[whynotminot]

Have never heard anyone in my life that isn’t an engineer comment on Pro Motion. Not even in an accidental sort of “hmmm why does my phone just feel faster” kind of way.

This is a feature that really only matters to the Hacker News crowd, and Apple is very aware of that. They invest their BOM into things the majority of people care about. And they do have the Pro Motion screens for the few that do.

Even I — an engineer - regularly move between my Pro Motion enabled iPhone and my regular 60Hz iPad and while I notice it a little, I really just don’t see why this is the one hill people choose to die on.

[electrograv]

You have to understand that your own perceptual experience is not identical to that of all other humans. Without recognizing that, we will inevitably end up talking past each other endlessly and writing each other off as { hallucinating, lying, exaggerating, etc } for one of us claiming to perceive something important that the other does not.

It would be no different than arguing about whether we need all three primary colors (red, green, blue) with someone who is colorblind (and unaware of this). Or like arguing whether speakers benefit from being able to reproduce a certain frequency, with someone who is partially or fully deaf at that frequency. And I truly mean no disrespect to anyone with different perception abilities in these or any other domains.

Recognizing that large differences exist here is essential to make sense of the reality - that something that seems completely unimportant or barely noticeable to you, could actually be a hugely obvious and important difference to many others (whether it’s a certain screen refresh rate, the presence of a primary color you cannot perceive but others can, an audio frequency you cannot hear but others can, or otherwise).

[whynotminot]

This is why I led with this part, unrelated to my own perception:

> Have never heard anyone in my life that isn’t an engineer comment on Pro Motion. Not even in an accidental sort of “hmmm why does my phone just feel faster” kind of way.

I would also argue the crowd that insists everyone needs Pro Motion is doing exactly what you accuse me of -- assuming their needs and perception must also be everyone else's. When clearly the market has said otherwise, given Apple's success for many, many years with 60Hz screens.

[electrograv]

> I would also argue the crowd that insists everyone needs Pro Motion is doing exactly what you accuse me of -- assuming their needs and perception must also be everyone else's.

I am not seeing this alleged crowd of people insisting that everyone needs 120hz/ProMotion. This seems to be a red herring.

I am seeing a crowd of people (including myself) saying that we experience 120hz/ProMotion as a huge improvement over 60hz, so much so that we will never buy a product without this ever again (so long as we have the choice).

I furthermore claim that while not everyone is a member of this crowd (obviously), it represents a sufficiently large share of the device-buying population to justify steering billions of dollars of hardware and software industry to support this, which evidently has happened and increasingly continues to happen.

If this crowd were an insignificant minority as you seem to imply, then 120hz displays would be a fad that fades away in all but the most niche markets (e.g. pro gaming), and yet we’re seeing precisely the opposite happen — 120hz displays are growing in popularity by expanding broadly into increasingly non-niche consumer device products everywhere, from laptops to tablets to phones.

> When clearly the market has said otherwise, given Apple's success for many, many years with 60Hz screens.

Arguing that the market doesn’t want/need it now because Apple succeeded without it in the past, is completely absurd — just as nonsensical as trying to argue that computers don’t ever need any more memory because they sold just fine with less in the past.

[whynotminot]

Well I guess if you don’t see it it doesn’t exist.

Apple sells Pro Motion displays. If it matters to you, you can buy them. They aren’t refusing to serve this market, they just don’t prioritize it with their lower cost products.