Apple Updates MacBook Air, MacBook Pro, Insane New 2880x1800 Notebook Display Discussion

At today's WorldWide Developers' Conference in California, Apple just pushed the boundaries of laptop tech once more, updating their notebook lineup with 2880x1800 displays.

Read the full content of this Article: Apple Updates MacBook Air, MacBook Pro, Insane New 2880x1800 Notebook Display

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This just drives home the fact that notebook PC makers need to stop using the pathetic 1366x768 resolutions on premium notebooks. If you want to market a new laptop as a premium product in needs to have a resolution that consumers will interpret as being a "premium" spec.

 

I noticed today at the Lenovo product page that you can order a T530 with a 1900x1080 screen. I don't know if it's an FHD, but I hope this trend continues and spills over to other notebook makers.

 

I wonder if the retina 15 inch screen will suffer the same high power consumption as the new iPad's retina display. Or maybe Sharp managed to pump out sufficient quantities of IGZO panels fast enough this time around.

btw, FHD in the T5x0 Thinkpads is not new. The old T520 had it as well.

 

I'm a long time Windows user and have never owned a Mac.

Looking at the specs and price of the Retina MBP, it's quite apparent how much "PC" makers have been dragging their heels, and how much consumers have simply accepted mediocre 16:9 displays, erratic multi-touch trackpads, oversized form factors, and terrible customer support - even in the "premium" segment. Even if you pay for a business class machine, you still end up with overweight, oversized, and underspeced (e.g. terrible graphic cards) machines like the Dell Latitude E6xxx series. You also end up paying extra for a decent screen (IMHO should be standard on business class machines).

Bravo Apple. If I was in the market for a laptop today I'd buy the Retina MBP. You are the company that is truly innovating. I only hope that Windows laptops makers try to follow sooner than later.

I'm curious as to who is going to buy the $2199 MBP over the $2199 Retina version. Is Apple purposefully trying to push people to the Retina version?

 

Can we talk about how my Dell Inspiron 9100 from a million years ago shipped with a 1920x1200 panel and it's taken this long for people to start taking them seriously (except Sony; I love you, you quirky 13-inch laptop with a 1080p display).

I'm betting it's to prevent people from whining about not having a MacBook Pro with Gig-E or an optical drive.

 

I have to disagree with several points. Business machines have excellent support with many more options compared to Apple (yes, I've owned both and can compare them). Dell and Lenovo are much cheaper than Apple since they get many more discounts and if you compare similarly priced machines, the workstation models destroy the Apple in pretty much every hardware aspect. Lenovo, Dell and HP all offer ips panels in certain models and their fhd tn panels are among the best out there. The problem with retina displays in windows is that software companies have yet to implement good scaling and why I chose not to get a fhd display, let alone consider a retina display.

Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using Tapatalk

 

I think that's exactly what's so sad about screens nowadays. I also had an older Inspiron that had a nice screen. It's depressing to think about how long we've been waiting for things to go back to how they were 6+ years ago.

The rest of your post is a bigger debate than I care to get into, but I'll address this point. I agree that you can get good FHD panels, but you also have to pay for them. Looking back 6+ years, I would have expected most standard screens to be "decent" by this point. Instead the industry has regressed to the point where many of the standard screens are beyond mediocre, forcing the buyer to pony up for a better panel just so photos look okay (read: not washed out, black color actually looks black) and so you can avoid seeing color differences when looking at the at top and bottom of the screen.

 

I agree with this. There are some laptops out there that I strongly consider buying just from looking at the specs just to find out later that it only comes with that 1366x768 resolution (it's a real deal breaker). They should definitely at least offer upgrade options for a better display.

 

Finally a screen comes out that will end up making users magnify text. I have a hard enough time seeing some smaller print on an 1080 screen, can't wait to see how hard my eyes are going to have to work on even more pixels. Pretty exciting stuff though, the machine seems like a real winner.

 

^ ^ I never thought I'd hear myself say this, but I guess you could always hook up an external monitor with a lower resolution if it's a big problem. Otherwise, just select a lower resolution. 2880x1800 does seem rather extreme though.

