Now that windows 8 and mountain lion both for the first time credibly handle HiDpi I agree, it's about time we switched. But laptop makers are hardly to be roundly chastised for not going super density until now (though higher than 1386x was always workable) since the windows experience of hidpi was pretty broken. Fonts would get clipped inside too small bounding boxes, things wouldn't line up, chroming would be too small and so on.
Now all we need is linux to credibly support it as well, or at least a linux built for mouse use. There are still many, many usability issues in gnome with a high ppi screen.
Also, lets not forget how far mobile gpus have come in the last few years, it would have been impossible to push that many pixels with anything but the most minimal of 3d use cases.
It's a much more complex problem than linus would suggest by simply having oems switch panels. Witness how relatively complicated apple's solution is, which came after years of supposedly "somewhat" supporting hidpi. Use the hidpi macbook pro at 1920x on the ivy bridge gpu and it's still noticeably laggy at some 3d operations.
Care to share why you think Windows 8 handles DPI differently than Windows 7?
At least in terms of native applications I've seen literally no differences; maybe Metro handles it better but Metro on the desktop is, well, Metro on the desktop.
PS - I know it is now called "Modern UI" but that name sucks.
It seems like a chicken and the egg problem but it really isn't: there's far more support for HD res than there is HD hardware out there.
Go to any etailer and check 1080p on laptop options: from 300 models you get 50 at best. There's very little choice too, AFAIK the Zenbook is the only 1080p ultrabook out there and I could only find 2 AMD laptops with HD screens.
Like I said before I don't know what's crazier: that a 10" tablet has a 2560x1600 screen for $399 or that a 15" laptop for $800 might not have a 1080p screen.
The irony is that its been years since I saw a sub-1080 monitor for sale, but XGA/720p laptops are still the norm.
> Now all we need is linux to credibly support it as well, or at least a linux built for mouse use. There are still many, many usability issues in gnome with a high ppi screen.
I've never had a problem using high DPI screens on Linux. There's a setting in xorg.conf, but I haven't had to touch it in years because the correct settings are usually auto-detected.
I don't use Gnome, though, so maybe it's causing problems?
The hiDPI thing should only be meant as a transition. What we ultimately want, is for pages to look the same on the web, and the UI to look the same on the apps, but just have higher PPI. The hiDPI thing just enlarges them because Windows 8 and Mac OS are not resolution independent. What I want is for everything to work on 2560x1600 by default, with the same sizes we have today - not enlarged, and not smaller either.
What usability problems do you see with DPI in Gnome? I can freely adjust the font-scaling across Gnome and... well for the past 2 weeks straight I can't remember having any issues.
I'm so damn happy people are starting to realize how awesome resolution is. I've been buying 1920x1200 15" Dell laptops for 10 years now, and never bought a Mac because they've always had terrible resolution. I run Linux anyway, but I'm going buy Mac hardware next, unless a PC maker creates a competitive display (which I assume they will).
For years, the things I have cared about in terms of computing have been, roughly:
1) Internet connectivity. Without it I'm mostly dead in the water.
2) Screen resolution. I want as much code/information on the screen as possible. I currently have a 1920x1200 Dell myself, and am I bit scared/saddened that I won't be able to replace it.
3) Memory. Always good.
After that come processor speed and storage space. I suspect my next machine will have SSD, because I've heard that it's such a dramatic improvement.
I completely agree with Linus though - I very much want a high resolution laptop screen.
One of the reasons that I finally jumped over to the Mac was the fact that it was one of the few laptops that provided 1680x1050 at around 15".
My previous 2 Windows laptops had been that resolution, but when I came to upgrade about 2 or 3 years ago, that resolution seemed to have been abandoned for 15" laptops by pretty much everyone apart from Apple. Most of them had gone to 1440 or even less. A handful of pretty expensive, at least Apple price, and usually quite bulky, ones offered 1920x1200 but given that the scaling didn't look too great on them at the time I though that this might be just a bit too small for me, and if I was going to be paying about the same price for a Windows PC as I was paying for a Mac one - and not get the resolution I wanted anyway on Windows, I thought I'd bite the bullet and see what all of the Mac fuss was about.
