[ksec]

>The ThinkPad 13s will start at $1,099

This $1099 config better have 16GB Memory and 512GB by default. Otherwise it is a machine that cost about the same as MacBook Air M2, with lower Display Res, slower CPU and GPU and No Touch ID. This is perhaps for the first time in history Apple has a better "spec" machine for the same price. With the scale of iPhone and iPad, Apple is now at a point where the whole PC industry can no longer compete. And that is excluding things like speakers, trackpad, and thunderbolt port.

>A spokesperson told Ars Technica that its business customers are being more open to the aspect ratio.

Biggest lie ever. People want 16:10, but for years the industry shove 16:9 to your customer because it was the cheaper panel.

> Arm Cortex-X1 cores at up to 3 GHz

For Context, the Single Core GB5 Scores

Arm Cortex-X1 cores at up to 3 GHz = ~800

Apple M1 ( A14 Core+ ) = ~1700

For PC Laptop counterpart, a 800 GB5 score you are looking at something like AMD Ryzen 7 4700U if it was limited to run at ~10W. So not too bad. Apple is the outliner here.

[acdha]

> This is perhaps for the first time in history Apple has a better "spec" machine for the same price.

This was also true at times after Apple switched to Intel — for example, around the time Apple went SSD-only they were considerably cheaper _and_ faster than the competition who were either shipping HDDs or using slower low-end SSDs using HDD-optimized interfaces. The main confound has been that they weren't selling crappy but super cheap machines or large laptops, so you could find products in those classes which were faster (at twice the weight / half the battery life) or much cheaper and a lot of people would make comparisons for things which were really in different classes.

The difference now is that we've hit the point where it's easier to do those side-by-side comparisons because everyone is using SSDs, solid case designs with decent thermals, etc. so there isn't an obvious confound like weight or build quality to complicate the comparisons.

[bubblethink]

The thing with lenovo is that advertise inflated prices. Everything is 50% off in a few months around black friday. The list price is only for press releases. Besides, thinkpads are sold primarily in bulk to companies who also get the discounted rate.

[nuodag]

Not in this market. We're usually buying thinkads in bunches of 20 every few months, and are struggling to get any (decent ones), never mind 50% off.

[rjzzleep]

Thinkpads for some reason are disproportionally cheaper in the US. A lot of countries in (south) east asia are a lot more expensive. Taiwans own electronics brands are cheaper in the US than they are in Taiwan.

[scns]

With taxes?

[numpad0]

no the MSRP is simply doubled in regions they do that, and effective prices are exactly the same as elsewhere. Like a midrange model might be listed as $4999.99 stricken with an "up to 65% off launch celebration offer" and a "bonus" 15% off auto-applying coupons, and all combined the price might line up into e.g. a $1045.69 for an i5/16GB. That sort of BS. It's actually one of aspects that had improved about ThinkPads since the Lenovo handover.

[rurban]

I got all my ThinkPads for discounted €450 in Germany. All my MacAirs did cost >€2000 and had horrible keyboards

[greggsy]

The RRP is also there to appease retail partners selling direct to the public

[shusaku]

> This $1099 config better have 16GB Memory and 512GB by default.

Doubtful. But they’ll make up for it by having it be on sale 24/7/365. I love my thinkpad but the buying process is awful.

[syshum]

Maybe on the consumer side, but the enterprise side I love them. PSRef is by far the best tool any mfg has ever made for comparing models for an enterprise selection. I am still shocked no other manufacture creates a tool.

[wincy]

Yeah but you can constantly get deals on the new MacBook Air for ~$850. It’s just such an amazingly good and affordable laptop.

[camgunz]

Those are usually for the baseline models. But, other than meager storage, I think it's still a great deal.

[Synaesthesia]

Well thankfully Apple charges so much for 512gb SSD that it isn't actually cheaper to buy the Macbook Air.

[daptaq]

> Biggest lie ever. People want 16:10, but for years the industry shove 16:9 to your customer because it was the cheaper panel. Any background on this? I always assumed 16:9 became popular because of videos.

