uses its centrality to ensure that the hardware is used efficiently in a way that no application in a multitasking environment possibly can. If that code contains Core Image calls, those can run on CPU or GPU cores, depending on availability. And it's all completely transparent to the application developer.
Windows has APIs that make it easier to manage thread pools, which is great; but it's still a per-application solution. It can't wring as much performance out of the hardware as GCD can as long as there is even one other non-trivial process running concurrently.
GCD does not solve threading in the general case. The attempts at comprehensive solutions, like PARLOG, are hardly better than the problem, because threading is tricky and involves a lot of judgment calls and edge cases. GCD pretty much sidesteps the hardest problem--what to thread,---and simply ensures that once you know what to thread, it will take care of all the details with an efficiency that is impossible within the application space, and spare the developer some extra work in the process. Developers usually like that.
But the takeaway point is that GCD is not some mind-blowing new technological shiny thing. At root, it has one small but crucial improvement on everyone else: It moves the thread pool and the management and allocation code into a space where it can consider the entire context it's running in--hardware, applications, everything--when deciding what to allocate where. It's refinement, not revolution, but that doesn't make it any less significant. It accomplishes what it is meant to, which is to offer a simpler API which offers better performance.
(Anyone who thinks that technology really embraces revolutionary change is welcome to explain to me why the idioms and syntax of the C programming language, codified in 1973, are still in nearly universal use 36 years later on all platforms despite great leaps forward in linguistics and parsers and compilers and run-time environments, and despite decades of research by many of our brightest minds. In fact, any truly revolutionary ideas will come under a relentless assault, and only those that survive this mob attack will have any chance of taking hold.)
Nice post. Even though we may have different opinions on this topic I can understand your points clearly.
I'm not a programmer so I can't speak as to the significance of GCD. It sounds like a programming breakthrough to people like me who have a superficial understanding of programming.
As you probably know Apple have open sourced GCD. Here's the thread at Ars on the subject. While the general tone of the discussion doesn't 'slam' GCD as a useless tool, it isn't considered a breakthrough either.
Nice post. Even though we may have different opinions on this topic I can understand your points clearly.
I'm not a programmer so I can't speak as to the significance of GCD. It sounds like a programming breakthrough to people like me who have a superficial understanding of programming.
As you probably know Apple have open sourced GCD. here's the thread at Ars on the subject. While the general tone of the discussion doesn't 'slam' GCD as a useless tool, it isn't considered a breakthrough either.
Thanks for posting this. I was curious about this article after someone (you?) mentioned it above.
Actually it's an inch and a half. About 3-5 lines of text at typical font sizes. Negligible.
I make no assumptions. You implying that just because it's larger it will cost more. PC Components and electronics components in general become cheaper with wider adoption. It's happening as we type. You are the one making assumptions. LCD technology gets cheaper every year. It's also reasonable to expect that a 26" display at a higher resolution will cost the same as 24" display used to which may be why they are looking at larger displays. Who knows? We weren't even discussing cost.
If you were in publishing you would know that a piece of 'paper' as displayed on your monitor has no bearing on how it would look on real paper. It is all about pixels per inch, and the current iMac monitor has about a 93 PPI rating meaning your 8.5x11 'paper' @ 93 PPI is actually being upscaled if your using the 24" display and it's filling your screen.
No, it's about ten lines, often more, as text is often ten points, not twelve as you're imagining. There is often smaller text as well, sometimes down to eight point, or even six in some Ads.
Cost is relative, as bigger monitors get cheaper, so do smaller models.
What we used to think of as a reasonable cost for a 1280 x 1024 31" monitor, $3,000, 20 years ago, is now considered, even with inflation taken into account, to be the price for a high end monitor. As expectations change, so does the willingness to spend. When Apple's first HQ LCD 23" monitor came out, its $4,000 was considered to be low for such a thing, but now people are complaining about a 30" for less half that.
Big monitors will always cost more, and for most people, and unfortunately today, even for businesses that should know better, cost is a primary concern. So if going to a larger monitor with more horizontal resolution in order to get a proper vertical size is required, then that will cost more, and people won't be happy abut it.
I was in publishing and photography for almost 40 years, so yes, I know what it looks like. Since you've shown that you don't know that the industry has been moving to "soft proofing" for the past ten years, I'm not so certain how much you know.
More often, what you see on your, professional, properly calibrated monitor, is what you go to press with. The approved image on yours is sent to the printer to view on his, and you go to press. More rarely are "proofs" being used. 3M, Kodak, Agfa and others are discontinuing their proofing systems, and with digital printing systems, and even with ink presses, press proofs are becoming a thing of the past.
When I print at home, I've got a 5,000k Graphlite viewing box, just as I used to use at my lab. My Eizo monitor is calibrated with my i1 X-Rite equipment, and I use calibrated profiles for my Canon IPF5100 printer.