 

2 thunderbolt and 1 HDMI = winning. Multimonitor

My next 3 screen setup
8000 x 5080 resolution (MBP15" w/ two 30" Cinema Display)
(it can be done. Imac powering 2 30" displays: http://www.engadget.com/2011/05/03/apple-imac-hands-on-with-dual-30-inch-displays-video/)
or

4 screen setup using both thunderbolt and HDMI
9920 x 6160 (the same above w/ a 24" 1920x1080p via HDMI)


I'm trying to think how big 8000x5080 resolution desktop workspace is.

 

This new MBP is quite the product... except for the price.

I'm struggling to understand how the retina display is worth $1000+ more than an equivalent 15" ultrabook from another manufacturer w/ a 1080p screen (Zenbook Prime?).

I think people are overestimating the impact of the retina display. Or maybe I'm just not understanding fully. In order for this resolution to be useful most of the content displayed will need to be scaled up 2x anyways... so is this really any better than a FHD 1080p screen?

 

powered by a single Nvidia 650M, good luck with that.

 

The icons and text will be the same size as on a 1440x900 screen; they'll just be sharper and less pixelated. Exactly like what Apple did with the iPad 3. When they quadrupled the resolution, it's not that everything got smaller on the screen; it just got sharper on the screen.

 

Sort of. I think you can adjust it to some extent. Plus, manufacturers can update their apps for retina, and use a combination of doubling the dimensions and adding new features to take up the rest of the unused pixels.

 

Just curious. From an audio production standpoint. And this is rife with ton of hypotheticals. Wondering if the Retina MBP would support just higher resolutions in general. I know it's not exactly readable, but having all that space would be killer. The hypothetical Logic 10 release should include support for this.

 

Macbook Air again beats the competition with its price/performance ratio.

Macbook Pro with Retina is a little bit... uninspiring. 256GB storage for the entry-level is hardly enough for the hardcore ("Pro") user. Why not give the $2799 model 2GB of graphics memory? The 2880x1800 display surely needs it for more acceptable performance. I mean, at least make it a BTO option.

Macbook Pro refresh (non-Retina) is a major disaster. They should've simply replaced the 2.6GHz model (w/ 1GB graphics memory) with the 2.3GHz CPU and sold it for $1799. $2199 for the 2.6GHz just doesn't work cosnidering the entry-level Retina costs exactly the same. It may have a better processor and more storage, but at the end of the day, the average crowd is just going to drool over Retina and pick up slimmer model instead.

Looks like I made out the right decision to pick up the Ideapad Y580 and wait it out for a refresh.

 

As already stated, Apple is scaling up so it isn't like everything is going to be half the size. I do agree with you that text is quite small at 1080p on a 15" screen.

More than anything else, I'm hoping this is a sign that we are finally going to see some major changes in laptop screens. I hope this push for high PPI screens will drive down the costs of decent lower PPI (e.g. 1600x900) screens, and we'll finally see 13" and 14" laptop screens with good colors, contrast, and wide viewing angles.

 

Not everyone does gaming. I've powered two 30" monitors with an old 15" Macbook Pro in a 3 screen setup. Heck, I've even powered a 30 & 24" cinema display with a core 2 duo mac mini.

The HD4000 onboard is a capable of pumping out two 2560 streams. Then you have the other nvidia graphics card.

You won't be able to play games or do full 1080p streams across multiple monitors but you can sure use them to open big spreadsheets /database queries. I'm rocking a 1600x900 and a 2560x1600 off a lowly Thinkpad w/ HD3000 right now. But does the job.

Like I said, not everyone plays games or do anything GPU intensive. They need the ability to power the resolution.

 

I really don't see anything special in this Macbook Pro. You are really paying for the screen resolution and the simple laptop design.

Still remember the Sony Vaio P with its 1600x768 8" inch screen at its insane price 3 years ago.

 

I'm really considering getting new air 13"/128GB/8GB for 1240. Student discount and apple 100. card, so 1140.
There is nothing that any win machine make available that can be matche or is there?

 

In what way do you want the MBA matched? There are many solutions depending on what you mean...

 

AnandTech provided a nice demonstration of Apple's scaling on the MBP-R.

 

Simple design? Are you serious. Take a look at the inside.
You are paying for the technical marvel and impressive feat of engineering.