[avidphantasm]

If you are authoring 16:9 content, something like 16:10 allows for some UI controls to be displayed along with 16:9 video at native resolution during previews. When programming, more space is better. So for creators, 16:10 is unambiguously better.

[Jedd]

> When programming, more space is better. So for creators, 16:10 is unambiguously better.

I don't think that's how space works.

[amarshall]

Given the same diagonal size, a more-square display has a greater total area. So a 16:10 13" display has more area than a 16:9.

[fomine3]

We should stop using diagonal size metric for display. It's fine for TVs that have fixed aspect ratio, but confusing for multiple aspect ratio.

[amarshall]

Agreed. Along with that the ambiguous 1080p, 1440p, etc. monikers. So much shorthand assumes the aspect ratio. Plenty of displays that are 21:9, 16:10, 3:2, etc.

That said: diagonal size with an aspect ratio, e.g. “13" 3:2”, is fine.

[bogwog]

A 16:9 screen is wider than it is tall, so if you’re programming that means fewer lines of code visible at a time.

[Jedd]

> A 16:9 screen is wider than it is tall, so if you’re programming that means fewer lines of code visible at a time.

A 16:10 screen is also wider than it is tall.

I'm not sure if I'm being trolled.

Number of usefully displayable lines is not defined by the x:y ratio.

Further, any half-way decent 16:9 monitor can, in a matter of moments, become a 9:16 monitor.

EDIT: I am aware we're talking about a laptop display, so orientation isn't flippable - but OTOH if you're trying to develop code on a 13" monitor at 1200 pixels high - your problem is not a ratio one.

[LoveMortuus]

16:10 is less wider, and thus gives you more vertical real estate.

If it helps you understand better 16:16 would be a perfect square.

[dasKrokodil]

True, but if you're having two windows side by side, the wider 16:9 will give you more horizontal space to do so.

One more thing about display sizes and aspect ratio:

Since display sizes are usually given by the length of the diagonal, those aspect ratios that are closer to a square (1:1) will have a bigger area for the same diagonal. With the same diagonal length, a 16:10 has a ~5% larger area than a 16:9, and a 4:3 has a ~12% larger area than the 16:9.

This is a nice tool for display size calculations: https://displaywars.com/

[sbarre]

In most cases that I've seen, a 16:10 vs 16:9 display has the same pixel width (the 16 part) part and more vertical pixels. So you were never actually sacrificing width as you claim.

I've had 3 16:10 panels in the last 10 years and this was the case each time: 1920x1200 (vs 1920x1080), 2560x1600 (vs 2560x1440) and now a 3840x2400 (vs 3840x2160).

16:10 monitors were out of fashion for most of the last 10 years, but are making a comeback lately.. They were hard to find for a while but worth the effort imo.

[Hinrik]

>True, but if you're having two windows side by side, the wider 16:9 will give you more horizontal space to do so.

I don't know about you, but I don't read two pages of text at the same time.

[petercooper]

A lot of people on this thread seem to think one way is better than the other, but I'm happy with the market being a mixture of devices. I prefer wider and shorter screens because I always have multiple things on screen at once and want to see them all - but I appreciate other people work differently.

[daptaq]

I get why 16:10 is preferable (I'd like 4:3 even more, or even 1:1 on a desktop), what I don't understand is the incentive to push 16:9. Is it just because less pixels -> fewer expenses.

[slantyyz]

If you're authoring 16:9 content, you can display 1080p video at native resolution with UI controls on a 2560x1440 monitor, which is also 16:9.

16:10 in a vacuum is a useless metric. Real world stuff like actual resolution, screen dimensions, font sizes, scaling, etc. only make 16:10 ambiguously better.

[3pt14159]

I have a MacBook Pro with 3456 × 2234 (around 16:10.5) resolution and it is perfect. I don't know why people would want laptops at 16:9 at all. I can play videos just fine on this thing and the other 95% of the time it's a better resolution for doing things like coding and spreadsheets.

[olex]

New MBPs are exactly 16:10 for full-screen, non-"notch-aware" apps - the screen is basically 16:10 below the notch, plus the two side areas. Rather neat solution imho.

[3pt14159]

Right, but I don't even notice the notch is so small. In most cases it feels like a 16:10.5 and I'm loving it.