What I see on my monitor VERY closely matches my print.
I'm well aware that 90 to 100 ppi monitors are not at the rez of a sheet of printed paper. The fact that you would think to say that is puzzling. It doesn't matter. For proofing, it's considered to be fine, and it is.
Nice post. Even though we may have different opinions on this topic I can understand your points clearly.
I'm not a programmer so I can't speak as to the significance of GCD. It sounds like a programming breakthrough to people like me who have a superficial understanding of programming.
As you probably know Apple have open sourced GCD. Here's the thread at Ars on the subject. While the general tone of the discussion doesn't 'slam' GCD as a useless tool, it isn't considered a breakthrough either.
I read that thread, and the people complaining about it obviously don't understand it.
No, it's about ten lines, often more, as text is often ten points, not twelve as you're imagining. There is often smaller text as well, sometimes down to eight point, or even six in some Ads.
Cost is relative, as bigger monitors get cheaper, so do smaller models.
What we used to think of as a reasonable cost for a 1280 x 1024 31" monitor, $3,000, 20 years ago, is now considered, even with inflation taken into account, to be the price for a high end monitor. As expectations change, so does the willingness to spend. When Apple's first HQ LCD 23" monitor came out, its $4,000 was considered to be low for such a thing, but now people are complaining about a 30" for less half that.
Big monitors will always cost more, and for most people, and unfortunately today, even for businesses that should know better, cost is a primary concern. So if going to a larger monitor with more horizontal resolution in order to get a proper vertical size is required, then that will cost more, and people won't be happy abut it.
I was in publishing and photography for almost 40 years, so yes, I know what it looks like. Since you've shown that you don't know that the industry has been moving to "soft proofing" for the past ten years, I'm not so certain how much you know.
More often, what you see on your, professional, properly calibrated monitor, is what you go to press with. The approved image on yours is sent to the printer to view on his, and you go to press. More rarely are "proofs" being used. 3M, Kodak, Agfa and others are discontinuing their proofing systems, and with digital printing systems, and even with ink presses, press proofs are becoming a thing of the past.
When I print at home, I've got a 5,000k Graphlite viewing box, just as I used to use at my lab. My Eizo monitor is calibrated with my i1 X-Rite equipment, and I use calibrated profiles for my Canon IPF5100 printer.
What I see on my monitor VERY closely matches my print.
I'm well aware that 90 to 100 ppi monitors are not at the rez of a sheet of printed paper. The fact that you would think to say that is puzzling. It doesn't matter. For proofing, it's considered to be fine, and it is.
It is relevant because the complaint was that you simply couldn't see two 'sheets' of 8.5x11 documents side by side in a 16:9 aspect on a 1920x1080 resolution, which is not true. Scaled to 100% at 72DPI you can acutally stack 3 of them side by side plus some at 100%, even at 16:10. Oh, and the default size on my iMac 24 in Firefox was 16. I believe it's 14 or 16 on Safari as well.
This whole argument about cost is irrelevant. You seem to be the only one working that angle. People are fine with a larger option for screen size like 26" or 30". Hell we even agree that 16:10 would be better than 16:9, but stating they will lose too much real estate to properly display two docs side by side if silly.
It is relevant because the complaint was that you simply couldn't see two 'sheets' of 8.5x11 documents side by side in a 16:9 resolution on a 1920x1080 resolution, which is not true. Scaled to 100% at 72DPI you can acutally stack 3 of them side by side plus some at 100%, even at 16:10.
I have no idea what you're talking about, and I'm not sure you do either.
Do you know what 100% scale means?
It doesn't mean what you seem to think it means. It doesn't mean that the computer thinks it's at 100%.
It means that an 8.5" x 11" sheet is exactly 8.5" x 11" on the monitor.
A 16:10 monitor has a screen that's about 12.625" high. After you take the room for the menu bar at the top the top of the screen, the program's menu bar and the border, you have a bit more than 11" left for the display of the sheet. Only on a 24" monitor is 100% in the program, 100% to the actual sheet. For smaller monitors, 100% is smaller than the actual sheet.
This is what matters.
I have no idea what you're talking about, and I'm not sure you do either.
Do you know what 100% scale means?
It doesn't mean what you seem to think it means. It doesn't mean that the computer thinks it's at 100%.
It means that an 8.5" x 11" sheet is exactly 8.5" x 11" on the monitor.
A 16:10 monitor has a screen that's about 12.625" high. After you take the room for the menu bar at the top the top of the screen, the program's menu bar and the border, you have a bit more than 11" left for the display of the sheet. Only on a 24" monitor is 100% in the program, 100% to the actual sheet. For smaller monitors, 100% is smaller than the actual sheet.
This is what matters.
Aspect ratio has NOTHING to do with the height of a monitor in inches. It only describes the width to height ratio. Nothing more.