I was recently asked for laptop buying advice. I told them that if they're going to be using it more than casually, then prioritise the screen over everything else; Minimum 1080p IPS screen. I was shocked that here were less than a 5 models (that you can buy new) out there that fit the bill. Such a sad state, I expected that to be the starting off point.
1680 by 1050, which is the best you could get on a 15" Mac previously, isn't exactly "terrible resolution" (by historical standards anyway). But otherwise agreed. My main machine is a 15" Retina, and I don't think I could ever go back to a lower-PPI laptop.
The problem is there are just as many bad IPS LCDs systems out there as there are bad TN LCDs. The main problem seems to be either uneven backlighthing (especially on LED based LCDs) and really bad anti-glare coatings that make grey colors sparkle. I just returned an Asus IPS LCD because of the later case.
One of his comments far down the page just struck me:
"It's ignorant people like you that hold back the rest of the world. Please just disconnect yourself, move to Pennsylvania, and become Amish.
The world does not need another ignorant web developer that makes some fixed-pixel designs. But maybe you'd be a wonder at woodcarving or churning the butter?"
The 13" MacBook Pro is now 2560x1600. Give it 18 months the entire Apple line will be a minimum 2560x1600.
That's fine if you are willing to drop $1000 on a laptop, I don't expect we'll see $400 laptops @2560x1600 for several years - the Tablets have the advantage of free operating system, lower computing requirements, smaller physical screens, and, in the case of Amazon/Google, a willingness to subsidize the hardware sales in order to capture downstream Content/Search revenue.
While I have sympathy with your point, I haven't seen evidence is that Google is subsidizing (as I think Amazon is) rather than just selling at cost. The reason this is an important distinction is that it highlights how much the other handset makers, especially Apple, have been gouging their customers.
Google's disconnect from the hardware also shows how you actually can have performance on older hardware - apparently the new real-time Google Voice is on older iOS devices that Apple said couldn't handle Siri - if you don't have an interest in the upgrade cycle.
I used to have a "huge" 22" Iiyama CRT (20" Effective) boasting 2048x1152. I have forever been confused why current desktop screenS try to satisfy you with 1080p. This crap was getting hyped up On screens years after I was already enjoying higher resolutions at good refresh rates. And guess what? My 2 screens ay work are two 27" iiyamas LCD. And they don't go over 1080p... shouldn't it be even easier to get a better pixel density with lcds in bigger screens ?
I agree with the "tiny font" bit. As a patient with severe myopia my mac air is a lot more comfortable on the eyes than my 16" widescreen acer.
TBH I'm not sure if I want 2560x1600 yet if there is going to be a significant drop in battery life. I have an IPS 1366x768 on a 12.5" screen and it looks great. Fonts already go smaller than I can reasonably see for programming - I can't imagine a higher resolution would materially improve my workflow.
Personally I'd like to see a higher refresh rate. Even with triple buffering I don't think that horizontal scrolling is smooth enough. I'd love to have a 120hz laptop screen. The new Windows 8 start screen, and switching between workspaces in Linux would be so much nicer. Still it's not exactly necessary, just a nice to have.
Battery life seems to have held steady for the HiDPI/Retina Macbooks and for all the tablets we've seen. So the real sacrifice is in weight and thickness.
Linus's rant is compelling, but as the owner of a 2011 MacBook Air, I'm not completely sure I want to add 1.5 pounds (the difference between the MBA and the 13" Retina MBP). Granted, complaining about 4 pounds sounds ridiculous, but having something you can effortlessly carry from room to room with one hand is pretty great.
Storage - it affects the size disk you need/want because high resolution images / video take up much more space.
Memory - You need more memory to build up screens for a higher density display. Further you need the bandwidth to shove that data around.
Compute - If you want to 'render' to the display rather than just copy bitmaps around, or composite complex bit maps, you need to spend a lot of time computing which can make other things slow.
So when you look closely at tablets you will see interesting places where they have been adapted to support these densities.
But more importantly there is 'change' in the systems where there is new money being invested. So tablets are getting all of the 'change' now, less so with laptops, and hardly at all with desktops.