The other Ultrabooks are running ULV processors, integrated HD4000 with max 8GB ram

This is running a regular quad core i7 laptop CPU with a 1GB discreet GPU in a .71" form-factor.
That is stuffing a Lambo V10 engine in an AUDI RS6. versus a 6 cyl in the regular Audi A6


That is very impressive in terms of engineering and manufacturing. Compare this to a fully loaded quad i7 Lenovo T530. Oops,lenovo doesn't have anything comparable unless you go to the W520/W530.
And the W5XX are big bricks.

The interior is very bespoke in terms of moterhboard design. No wasted space.

Example of Apple engineering. Inside of an 13" ASUS Prime Zenbook (with 1080p screen, vanilla ULV Ivy Bridge and integratedGFX card).


Now compare that to a 13" AIR.



The 15 retina interior is even more beautiful on the inside.



Other companies are going to have to step up their industrial designs.

 

Graphics performance would be no different regardless of scaling right?

 

This is not a gaming laptop... the 1gb 650 should be more than enough to power this display and run photo/video applications. If this was a gaming laptop, sure, I'd expect more...

 

love the 15" retina design:
1. decent quality screen
2. ditched the optical drive
3. slimmer chassis
4. perfect scaling to 1440x900 for gaming
only problem is that 15" is too big for me.

if they create a 13" retina with the same chassis style, a 1920x1200 screen, and a GT640M GPU then i will be sold.

 

But the engine still renders the same amount of pixels (2880x1800) per frame. What exactly is the native gaming resolution for the Retina MBP?

 

not if you set the game to render at 1440x900............ surely?

 

Can you add a HDD to the retina MBP ?

 

Find one other laptop that has such a potent mix of power, portability, build quality, battery life, and customer support. Even with a 1080p screen, you will not find one. At least for now, this laptop is something special and unique.

 

No. Flash only.

 

But how exactly does it scale? Would graphics appear at all blurry say if I set the game to run at 1440x900?

 

Any answer will only be speculation at this point. We'll have to wait for some proper reviews and analysis. I'm sure your question is being asked by a lot of people and reviewers will answer it soon - many reviewers must be sprinting to get the first full review out!

Anandtech has a brief review of the screen and gaming - AnandTech - MacBook Pro Retina Display Analysis

In the analysis he points out that the console text in Portal is not rendered properly. I don't know if that means blurry games when people are actually gaming or if we'll only see some fuzziness in static screenshots.

 

The Lenovo w series is not that bulky or heavy side by side with the mbp. Other than that, it has the power, build quality, battery life, and customer support that meet or exceed the mbp. The screen resolution of the retina display is definitely a nice change to current screens but there are many more important factors in a screen that just resolution.

Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using Tapatalk

 

Wow almost made me look at their website. I wonder when and if other OEMs will offer this screen resolution...

 

shouldn't do, as you are directly transposing one pixel rendered over four pixels on the screen, so no blurring.

 

scale? there is no such thing. You play at what res you can, simple as that. there is a lot of games that dont support that res, thus leaving you with the max of 1920*1200, currently I couldnt see the blurriness of the screen playing at lower res, anand is still performing some tests

 

I agree with you that the W series is probably the best competitor to the Retina MBP. However, the W series is twice as thick and weighs 1.5 pounds more - not to mention probably an inch deeper with the 8 cell battery.

The quality of customer service depends on location. In the US Lenovo and Apple are good. The quality of Apple support is much more consistent outside the USA, which matters to a lot of people all over the world.

What really kills the portability of the W series is the power brick. With the W520 Lenovo forced you to use a 170W (180W?) power brick that is rated for the most powerful configuration. I suspect they could have easily come up with a power scheme that allowed you to use the 90W brick for traveling/portability. That would have really helped the portability of the W series.

 

In my opinion this revolutionary thing to happen to happen to laptops since the macbook air. (Which shows how stagnent laptops have been for a while) Both of these have been from apple.

The only other company that seems to be trying is sony. None of the other manufacturers have really tried anything interesting recently, that I can think of, except maybe the dell adamo but that didn't go anywhere

People have wanted this since the Iphone 4 came out. What i'm wondering is, why didn't someone (like dell or hp) try to one up apple on this or something?

