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.<p>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.<p>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.<p>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.
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).<p>Next up: IPS LCDs <i>everywhere</i>.
One of his comments far down the page just struck me:<p>"It's ignorant people like you that hold back the rest of the world. Please just disconnect yourself, move to Pennsylvania, and become Amish.<p>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.<p>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.
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 ?<p>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.<p>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.
It is an interesting rant.<p>Pixel density affects many aspects of a system;<p>Storage - it affects the size disk you need/want because high resolution images / video take up much more space.<p>Memory - You need more memory to build up screens for a higher density display. Further you need the bandwidth to shove that data around.<p>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.<p>So when you look closely at tablets you will see interesting places where they have been adapted to support these densities.<p>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.<p>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 <i>reject</i> 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.<p>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'
I disagree with Linus on this one.<p>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).<p>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).<p>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).<p>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.<p>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).<p><a href="http://i.imgur.com/RqL6v.png" rel="nofollow">http://i.imgur.com/RqL6v.png</a>
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.<p>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?<p>And if they started using AMOLED screens instead of IPS, then that would really be the perfect screen.
IBM invented a 2000ppi monitor over a decade ago, but it was useless because software and video cards couldn't handle it.<p>Roll it out. Stop with this incremental horseshit for sciences sake and make a LEAP.
His not the only one to think so:<p><a href="http://andrew.huang.usesthis.com/" rel="nofollow">http://andrew.huang.usesthis.com/</a><p><a href="http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2007/06/where-are-the-high-resolution-displays.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2007/06/where-are-the-high-...</a><p>And about every other hacker I know.
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.<p>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): <a href="http://www.theverge.com/2012/8/31/3282360/samsung-wqhd-2560-1440-dual-display-laptop-prototypes" rel="nofollow">http://www.theverge.com/2012/8/31/3282360/samsung-wqhd-2560-...</a>
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.<p>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.<p>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.<p>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!<p>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.<p>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.<p>(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.
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?!<p>(i had a 15" 1400x1050 display, then a 16" FullHD and now a 13" 1366x768)
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.<p>Computer displays have stagnated for too long.
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.
I think a good solution could come from review websites. If they all agreed that any screen size below 2560x1600 (or maybe a little less) would only score a maximum of 5/10 it would certainly rock the boat.
Before this happens, it would be really nice if Windows supported different DPIs on different screens. IIRC Linux can already be hacked to do this. Windows cannot. The result of this is I have a 21" 1080p desktop screen sitting next my 14" 1080p laptop screen and I cannot read text on my laptop screen! (I'd move the laptop dock closer but then it'd be sitting on top of my working space.)<p>As for Windows 8 doing high DPI, Tech Report has a decent article (<a href="http://techreport.com/review/23631/how-windows-8-scaling-fails-on-high-ppi-displays" rel="nofollow">http://techreport.com/review/23631/how-windows-8-scaling-fai...</a>) on the lackings of Win8 high DPI settings even in Metro. Though feel free to ignore their complaints about browser scaling, each browser takes a different approach to how they break web pages when scaling. (Suffice to say 1 pixel borders and non-integer scaling don't go together well!)<p>They go into detail about the different scaling options, but the scaling options are all things that the user has to manually enable! Hardly auto-DPI. There is a balance to be struck between "more information on screen" and "better displaying information on screen" that Microsoft apparently decided to not even attempt, instead giving the user a blunt instrument with which to toggle between "way too big" and "way too small".
The one issue that cannot be ignored is that a higher resolution display will consume significantly more power and cause the GPU to consume more power and generate more heat. The relationship is roughly linear to pixel count, in other words 2x more pixels is equal to 2x more power and heat. From 1366 x 768 to 2560 x 1600 it's roughly 4x more power/heat.
It WILL indeed be the new standard resolution, very soon, especially considering the "push" the PC industry is getting from Apple's Retina Macbook Pros. The demand for high res panels is just to darn high and it has to be met. Like in Apple's situation, the cost can be taken care of by charging a premium and then using economies of scale to bring down production costs and making these kind of displays the new norm.<p>But exactly when this will happen? Well, it sort of already has: <a href="http://www.engadget.com/2012/08/31/samsung-Series%209-WQHD-Ultrabook-matte-display/" rel="nofollow">http://www.engadget.com/2012/08/31/samsung-Series%209-WQHD-U...</a><p>However, I believe we're going to see a huge blast in these super high-res panels right after Intel Haswell is released. It'll provide the Ultrabooks with graphic performance capabilities that'll be good enough for these high-res panels.