The reason this will change though is that I expect we've convinced display manufacturers that 'regular users' (the bulk of the purchasers) want 'high dpi' displays. Its not easy communicating with an entire industry but success Apple has been having with 'retina' displays, and the more recent Android tablets with higher resolutions, means more people will jump in to support them. And more importantly when the choice is available folks reject lower density displays. So in the great 'tuning' these guys do where they calculate how to get the most money out of each hour of running their factories, the equation is tipping in favor of high dpi displays.
That said, I'd love to have a couple of 32" 2560 x 1600 displays for my desktop, but I think that is still a couple of years off from being 'mainstream'
"That said, I'd love to have a couple of 32" 2560 x 1600 displays for my desktop, but I think that is still a couple of years off from being 'mainstream'"
Overclockers have a sale on 27" 2560x1440 displays today. They're selling for £311. I bought one about a year ago for £450 - worth every penny.
In an ideal world I would agree completely, a better DPI is amazing both in terms of font readability AND for watching full screen media (movies, TV shows, games, etc).
But in the real world higher resolution means small screen elements. At 1600x900 fonts are readable at 125%, at 1920x1080 even at 125% fonts and some elements are literally too small to be comfortable read (you get eye-strain after less than an hour).
Now I would turn it up to 150% "text size" but that breaks SO many native Windows applications (e.g. pushing text off the viewable area) and does the same on Linux too (Ubuntu).
Ideally everything should remain the same size no matter what the resolution, and the DPI should just grow upwards. This is how it works on platforms like the iPad.
So, I disagree with him, I don't want higher resolution displays because Windows, Linux, and OS X still suck at handling resolution (and if you use a non-native resolution it hurts the performance since the GPU has to re-scale constantly).
I've always been a sucker for high-quality displays. Apple's Retina MBP is what finally converted me from being a Windows user. I have to say, I really love it.
And... I may be the only one here... but I think they should go a little higher than 2880x1800. I know normal viewing distance is something like 15 inches, but I like to sit closer to my screen when coding and it sure would be nice to have all semblance of "pixels" completely disappear. How cool what that be?
And if they started using AMOLED screens instead of IPS, then that would really be the perfect screen.
Resolution matters when you need to work with text. For me, Macbook Pro 15" retina is the best thing ever happened, and it is impossible to look back now.
Seeing as how Apple's "retina" displays are actually made by other folks (Samsung and LG for the 15" rMBP), I suspect we will see high-res panels on other laptops very soon.
I don't get what point he's trying to make at all. And I don't know why it makes either a blog post, or top story on hn, who cares what screen resolution Linus has his laptop set to.
I can work just fine on my 2009 MBP with 1280x800 (or whatever it is) the text is perfectly readable, there's no noticeable pixelation at distances past a few inches from the screen and having everything shrink, as a result of increasing the res, would make it unusable.
He's probably exaggerating for effect, but it's not even remotely true that laptop resolutions have stagnated. They have steadily increased to the point where we now have retina screens on regular work laptops.
I think if Linus created a blog post saying he'd just set his background color to blue, it would make the top spot here!
It's a shame to see Linus stooping to mock apple's use of the term retina. They (Apple) name everything, like the fusion drive or any number of previous technologies. It's to humanize the tech so the average person walking into the apple store doesn't have to talk in tech-speak. It's just a marketing term, and every company has them.
The definition of "reasonable resolution" changes over the years, VGA seemed reasonable compared to EGA.
One nice thing about the choice of 2560x1600 as a standard pick is, it to my knowledge is the largest resolution supported by DVI, and specifically DVI dual link at that. This might start pushing the market towards DisplayPort, which used to be limited to 2560x1600, but is allegedly being expanded upwards.
(DisplayPort is my favorite display connector to date, and I hope to see adoption grow)
Seems like this guy is not bothered about battery. I have a 1366*768 display which just works fine. Most of the times I'm just running a terminal and this resolution saves quite some battery.
The brand new 1700€+ 1080p 17" Dell XPSes around me at work barely manage to get 2h idling. For my colleagues it's basically an embedded UPS, while my MacBook Pro still handles 5+ hours after three years.
Like my MBP, Retina Macs still have 7 hours of battery, so I don't see the landscape changing much: many laptops, retina-class or not, cheap or not, will get crappy battery life, and a few will get it right.