I actually have a 16:9 24" display on my Mini. It's 12 inches high on the actual display area. More than enough to preview an 8.5x11 document with menu bar.
Yeah, I definitely think the iMac is what Apple want you to buy because it's always featured on the compare pages. If you go to the Mini compare, it has an iMac, if you go to the Mac Pro compare, it has an iMac. If you go to the iMac compare, it has neither the Mini nor Mac Pro.
It's about control and probably profit. They control every single component you get including the display when you get an iMac - it's near impossible to even replace your own hard drive.
That aspect I don't like about it but it would be easier to look past if the design was better. No chin, no glossy and that would remove a significant barrier towards liking it. Clarksfield processors would be great and a more powerful NVidia graphics chip or the Radeon 4830.
If they put e-IPS into the lowest one instead of TN, that would help too but probably wouldn't be cost-effective.
I really want them to put in a hard drive slot at the bottom similar to what you get for Ram so they can be easily removed/upgraded. 2 x 2.5" slots would be nice as it will accommodate SSD drives in RAID or a small SSD for boot and a 2.5" drive for storage.
Apple only go up to 1TB BTO in the iMac anyway so 2 x 500GB 2.5" is the same storage and because you can put them in RAID-0, it can be faster or in RAID-1 more secure.
I would agree as long as they have enough space for three platter 12.5mm drives. Sooner or later the 2.5" form factor will be the norm as SSDs become cheaper and more common.
16:9 displays are becoming more and more prevalent in notebooks and computer monitors because of cost. LCD panel makers want to standardize on 16:9. This will drive the cost down of fabrication. I would be shocked if the new iMac, new MacBook, and I can only presume new MacBook Pros, don't switch to this ratio with the very soon-to-be-announced redesign.
I would be shocked if they do it this soon (Apple likes 16:10 displays and they're usually slow to adopt new display tech), but sooner or later 16:10 are going to be pretty hard to find.
I believe you meant 16:9, not 19:9
- IF the 21.5" is 1920x1080, then it's a improvement vs the current 20" (1680x1050)
- AFAIK, 25/26" displays are "just" 1920x1080, and are not an improvement vs the current 24" (1920x1200)
- I've seen some 27" displays capable of 2048x1152 (Samsung), that would be a small improvement vs the current 24"
Most of the time 16:9 is not an improvement vs 16:10. Like it has been said many times in this forum, with 16:10 in the 24", for example, you can display all of the 16:9 footage and have room for some tools in the bottom, that's better for video editing. Of course, a 27" or 30" (2560x1600) display would be even better.
They would standardise the iMac on 16:9 at 1920x1080 and not any higher resolution, if they go to 16:9. Because of video content and so on for TV shows especially. Of course, if there was BluRay they would "have to" put in a 16:9 1080p format screen. Though, 16:9 doesn't help with movies anyway because they're wider than 16:9. So you're getting less vertical pixels than 1080 anyway...
I think this 16:9 could be done on the next refresh, in other words, possibly within a few weeks time. Less chance if no BluRay incorporated into the iMac, higher chance if it is. My prediction.
I would be shocked if they do it this soon (Apple likes 16:10 displays and they're usually slow to adopt new display tech), but sooner or later 16:10 are going to be pretty hard to find.
The cost of 16:9 screens is staggeringly cheaper than 16:10 screens. In the PC world, anything 19" and up on the cheaper side is predominantly 16:9.
It could be a cost saving on components that Apple simply would not be able to resist.
The cost of 16:9 screens is staggeringly cheaper than 16:10 screens. In the PC world, anything 19" and up on the cheaper side is predominantly 16:9.
It could be a cost saving on components that Apple simply would not be able to resist.
That depends on what they want to emphasize. 16:9 is cheap because HD video is 16:9. If you're viewing HD video, it's perfect. If you're authoring video, it's not. You'd like some space for the editing interface. Apple, of course, has skin in that game.
Apple has been using unorthodox screen sizes since the Titanium Powerbook's odd 3:2 ratio. If they cost more? Apple's a premium brand. If Apple does adopt 16:9 it will be on the consumer machines only. The professional machines can soak the extra cost, especially in the quantities that Apple orders displays.
The cost of 16:9 screens is staggeringly cheaper than 16:10 screens. In the PC world, anything 19" and up on the cheaper side is predominantly 16:9.
It could be a cost saving on components that Apple simply would not be able to resist.
The one problem is that while they're prevalent in in the TN ranks, you don't see a lot of IPS displays with a 16:9 panel yet. The only one can think is the brand new 23" from NEC. It does come with a pretty considerable price decrease versus 16:9 IPS screen though. Then again, its lower resolution than the new 23" TN screens.
i wonder if we will see any 'secret' SL features...
Like steam-power or a solar energy pod?