WWDC: The new 15" MBP with 2880x1800 resolution

[Deleted]

I'm quite surprised at the fact that they crammed in the 2880x1800, that said I wouldn't be surprised when people came in here and asked why they were lagging while playing WoW. =)

Good job on Apple for cramming in that resolution & making it thinner (looks like that atleast), I'm still looking for that HDMI cable. (Being a guy who often streams YT/Twitch from his laptop to TV)

It comes with a HDMI port :P

Im amazed at what they have done all in 0.71 inches of depth....

[inux94]

They added a HDMI port on their MKP's now??

[Abominator]

Is this resolution thing a marketing gimmic? I mean it wouldn't be easy to tell the difference between a 1920x1080 screen and a 2880x1800 screen especially at 15" unless your face was literally touching the screen. The only difference 2880x1800 makes is a difference in the price and the hardware components capable of running it.

[Deleted]

Is this resolution thing a marketing gimmic? I mean it wouldn't be easy to tell the difference between a 1920x1080 screen and a 2880x1800 screen especially at 15" unless your face was literally touching the screen. The only difference 2880x1800 makes is a difference in the price and the hardware components capable of running it.

The difference between 1920x1080 and 2880x1800, even on a 15" display, is huge. Unless you have bad eye-sight you will see a huge difference in picture clarity, sharpness, comparing the two.

As such, I wouldn't at all say that this is a "marketing gimmick". As I said in the OP, we have in the past 17 years (or so) moved from 70 PPI to 100 PPI. While the development has moved so slowly in the "desktop" market, we have seen huge leaps in the mobile department. Cell phones just a decade old had a PPI around ~40, and today we see phones reach 326 PPI. Just compare the HTC Wildfire (2010) to HTC One X (2012); 125 compared to 312 PPI. That is a huge leap forward.

It is about time we see the same leap happen on the desktop market, and reaching a point where pixels are almost indistinguishable.

[DeltrusDisc]

Real-life levels of resolution would be nearly impossible. You are talking pixels as small as molecules or atoms or even smaller. Not gonna happen. If someone ever claims to have done it, it will just be a marketing ploy.

Don't be so sure, displays continue to get better and better.

---------- Post added 2012-06-12 at 04:33 AM ----------

It's mostly marketing.

Retina display sounds cool, it's sort of like Blu-ray :P

You realize what Blu-ray actually supports that DVDs simply cannot, right? While streaming and such pretty much pulverized Blu-rays, people who live where they cannot get quality internet would probably love Blu-rays, in fact I bet they DO love them. Blu-rays support 1080p at I believe 60 fps, which is far better than any DVD-movie. DVD movies typically cap out at 480p-720p and have your average motion blur 24 fps.

[Idrinkwhiterussians]

I am actually quite interested in comparing the two MBPs side by side. One with the retina display and one with the old display. They will still be selling the old style 15 as well as the new.

VERY interesting either way.

Also, I do remember my first cell phone with a color display. The pixels were just... wow. The correlation between mobile displays is quite interesting to note.

[DeltrusDisc]

They added a HDMI port on their MKP's now??

Didn't you watch the video that was linked on Facebook?! Silly guy.

[lordjust]

Being one of the biggest (computer) companies in the world one can't deny that Apple is key in the development of computer engineering. Sure, perhaps the company receives too much praise for their "innovations", but the iPhone and iPad have been big stepping stones for the mobile market - no question about it...

Key in development of computer engineering? No. All Apple does is take existing technology and make it popular. Things like the iPad or iPhone existed before and Apple did just take these things, make them more comfortable and stylish and tell the world that they need that.

Good thing about Apple is that they push existing technology to the max so that it gets used instead of rotting somewhere until the current technology isn't good enough anymore for the consumers. But for new displays I think Apple just wants to be the first because the industry already prepares new display technology for the launch of S-HD (4x higher resolution of HD = ~200DPI) in 2014. All display manufactures already showed new displays and said that they are ready to roll out but they have to wait for the content to be ready and for 2014 the Japanese plan on launching the first S-HD TV station.