Yes please!!!
I can't say how much i am disappointed by that 1366x768 crapsolution.. before my current laptop i had a FullHD laptop and that was faaar better..
Even my first laptop from over 10 years ago had a better resolution then most standard laptops have, how is that?!
(i had a 15" 1400x1050 display, then a 16" FullHD and now a 13" 1366x768)
It's fine if you're okay with gigantic fonts that are usually seen on laptops. A lot of us prefer much smaller fonts to fit more code on the screen.
For example the equivalent of 9pt on a 900p display allows actually reasonably split-screen editing. On an actual 900p display though, it's much too blocky to be easily read without straining the eyes. At 1600p though, it's crystal clear.
I sure wouldn't want to spend my whole waking life wearing glasses that slightly-pixelized everything I saw. And since I spend a large amount of my waking life looking at "glowing rectangles", I'd rather they not be slightly-pixelized either.
Fonts are clearer, it stops me from getting eyestrain (because I don't register everything as slightly blurred), and it is a great help when working on photos.
Not just laptops - I'm sick of the standard PC monitor being such crappy resolutions as well. Even with dual screens on my work PC, there's not enough room for the xterms I need at a decent font size.
Nexus 10 with a keyboard (and battery) casing and some desktop linux on it sounds like a good cheap high res laptop. Performance wise it would be fine for the stuff I personally do, guess that would scare other coders off.
[+] [-] trotsky|13 years ago|reply
Now all we need is linux to credibly support it as well, or at least a linux built for mouse use. There are still many, many usability issues in gnome with a high ppi screen.
Also, lets not forget how far mobile gpus have come in the last few years, it would have been impossible to push that many pixels with anything but the most minimal of 3d use cases.
It's a much more complex problem than linus would suggest by simply having oems switch panels. Witness how relatively complicated apple's solution is, which came after years of supposedly "somewhat" supporting hidpi. Use the hidpi macbook pro at 1920x on the ivy bridge gpu and it's still noticeably laggy at some 3d operations.
[+] [-] UnoriginalGuy|13 years ago|reply
At least in terms of native applications I've seen literally no differences; maybe Metro handles it better but Metro on the desktop is, well, Metro on the desktop.
PS - I know it is now called "Modern UI" but that name sucks.
[+] [-] josteink|13 years ago|reply
I made that decision back in 2004 when my laptop had 1680x1050 resolution. Since then I've only gone higher and I've yet to have problems.
Windows seems to have handled this pretty well long, long ago so I have no idea what people are complaining about.
[+] [-] JVIDEL|13 years ago|reply
Go to any etailer and check 1080p on laptop options: from 300 models you get 50 at best. There's very little choice too, AFAIK the Zenbook is the only 1080p ultrabook out there and I could only find 2 AMD laptops with HD screens.
Like I said before I don't know what's crazier: that a 10" tablet has a 2560x1600 screen for $399 or that a 15" laptop for $800 might not have a 1080p screen.
The irony is that its been years since I saw a sub-1080 monitor for sale, but XGA/720p laptops are still the norm.
Let's at least make 1080p the standard.
[+] [-] anonymouz|13 years ago|reply
Would you care to mention some? My impression has always been that Gnome handles different DPI settings relatively well, but I'm no expert.
[+] [-] jlarocco|13 years ago|reply
I've never had a problem using high DPI screens on Linux. There's a setting in xorg.conf, but I haven't had to touch it in years because the correct settings are usually auto-detected.
I don't use Gnome, though, so maybe it's causing problems?
[+] [-] mtgx|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mtgx|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] drivebyacct2|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] staunch|13 years ago|reply
Next up: IPS LCDs everywhere.
[+] [-] davidw|13 years ago|reply
1) Internet connectivity. Without it I'm mostly dead in the water.
2) Screen resolution. I want as much code/information on the screen as possible. I currently have a 1920x1200 Dell myself, and am I bit scared/saddened that I won't be able to replace it.
3) Memory. Always good.
After that come processor speed and storage space. I suspect my next machine will have SSD, because I've heard that it's such a dramatic improvement.
I completely agree with Linus though - I very much want a high resolution laptop screen.
