Sharp whispers its vital statistics: 15.6in 3840 × 2160 IGZO screen for next MacLap Pro? Will the next MacBook Pro refresh sport a 4K display, one 4,000-ish pixels wide? If Apple wants to ensure that its flagship laptop does indeed feature such a massive resolution screen, Sharp has just the LCD it needs. The panel pusher today said it is sending out samples of a 15.6-inch display with a 3840 × 2160 pixel …
Theres already 4k (real 4k, not UHD which this is, uhd != 4k) 10 inch panels used as field monitors so it's not a technical limitation, probably just a marketing one. Theres a higher price and higher margin on larger screens (perhaps mitigated by lower volumes). Over the next two years we should see them creeping into the $1-$2k US region for 24-30" screens. I wouldn't be shocked to see UHD 10-12 inch tablets in 3 years. Prices for UHD screens have been falling massively recently, as soon as they think they can hit a price point that will attract enough volume they will. They've gone from $40-$60k US down to $3-$7k US in 2 years. This is officially a Very Good Thing (tm) although they have seemed to have gone from true 4k to UHD. Whilst some folks will bemoan it as they claim they can't see the difference it will help a lot with post processing. Hell 8k can't come quickly enough!
A crappy 16:9 ratio will not be used by Apple. As much as I dislike Apple this is one area where they always get things right.
No matter how many pixels you cram into a 16:9 display it will always be cramped vertically at this size (you are going to have to increase your OS's DPI setting anyway). Why can we not have 16:10 back Sharp?
The 2013 Nexus 7 replaces the 16:9 screen of the original with a 16:10. So it's not just Apple and not just expensive devices.
Personally I'm a fan of 3:2, as on the old titanium Powerbooks, amongst others. But I don't think that's likely to make a comeback any time soon.
Taller. 1920x1080 isn't a "proper" resolution for a PC, it should be at least 16:10 (1920x1200), the same goes for this new retina 3840 screen, it should be 3840x2400. The scrrens today are wide enough, but they are lacking in vertical resolution if you are reading documents, working on spreadsheets or doing just about anything other than watching films.
For YouTube, it is looking like you need a 2400x3840 judging by the numpties that hold their Jesus Phones vertically when making videos!
But you couldn't resolve your pixels, because it was a cathode-ray shadow-mask colour tube. Say 0.25mm phosphor-dot spacing, 20 inches across a good one, 20 x 25 x 4 / 2 pixels = 1000 pixels. That divide by two is there because one pixel was a triangle of R,G,B dots. Yes, you got some degree of super-resolution on information encoded as luminance (a good match to your retina), so QXGA wasn't completely wasted. You can argue for /1.5 or even /1, but the display was no way as spatially clear as a 1920x1080 TFT. Analogue, not digital.
OTOH colour quality, for reproducing photographs, peaked with the last of the IIyama/ Sony/ Philips 25 inch vacuum-tube monitors and has declined since. On the plus side it no longer takes three people to manhandle a high-end monitor into place, or a meter-deep desk to support it and a keyboard.
And good big tube monitors cost a fortune back then, so a fair comparison is probably one of the newest 2560 or even 4K ones. These days you get 1920x1080 for well under £200.
Every other bloody laptop make is engaged in a match to the death to see who can be first to make a screen with just one (wide) pixel. The average screen res of phone these says far exceeds the average res of laptop.
I might hate Apple, but at least they realise that some people would actually like to have some pixels on their screens.
It's been irritating me for a few years now that laptop monitors suddenly leapt backwards. After two decades of progress, from crummy VGA (and lower, sometimes mono) up to 1920x1200 17" or larger becoming a standard option at the top - now, Apple drop 17" entirely, the other manufacturers downgrade to 1920x1080 and brag about this being "full HD" as if that somehow makes it OK to be a step down.
Retina does sound nice, but I want more screen area on my laptop dammit! Start by giving the 2" or 120 pixels back, then try making some progress again...
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