[Deleted]

Key in development of computer engineering? No. All Apple does is take existing technology and make it popular.

Which results in that other companies, Apple included, invest more into developing these technologies.

For example, high PPI screens wasn't very common on the market before the iPhone 4, but with its release all of a sudden more and more companies started to invest, develop and release phones with high PPI screens.

Apple might not be the developing hand when it comes to these technologies, but it's still a key company in the process.

[kidsafe]

Could be something they rectify with Safari in the OSX-Mountain Lion update, assuming something to fix that isn't already implemented.

You could easily just Apple-+ to the zoom level of your choosing and leave it there...200% if you want things to look normal. You can also just pinch-zoom to your desired level as well... Safari handles full-page zooming fairly well.

[Deleted]

Is anyone aware of any laptops current or forthcoming (in the near future) that have anywhere near this level of technology in them with a similar size / weight? Forgetting the retina display because I'm not a graphics engineery type of person, is there anything else out there with the macbook pro's sheer grunt factor? People whinge and gripe about Apple but you can't deny the fact that they have some serious chops to back up their reputation.

As far as I can tell, Asus are the only other company out there who are making big strides in the laptop world with their ux31a range of lappies while everyone else is busy playing catch up. Especially when it comes to resolutions. Yeesh.

For the record, I am NOT an apple fanboi and actively detest them and their business practices. I am, however, appreciative of good technology and hardware which is something apple are very strong at.

[mafao]

You could easily just Apple-+ to the zoom level of your choosing and leave it there...200% if you want things to look normal. You can also just pinch-zoom to your desired level as well... Safari handles full-page zooming fairly well.

You don't need to do that. OS X is resolution independent and will automatically upscale the content. The applications are further free to implement their own enhancements if they are HiDPI aware.

You can also read up on it here: http://developer.apple.com/library/m...012302-CH1-SW1

http://developer.apple.com/library/m...012302-CH4-SW1

---------- Post added 2012-06-12 at 05:34 AM ----------

For the record, I am NOT an apple fanboi and actively detest them and their business practices. I am, however, appreciative of good technology and hardware which is something apple are very strong at.

This is a bit contradictory It seems its really 'cool' nowadays to hate Apple. What business practices of them do you detest? Their strong opposal to DRM? Although I agree that Apple is relentless in trying to control the market... still, its the only one hardware/software company right now with any degree of meaningful innovation (Microsoft are actively pushing as well with their completely new Windows 8 design).

[Gringgotts]

The real question is what would you do with this huge resolution? Process your words in extra high clarity? Games probably won't support that resolution for a while, and movies will be even later. Admittedly the extra screen real estate is nice, but on a such a small screen it hardly seems worth it.

I have a 22" 1920x1080 monitor and I have to look pretty damn close to see the pixels. A smaller monitor with a resolution that size seems like it's at a point of diminishing returns in terms of "seeing the difference". Now if it were on a larger display (30"+) I could see the purpose of it. Also, 16:9 ftw.

[jmacphee9]

Fair point, but I think it is meant more for picture/video viewing/editing, and for those purposes I think the resolution will be stellar.

i think the point of the new "pro" line was to return it back to being the actual professionally used version of their laptops, i would say the price tag confirmed this as a 2200$ laptop is far from a normal consumer price. in '08 or so this line just became the regular line of laptops, not the heavy professional ones real mac users were used to.

and for the people saying the text will be too small, isnt this monitor really just a 1440x900 that scales/doubles up when video and such is in use?

[mafao]

The real question is what would you do with this huge resolution? Process your words in extra high clarity? Games probably won't support that resolution for a while, and movies will be even later. Admittedly the extra screen real estate is nice, but on a such a small screen it hardly seems worth it.

I can't believe I have to write it three times Its called resolution independence. Pixels don't matter. You specify the dimensions of your UI in logical units (think cm), and the OS will translate that to pixels based on your PPI. Independent on your PPI, the content will look the same. UI rendering is vector-based, thus you will get better quality (e.g. crispier text etc.) without actually having to change your software.