[+] [-] prof_hobart|13 years ago|reply
My previous 2 Windows laptops had been that resolution, but when I came to upgrade about 2 or 3 years ago, that resolution seemed to have been abandoned for 15" laptops by pretty much everyone apart from Apple. Most of them had gone to 1440 or even less. A handful of pretty expensive, at least Apple price, and usually quite bulky, ones offered 1920x1200 but given that the scaling didn't look too great on them at the time I though that this might be just a bit too small for me, and if I was going to be paying about the same price for a Windows PC as I was paying for a Mac one - and not get the resolution I wanted anyway on Windows, I thought I'd bite the bullet and see what all of the Mac fuss was about.
[+] [-] mmcnickle|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Osmium|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] adestefan|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] 5h|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bduerst|13 years ago|reply
I can never go back.
[+] [-] emixam|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mark-r|13 years ago|reply
"It's ignorant people like you that hold back the rest of the world. Please just disconnect yourself, move to Pennsylvania, and become Amish.
The world does not need another ignorant web developer that makes some fixed-pixel designs. But maybe you'd be a wonder at woodcarving or churning the butter?"
[+] [-] ghshephard|13 years ago|reply
That's fine if you are willing to drop $1000 on a laptop, I don't expect we'll see $400 laptops @2560x1600 for several years - the Tablets have the advantage of free operating system, lower computing requirements, smaller physical screens, and, in the case of Amazon/Google, a willingness to subsidize the hardware sales in order to capture downstream Content/Search revenue.
[+] [-] jklio|13 years ago|reply
Google's disconnect from the hardware also shows how you actually can have performance on older hardware - apparently the new real-time Google Voice is on older iOS devices that Apple said couldn't handle Siri - if you don't have an interest in the upgrade cycle.
[+] [-] easy_rider|13 years ago|reply
I agree with the "tiny font" bit. As a patient with severe myopia my mac air is a lot more comfortable on the eyes than my 16" widescreen acer.
[+] [-] bornhuetter|13 years ago|reply
Personally I'd like to see a higher refresh rate. Even with triple buffering I don't think that horizontal scrolling is smooth enough. I'd love to have a 120hz laptop screen. The new Windows 8 start screen, and switching between workspaces in Linux would be so much nicer. Still it's not exactly necessary, just a nice to have.
[+] [-] saturdaysaint|13 years ago|reply
Linus's rant is compelling, but as the owner of a 2011 MacBook Air, I'm not completely sure I want to add 1.5 pounds (the difference between the MBA and the 13" Retina MBP). Granted, complaining about 4 pounds sounds ridiculous, but having something you can effortlessly carry from room to room with one hand is pretty great.
[+] [-] berntb|13 years ago|reply
Some money advice: Don't use a retina display. :-)
I recently saw my old iPad 1 at my ex gf. It was the best screen I had ever used -- now after an iPad 3, it was just horrible.
[+] [-] ChuckMcM|13 years ago|reply
Pixel density affects many aspects of a system;
Storage - it affects the size disk you need/want because high resolution images / video take up much more space.
Memory - You need more memory to build up screens for a higher density display. Further you need the bandwidth to shove that data around.
Compute - If you want to 'render' to the display rather than just copy bitmaps around, or composite complex bit maps, you need to spend a lot of time computing which can make other things slow.
So when you look closely at tablets you will see interesting places where they have been adapted to support these densities.
But more importantly there is 'change' in the systems where there is new money being invested. So tablets are getting all of the 'change' now, less so with laptops, and hardly at all with desktops.
The reason this will change though is that I expect we've convinced display manufacturers that 'regular users' (the bulk of the purchasers) want 'high dpi' displays. Its not easy communicating with an entire industry but success Apple has been having with 'retina' displays, and the more recent Android tablets with higher resolutions, means more people will jump in to support them. And more importantly when the choice is available folks reject lower density displays. So in the great 'tuning' these guys do where they calculate how to get the most money out of each hour of running their factories, the equation is tipping in favor of high dpi displays.
That said, I'd love to have a couple of 32" 2560 x 1600 displays for my desktop, but I think that is still a couple of years off from being 'mainstream'
[+] [-] kaolinite|13 years ago|reply
Overclockers have a sale on 27" 2560x1440 displays today. They're selling for £311. I bought one about a year ago for £450 - worth every penny.
