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by gojomo 5840 days ago
Never is a mighty long time!

Both handhelds and desktops have been increasing in resolution, and decreasing in cost, for years. There's no reason for that trend to stop until all displays reach 'retinal indifference' at their usual viewing distance. I would not be surprised to see 4000x3000 LCDs in laptops in the next decade.
2 comments
masklinn 5840 days ago
> Both handhelds and desktops have been increasing in resolution, and decreasing in cost, for years.

That's not entirely correct. 24" at 1920x1200 and 30" at 2560x1600 is something that's been there for years, and these days laptops are regressing rather than progressing: in 2005 I had colleagues with 15" laptops in 1920x1200, these days the majority seems to be 16/9 screens in stupid resolutions (1366x768 seems really common these days in entry-level laptops)

> Never is a mighty long time!

My never stands for the Macbooks, and probably the iPad as well. By the time we reach the ability to create such densities with acceptable yields on panes bigger than 10 inches, the current names will long have been retired.

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Retric 5840 days ago
Company's rarely change the name of a well liked product. Consider a 1976 Honda accord vs a 2010 Honda accord. They are vary different cars targeting different markets but as long as people think product X = quality the name tends to stick around.

(1976 68hp ) http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/3d/1977-1982...

(2010 177-hp to 271-hp on a v6) http://automobiles.honda.com/accord-sedan/exterior.aspx

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philwelch 5840 days ago
On the other hand, consider PowerBook--a strong brand since the early 90's that was still phased out.
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pohl 5839 days ago
Having been named after the PowerPC architecture probably accounts for that one.
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philwelch 5839 days ago
No, that's the Power Mac. The PowerBook predates the PowerPC by years--the first PowerBook was in 1991, and the first PowerPC-based PowerBook was in 1995, while the first Power Mac was in 1994.
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pohl 5839 days ago
You're right, the first was released in October of 1991. But look at what else Apple joined in the same month:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AIM_alliance

Looks to me like they were just establishing the brand in advance of the first chip.

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nooneelse 5840 days ago
You wouldn't need anything like 4000x3000 for 'retinal indifference' using the article's number of 287ppi@12" use distance as a basis for that threshold. 4000x3000 pixels, assuming a 22" screen is about 227ppi. The threshold in the article, translated to a typical working distance for a laptop of 22" is about 156ppi. So a 22" diagonal screen (same aspect ratio as your 4kx3k) would only need 1850 pixels on the short side to hit the 'retinal indifference' number.

Oh, and some other smartphones crossed into retinal indifference at their typical use distance sometime late last year.

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