[yodelshady]

On a related note, how much I wish 1440 / 1600 vertical had become dominant for PCs, rather than just "bigger number better".

It's so much more of a performance : sharpness sweet spot than 1080p - sorry, I can see pixel effects on a typical laptop - or 4k - which even desktops typically don't drive well.

[NikolaNovak]

>> I don't know why people would want laptops at 16:9 at all.

I don't believe almost any of the HN audience does. The vertical crampiness of almost all the laptops is what makes a second monitor practically mandatory for me.

[slantyyz]

> 95% of the time it's a better resolution for doing things like coding and spreadsheets.

Depends on the use case. my wife (accountant) lives in Excel, and I set her up with two 21:9 monitors side by side (42:9 overall) and she loves that setup compared to the one she has in the office.

[goosedragons]

When it's choice between something like a 16:10 1440x900 and a 1600x900 16:9 screen I'll pick the latter every time, more resolution is more resolution. A 4K screen would give you more "space" than your MBP offers.

[mschaef]

It's easier to run LCD production lines if all the panels are produced on the line at the same aspect ratio. Given the prevalence of 16:9 video panels, this made it easier to produce 16:9 panels for laptops. (So, you're essentially correct.)

[vladvasiliu]

Does that apply across sizes?

I'd expect laptop screens, having a different pixel density, to be manufactured on different lines so that having the same aspect ratio as some other size wouldn't count that much.

[ksec]

If the Pixel density differs ( a lot ) then yes it doesn't matter. But you still need economy of scale. This doesn't matter as much now because current LCD panel industry is essentially left over by Smartphone market. So you get a lot more flexibility than trying to print millions of the same 16:9 panels.

[mschaef]

Do you have any sense what share of the LCD panel industry goes to phones?

[ksec]

No up to date number ( Because I no longer care as much ). Before pandemic and chip shortage the trajectory was OLED will be cheaper than LCD by 2022/ 2023. That is excluding other benefits like thinner display so you could fit larger battery and higher res ( spec ) numbers for better marketing. It is only a matter of time before LCD get completely squeezed out on Smartphone.

[tehdgvtd]

> People want 16:10

That's, like, your opinion, man.

Give me a high end mobile workstation with 4:3!

[2Gkashmiri]

would linux support be better this time around with ARM considering we have had years of raspberry pi and similar devices support?

i would love to know if linux can shine on arm for desktop use out of the box

[marcodiego]

This is something that scares me. Since linux had a large dominance on ARM, it was common to vendors to make drivers for their devices. By making drivers, I mean get the driver properly mainlined. Of course, there always existed the mostly proprietary and closed board support package but it was to their disadvantage and there was a huge incentive to write drivers.

My fear is that, with windows becoming popular on ARM, this incentive will disappear and linux support on these machine will be weak.

[2Gkashmiri]

would it be like a situation where they would have to do less work because of existing linux support rather than building new windows support? dunno this looks like another mess then

[rsynnott]

> This is perhaps for the first time in history Apple has a better "spec" machine for the same price.

Eh, honestly the baseline MacBook Air has often been pretty good value in the past relative to the competition.

[danmur]

Or 3:2 even better

[torgoguys]

And old-skool 4:3 is even better (unless you use the panel for a lot of video). :)

It's a shame we're been wandering for nearly a decade, still trying and get back to what we already had.

[xorcist]

> People want 16:10,

4:3, please.

[phendrenad2]

Why not 1:1?

[seanmcdirmid]

Too square. Seriously: https://www.quora.com/Why-did-TVs-give-up-their-square-for-r...

Tldr: our peripheral vision extends width wise more than it does height wise. That 4:3 was popular at all was an artificial of display technology not being able to take advantage of that. Now, of course for using a computer vs just watching movies or playing games, 4:3 makes a lot of sense, but I think we’d see 3:4 (portrait letter size) before 1:1.

[aaaaaaaaata]

Is that price with or without a rootkit?

[midrus]

It is rootkit free, they still haven't migrated it to work in ARM. Will come in a later automatic update.

[sudosysgen]

You can generally buy a ThinkPad at 2/3 or even 1/2 of the list price.