Both OS X and Windows (at least in their API) support this, for Windows you need to use WPF

[Deleted]

However, the change from minidisplay to HDMI seems kinda strange to me... I mean, most people use an external screen or hooked up to a projector when doing presentations, not connecting it to a tv.

[Xuvial]

At that price I would buy a Razer Switchblade, and that is the bottom of the well as far as compliments go :P
This is basically a $2200 photo viewer/editor. I don't see how the processor will be fast enough for intensive video editing (who edits videos on a 15" mobile deivice anyway?). Definitely no use for gaming, MBP's have never implemented anything more than integrated or low-end discrete GPU's.

Yes it has an amazing screen and your high-res desktop will look heavenly, the stylish design will be a status symbol of "I have money and style" - but this is something Apple has always done well, there will be a market for this notebook.

Frankly I see this release just for the heck of having an updated notebook with the Apple logo - they've been out of the desktop/notebook scene for a quite a while now, atleast since media editing programs became just as powerful on PC's as Macs...and also as more people got into assembling their own rigs. iPhones and iPads is where the future lies for that company.

[Deleted]

I'll probably end up buying one of these as long as I can scale things right, I'd love to be able to hit that "sweet spot" of maximized clarity and screen real estate.

Just scaling everything up to be double the size wouldn't be very good (even if the clarity goes up with this) nor would I enjoy running things unscaled at 2880x1800 on a 15.4" screen. Somewhere in the middle would be nice.

I know that both standard Snow Leopard and Lion have some support for UI scaling built in but it has to be tweaked using the terminal. IIRC this machine will ship with a special Lion release (until Mountain Lion comes out) and I'm hoping it allows for smooth scaling and not just "scaled up" and "not scaled up" (or worse, just scaled up).

---------- Post added 2012-06-12 at 10:30 AM ----------

However, the change from minidisplay to HDMI seems kinda strange to me... I mean, most people use an external screen or hooked up to a projector when doing presentations, not connecting it to a tv.

Apple haven't switched from Mini-DP to HDMI, they've switched from Mini-DP to TB and have also added HDMI.

---------- Post added 2012-06-12 at 10:33 AM ----------

At that price I would buy a Razer Switchblade, and that is the bottom of the well as far as compliments go :P
This is basically a $2200 photo viewer/editor. I don't see how the processor will be fast enough for intensive video editing (who edits videos on a 15" mobile deivice anyway?). Definitely no use for gaming, MBP's have never implemented anything more than integrated or low-end discrete GPU's.

Quad Core i7 should be fast enough. Not as fast as desktop i7 but still fast.
It's also SSD-only, no spinning rust to slow things down.
And your RAM choices are 8 or 16 GB.

Frankly I only see this pitch as a "here's something updated with the apple logo" - they've been out of the desktop/notebook scene for a quite a while now, atleast since media editing programs became just as powerful on PC's as Macs. iPhones and iPads is where the future lies for that company.

Apple's been huge in laptops for a long time and have shown steady growth (both in absolute numbers and compared to the market as a whole) when it comes to desktops as well.

[Redasurc]

Im curious how that resolution is gonna work with games like wow. Running wow on a imac with 2560x1440 is not all that good and you have to scale down to 1920x1080. Wonder how artifacts gonne be like and pixel tearing. My last gen macbook pro 15 with the normal screen runs great but is still little hot, but ivy bridge gives about 10-15% speedincrease so I doubt the 2880x1800 wich is double pixels compared to the normal screen is gonna work. Though having said that I doubt that screen is really meant for gaming.

[Taotaisei]

All I can honestly see this as being is the "Hey we are saying we're the forefront" that they've done for a while. Without actually being it. The increased resolution will be helpful in editing especially when it comes to the professional level of "photoshopping" needed as just a few pixels messed up can ruin a photo but as others have mentioned I cannot help but see it as being more of a status symbol for hipsters sitting at starbucks saying "I have the new *insert item here*" and in the end not being used to it's remotely full extent.

However, I can see it as maybe being used by a pro on the go? That's about all I got.