 

This is absolutely phenomenal. I hope this sends a trend for the mainstream PC vendors as well. If this didn't have Mac OS I would jump all over this.

It's a pain to make this run Windows 7 only right?

 

Windows on osx sucks. That and windows has terrible scaling. They really need to address that before windows machines get higher resolution panels.

Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using Tapatalk

 

The W520/530 are great machines but if you want to run a Linux/Unix based OS, you will be gimped by the Nvidia optimus card in the lenovos. There are so many problems with adding high end monitors with the W520 ***in linux ***, I specifically opted to get a T420 with plain jane HD3000 integrated gpu just so I can run a 30" monitor with linux. I know, I research this for 4 months before settling on a T420. And even the T420 has horrible battery life. i cant imagine getting more than 3 hours at most on the W530 running Linux with the kernel 3.2. Both the Lenovo W & T series and the Macbook Pro retina appeals to me. I'm leaning toward the 15 MBP.

I carry two laptops with me right now in my bag. A t420 and a MBP13. The new 15 MBP would solve all my problems. I can probably carry a 15 MBP, an iPad3 & a Asus Transformer all in the same bag the T420 occupies.

My macbooks never had problems with multiple monitors. Especially those with greater resolution than 1920x1080.

 

Yeah I figured. That's unfortunate. It's gonna be a while before PCs start to adopt this crazy idea of putting higher res panels than 1366x768 in their laptops.

 

do you know what I see from the mbp retina? What the envy 15 was with updated specs. And what HP lost in their new envy line.

I dont know if it would make monetary sense to make the 2 15'' notebooks in the same line, however this is could be their halo product, for whatever good that is worth

 

I'm also a big fan of higher resolution screens and I wish Windows scaled nicely. I'm OK with 1920x1200 on my 15.4" screen. However, my mother finds her 1600x1200 21" desktop screen to be a bit hard to read. It's only a resolution issue because Windows doesn't scale well. Apple has effectively done a run around for this problem. They haven't actually fixed the issue but got around it via brute force. By doubling the linear resolution they can display the old stuff with easy scaling and display the new stuff with smoother lines. That's a clever if costly solution. I'm not sure the PC world would accept that solution since it would mean a big bump in screen prices. What I hope happens is MS comes up with a good scaling function in Win8.

The other thing that would really help would be web page scaling that works as nicely as that included with Android or iOS. It seems like those browsers quickly and nicely scale things. Often I would like to boost a page's size a bit but I don't like how poorly it re-renders in Windows (I'm not sure OSx is any better).

I think the new Apple is a cool product but like many other Apple devices I don't consider it to be as great as many claim. It also won't be the shape of things to come in PC land because for better and worse PCs are far more spec to price cost sensitive. If the specs aren't better for the same price we don't bite. Look how often you see screen size advertised but not resolution even when the resolution isn't 1366.

Still, if this breaks the 1366 doldrums I'm going to be very happy. I would like my next laptop to be a 13" 1600x900 model. I just hope I have a large range of options when that time comes.

 

I would buy a portable notebook with moderate HD display and hook up with a high quality 24" external monitor. It's simply more bang for the money.

 

i heard stories about that this retina displayed is scaled, and not true 1800P.
so the image is rendered at 1920x1200P and upscaled to 1800P.(the display has 1800P pixels)

it does make sense, if it had 1800P whitout any scaling, the text would become too small.

 

Yep and on top of that, they need to start using better quality panels as well. All of the 1366x768 panels I've tested in the last several years have shown poor color saturation (probably 60-70% gamut at best though I don't have a way to measure), gray-ish blacks instead of true blacks, and bad viewing angles (even for TN panels).

I'm more than interested to see how this ultra high-res introduction from Apple will affect the rest of the notebook market. My guess is PC makers saw it coming but, since 99% of consumers don't have a clue what they're buying unless Apple tells them, they'd have no way to effectively market the high resolution (and therefore no way to sell it at a higher price).

Now that high resolution is introduced to the mainstream spotlight (at these prices, it will not be in mainstream circulation for a while though), PC makers can start piggybacking off of Apple's marketing and knowledge spreading.