> In fact, if you have bad vision, sharp good high-quality fonts will help.<p>As someone with absolutely terrible vision, I'll have to disagree with this point. I've been keeping my screen res around 1024x768 for years because moving it higher just makes it so darn hard to see. I've now come to the point where some monitors and video cards won't even go that low. I'm probably a unique case. Still, I do wish accessibility was better for visually impaired users.<p>FWIW, Macs do magnification the best out of the box. Zoomtext on windows costs a bit, and I'm not sure anything exists for Linux that's even comparable to MacOSs magnifier abilities. Even with a mac, there's too much mouse movement involved for my tastes.
Totally, BUT, it will trash an admittedly imperfect economic sector. I've been following this for a few months; and that the market hasn't moved is incredibly harmful. The laptop market has basically stagnated, meaning a lot of pent-up demand that people are not likely to commit to other personal productivity improvements. So, in my opinion, in order to preserve inventory values, these guys fight as hard as possible to hold back technical development. I.O.W. If this valuation structure were ever to break, the corporates involved could take huge hits. Someone with more knowledge will have to take it from there.
this may not be a constructive comment, but oh god yes please. integrated graphics are good enough these days and you can always drop down to 1280x800 without scaling problems if you want framerate.
Intel is also pushing for higher resolutions for some time now. eg. Ultrabooks were supposed to have higher resolution screens.<p><a href="http://liliputing.com/2012/04/intel-retina-laptop-desktop-displays-coming-in-2013.html" rel="nofollow">http://liliputing.com/2012/04/intel-retina-laptop-desktop-di...</a><p><a href="http://vr-zone.com/articles/from-idf-retina-quality-2560x1600-hd-panels-on-ivy-bridge-ultrabooks/13689.html" rel="nofollow">http://vr-zone.com/articles/from-idf-retina-quality-2560x160...</a>
I can vouch for the retina display making text significantly more readable to those who need reading glasses, even if the text is exactly the same size.
You can't put 2560x1600 on anything but an 11-13" display, though.<p>I have a 13" Retina MacBook Pro and scaled resolutions look blurry, so I'm stuck with 1280x800.
For all manufacturers, this would reduce time of autonomy, and for many, significantly so. And obviously, price range.<p>It's a trade-off between various things, as usual. What Linus thinks may work for him (I happen to agree), but I can easily see someone wanting an ultraportable with basically VGA resolution and battery lasting entire day of active usage.
Currently there are 311 comments in this story. It's hard to find any mention of it, but does anyone actually run their Retina Macbook Pro at native resolution for every day usage, coding / programming, etc? I have mine hooked up to an external 2560 x 1440 Apple Cinema Display.
No. My screen is 1440x900 and it's honestly as big as I want it to go. See, what usually happens is that when you increase resolution, everything becomes smaller. Desktop icons, text in apps, web sites. Yes you can manually resize everything but it's a pain and it doesn't always work right. Web pages get deformed since you're only changing the fonts. And it's not like I'm ever watching movies in higher resolution than HD. So I'll keep my 'low' resolution screens.
Every now and then Linus says something slightly stupid, maybe even on purpose. The "shock title" effect.<p>Obviously 2560x1600 on 11" is utterly useless as it is on tablets. 1366 is equally dumb. Whatever goes in between is generally fine. I start being happy at around 1920 for 13" (and it's 4:3 friend) since, after that, i can't see pixels <i>at all</i> and in native mode I can't see the text too well either.
I don't think that's a personal thing.
Honest question here: When will I notice?<p>Maybe some games? Maybe some designery stuff? Maybe some video creation stuff? (It might be useful for doctors and medical images, but I kind of hope they're using special purpose monitors for that stuff).<p>And does pushing those extra pixels have a cost in energy use?
Sadly, Torvalds is wrong:<p>>Christ, soon even the cellphones will start laughing at the ridiculously bad laptop displays.<p>They've been beating the pants off of them for some time now.
I've been thinking the same thing lately. 2560x1600 needs to be the standard resolution for all laptops from 11"-15". In fact the 15"+ ones can start having 4k resolution (300 PPI) about 2 years from now, as both Intel integrated GPU's and ARM GPU's will support that resolution.
Mouahah, more pixel nonsense. Yeah, sure, put this resolution on a 11' screen, and have a sluggish GPU handle what's moving on screen on a 300-400$ laptop.<p>This is nonsense. You need pixels to a certain amount to have a good looking picture, but the benefit of having way larger resolutions is like a log curve: it stagnates as you go up and up, since you would notice the pixels less and less.<p>I am surprised to see Linus making this kind of claim, he used to be more practically-focused. Now he sounds like a marketing guy from Apple.<p>I say, why stop at 2560 * 1600. This is ridiculously low. Make 10 000* 7000 the new standard laptop resolution. Yes, we can. Tomorrow, please. Even if the capacity and the plants to make it do not exist, yet.<p>BS if I ever see it.