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It's not more space. My 4:3 monitor has a resolution of 1600x1200. That's 180 lines of pixels more than a 1080p screen which is about 13 lines of text.

nailer 9y ago
Those are oddly low resolutions for 2018, but: if it's the same height, just wider, then great. Also The Verge seems to think everyone uses maximised windows all the time, which is very 'The Verge' of them.
- ghostly_s 9y ago
  > Those are oddly low resolutions for 2018, but: if it's the same height, just wider, then great. Not odd at all. '1080p' is probably the most common resolution on laptops sold today. They really fleeced us with the 'HD' marketing; laptop displays today are often lower res than they were ten years ago!
slantyyz 9y ago
>> It's not more space. My 4:3 monitor has a resolution of 1600x1200. That's 180 lines of pixels more than a 1080p screen which is about 13 lines of text. And it's 320 less lines horizontally. What matters to you may not matter to the next person, because their use case is different from yours. No matter what laptop (and monitor) manufacturers do with respect to aspect ratio, they're never going to please everyone with their design decision.
- cup-of-tea 9y ago
  Why do they have to choose only one? Just offer options for people who don't want widescreen. This is hacker news. Surely here we can complain that they're not made for programming. I also do a lot of writing and extra width is utterly useless for that.
  - slantyyz 9y ago
    >> Why do they have to choose only one? Just offer options for people who don't want widescreen. Isn't the answer kinda simple? If Apple were to decide to offer non-widescreen laptops and they sold like hotcakes, everyone would follow suit. For better or worse, Apple sets the trends on laptop form factors.
- octorian 9y ago
  Which is why we started by widening that to 1920x1200 (16:10). Which I think many of us were perfectly happy with. You didn't lose any vertical pixels, but gained horizontal pixels. Then all PC laptop manufacturers seemingly conspired to deny us the option to purchase anything, at any price point, with >1080 vertical pixels. (Thankfully Apple didn't follow this trend at the time.) Of course now with all the 4k/5k/high-DPI stuff we might finally be moving past that, but I haven't gone PC laptop shopping in a long time.

nailer 9y ago

Those are oddly low resolutions for 2018, but: if it's the same height, just wider, then great. Also The Verge seems to think everyone uses maximised windows all the time, which is very 'The Verge' of them.

ghostly_s 9y ago
> Those are oddly low resolutions for 2018, but: if it's the same height, just wider, then great. Not odd at all. '1080p' is probably the most common resolution on laptops sold today. They really fleeced us with the 'HD' marketing; laptop displays today are often lower res than they were ten years ago!

slantyyz 9y ago

>> It's not more space. My 4:3 monitor has a resolution of 1600x1200. That's 180 lines of pixels more than a 1080p screen which is about 13 lines of text. And it's 320 less lines horizontally. What matters to you may not matter to the next person, because their use case is different from yours. No matter what laptop (and monitor) manufacturers do with respect to aspect ratio, they're never going to please everyone with their design decision.

cup-of-tea 9y ago
Why do they have to choose only one? Just offer options for people who don't want widescreen. This is hacker news. Surely here we can complain that they're not made for programming. I also do a lot of writing and extra width is utterly useless for that.
- slantyyz 9y ago
  >> Why do they have to choose only one? Just offer options for people who don't want widescreen. Isn't the answer kinda simple? If Apple were to decide to offer non-widescreen laptops and they sold like hotcakes, everyone would follow suit. For better or worse, Apple sets the trends on laptop form factors.
octorian 9y ago
Which is why we started by widening that to 1920x1200 (16:10). Which I think many of us were perfectly happy with. You didn't lose any vertical pixels, but gained horizontal pixels. Then all PC laptop manufacturers seemingly conspired to deny us the option to purchase anything, at any price point, with >1080 vertical pixels. (Thankfully Apple didn't follow this trend at the time.) Of course now with all the 4k/5k/high-DPI stuff we might finally be moving past that, but I haven't gone PC laptop shopping in a long time.