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MO-019-...
That's not a high-DPI/retina display though, just a regular DPI.
[+] [-] UnoriginalGuy|13 years ago|reply
In an ideal world I would agree completely, a better DPI is amazing both in terms of font readability AND for watching full screen media (movies, TV shows, games, etc).
But in the real world higher resolution means small screen elements. At 1600x900 fonts are readable at 125%, at 1920x1080 even at 125% fonts and some elements are literally too small to be comfortable read (you get eye-strain after less than an hour).
Now I would turn it up to 150% "text size" but that breaks SO many native Windows applications (e.g. pushing text off the viewable area) and does the same on Linux too (Ubuntu).
Ideally everything should remain the same size no matter what the resolution, and the DPI should just grow upwards. This is how it works on platforms like the iPad.
So, I disagree with him, I don't want higher resolution displays because Windows, Linux, and OS X still suck at handling resolution (and if you use a non-native resolution it hurts the performance since the GPU has to re-scale constantly).
http://i.imgur.com/RqL6v.png
[+] [-] Xcelerate|13 years ago|reply
And... I may be the only one here... but I think they should go a little higher than 2880x1800. I know normal viewing distance is something like 15 inches, but I like to sit closer to my screen when coding and it sure would be nice to have all semblance of "pixels" completely disappear. How cool what that be?
And if they started using AMOLED screens instead of IPS, then that would really be the perfect screen.
[+] [-] otakucode|13 years ago|reply
Roll it out. Stop with this incremental horseshit for sciences sake and make a LEAP.
[+] [-] sukuriant|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gergles|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Aissen|13 years ago|reply
http://andrew.huang.usesthis.com/
http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2007/06/where-are-the-high-...
And about every other hacker I know.
[+] [-] chj|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] abhimishra|13 years ago|reply
In fact, Samsung recently demoed a few Series 9 prototypes at IFA with WQHD resolution (2560 x 1440, which is the 16:9 resolution you get from most 27" panels): http://www.theverge.com/2012/8/31/3282360/samsung-wqhd-2560-...
[+] [-] hnriot|13 years ago|reply
I can work just fine on my 2009 MBP with 1280x800 (or whatever it is) the text is perfectly readable, there's no noticeable pixelation at distances past a few inches from the screen and having everything shrink, as a result of increasing the res, would make it unusable.
He's probably exaggerating for effect, but it's not even remotely true that laptop resolutions have stagnated. They have steadily increased to the point where we now have retina screens on regular work laptops.
I think if Linus created a blog post saying he'd just set his background color to blue, it would make the top spot here!
It's a shame to see Linus stooping to mock apple's use of the term retina. They (Apple) name everything, like the fusion drive or any number of previous technologies. It's to humanize the tech so the average person walking into the apple store doesn't have to talk in tech-speak. It's just a marketing term, and every company has them.
The definition of "reasonable resolution" changes over the years, VGA seemed reasonable compared to EGA.
[+] [-] sliverstorm|13 years ago|reply
(DisplayPort is my favorite display connector to date, and I hope to see adoption grow)
[+] [-] jaseemabid|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lloeki|13 years ago|reply
Like my MBP, Retina Macs still have 7 hours of battery, so I don't see the landscape changing much: many laptops, retina-class or not, cheap or not, will get crappy battery life, and a few will get it right.
[+] [-] epaga|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] buster|13 years ago|reply
(i had a 15" 1400x1050 display, then a 16" FullHD and now a 13" 1366x768)
[+] [-] zephyrfalcon|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] electrograv|13 years ago|reply
For example the equivalent of 9pt on a 900p display allows actually reasonably split-screen editing. On an actual 900p display though, it's much too blocky to be easily read without straining the eyes. At 1600p though, it's crystal clear.
[+] [-] walrus|13 years ago|reply
Other people may have other reasons for higher density displays, but those are mine.
[+] [-] jfb|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] glhaynes|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Filligree|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] oneandoneis2|13 years ago|reply
Computer displays have stagnated for too long.
[+] [-] tluyben2|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] stcredzero|13 years ago|reply