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It's frustrating that consumer Hi-DPI display development has completely stalled in the last five years. As mentioned in the article, macOS works best using tr

It's frustrating that consumer Hi-DPI display development has completely stalled in the last five years. As mentioned in the article, macOS works best using true 2x integer scaling. Using 2x scaling, a 4k monitor will result in an equivalent workspace to a 1080p display—unusable for productivity and development. A superior option is iMac/LG 5k display results which nets an equivalent workspace of 1440p. The only options for greater-than-4k displays on the market currently are the 27" LG 5K ($1200, 2014) and the Dell 8k ($3500, 2017). I'm convinced this is due to the manufacturers focusing their attention on the high-margin gaming market which has no need for resolutions higher than 4k. I'm holding onto my 30" 2560x1600 Apple Cinema Display until I can get something that offers me the equivalent amount of screen real estate at 2x retina scaling.

daniel-thompson 6y ago
Same here. I'm using my Dell 3008WFP (also 30" @ 2560x1600) until something genuinely bigger & better comes out. I bought it over a decade ago and it still works great for programming.
- _ph_ 6y ago
  I still use mine at work, and am extremely happy with it. The font rendering on my iMac 5k is better of course, but for work, the additional screen estate (especially vertically) is hard to beat. I am of course contemplating the 38" Dell with 3840x1600 :).
kd5bjo 6y ago
> an equivalent workspace to a 1080p display—unusable for productivity and development. I have to disagree here. I use (and have used) a 1080p display for years and don’t feel the need for anything larger. That might be an artifact of my early years on 80x25 character displays, though.
- Koshkin 6y ago
  > 80x25 character displays I am sure Doom and other great pieces of software were written on one of those.
  - AlanYx 6y ago
    Not to take away from your point, but Doom was actually written on a NeXTstation and cross-compiled for PCs, so at a minimum they were using 1120x832 resolution (2 bit greyscale).
codydh 6y ago
I'm also hanging on to my 30" Apple Cinema (and adapters to work with a new USB-C MBP). The LG 5K seems like a decent replacement though, I'm not totally clear why it seems so unpopular.
- nicksergeant 6y ago
  I've been using two LG 5k monitors for years and they are excellent. They got a bad reputation when they were released for build quality issues, but I haven't had a single issue.
aplummer 6y ago
I use a Pro Display XDR for programming / design work, I think you forgot this one. It seems like it would fit your needs (with the obviously premium price) as it’s 32”. It’s overkill for most, but still the best display I’ve ever used and I love it. I actually tried an Asus 4K 120hz for much less but the fan noise was a deal breaker even if the screen didn’t break on arrival (it did). Disclosure: Apple employee
- PStamatiou 6y ago
  +1, love my XDR for coding and designing: https://paulstamatiou.com/stuff-i-use/ https://paulstamatiou.com/stuff-i-use/
  - bredren 6y ago
    Thanks for this. You don't comment on the 60 vs 120 hz that is highlighted in OP opinion piece. Any thoughts on XDRs apparent lack of support for 120?
    - PStamatiou 6y ago
      Color accuracy is far more important to me than 120hz capable. The faster displays today tend to be subpar at color accuracy, illumination uniformity, etc.
  - silviogutierrez 6y ago
    Great post! Noticed you have the Logitech webcam. I think it'd be helpful if you: - Added a picture of the back of your 6k with the webcam. I'm sure it changes the look, however short the cable is. - Address the lack of speakers. I see you mention using a bluetooth speaker or your home audio setup. What's it like using the MacBook Pro speakers? - Added a picture of your setup + speaker if that's what you use regularly. I love your minimalist look and have a similar one, but have been holding on to my LG 5k because of the speaker/webcam.
- slezyr 6y ago
  Apple-only monitor? That's ridiculous. You can change its settings only from apple device.
pkamb 6y ago
30" Cinema Display has better than 5k iMac resolution, but at 1x. 160 extra vertical pixels. Still the best monitor around. $3000 MSRP now available used for $200-300.
dont__panic 6y ago
On the other side of things, running dual 4k displays for anything remotely intensive (a browser, IDE, instant messaging, mail client, and terminal in my case) can bring some machines to a crawl or run the fans at high speeds indefinitely. I think graphics technology has to catch up to hiDPI before I'd go past 4k. And let's not even get into the fact that 4k 60hz is a struggle and a half -- you need HDMI 2.0 or displayport to make it work at all, and many modern laptops lack either port, forcing you to use USB-C/thunderbolt with adapters that have poor spec support and even worse documentation. Even if someone offered me dual 5k displays to replace my dual 4k ones, I would turn them down right now. Before we move on to 5k displays, we need to get 4k60 down. And while I'm on my soapbox... where the hell is 4k90 or 4k120? I only bought my 4k monitors last month, with virtually unlimited budget, but they just don't exist. I imagine they've fallen victim to the same issue: the cables to support it just barely exist, and certainly can't be doubled up for dual monitor setups without a mess of wires plugged directly into a laptop or desktop.
- lifty 6y ago
  If you use a Mac, a 5k monitor with integer scaling (2x) will take fewer GPU resources to run than a 4K with fractional scaling (1.5x). This why I refuse to switch to a 4K monitor for now. Will do the leap to a 5k monitor but the options are very slim now.
clarry 6y ago
Why is everyone so attached to scaling? What is this shit software that 1) everyone relies on and 2) whose UI and font size can't be adjusted like any normal software (or web page) since the 90s? Is this yet another brainfart from Apple?
- robertoandred 6y ago
  Probably something to do with the fact that macOS has handled high-dpi perfectly since 2012 and Windows is still struggling.
  - WorldMaker 6y ago
    Windows has great High DPI support. It's Windows applications that often haven't seen upgrades since before even 2012. Windows' commitment to backward compatibility is the struggle. Windows hasn't had the option to just change processor architectures every dozen years on a seeming whim and subsequently force all software to be rewritten or die.
    - robertoandred 6y ago
      Mac apps didn't have to be upgraded to work with high dpi.
      - WorldMaker 6y ago
        macOS X was released in 2001 with the "Cocoa" application UI library. While "Carbon" helped older Mac OS applications run for a limited time on OS X, no applications today use any graphics stack older than Cocoa's 2001 release, as the drop of all support for PPC-targeted apps insured that in macOS' switch to x86. (Cocoa had High DPI support baked in from NextStep, even if it took ~11 years to be "needed".) Win32 was first beta tested by developers in 1992, and has had to remain stable and backwards compatibile to those first early 90s versions. There are still 32-bit apps written in 1992 that are expected to run unmodified on Windows 10 today. The last processor-architecture related API drop that Windows has been allowed by public perception and corporate strategy was Win16 support was dropped on 64-bit processors. (Hence why Windows on ARM has struggled and the current iteration of Windows on ARM now involves a 32-bit x86 emulator as a core feature.) Mac apps did have to be upgraded, it's just that Apple has been much better at requiring upgrades. There's barely no comparison here. There is no way that you can possibly find today a version of macOS that still supports Mac Classic applications unmodified from the 90s (for instance 94's Glider Pro v1) with High DPI support, yet Windows absolutely must run applications from Windows 95. Sure, Windows sometimes still stumbles in High DPI support for pixel-perfect applications written three decades ago in the 90s, but it at least tries, macOS shrugged and gave up.

daniel-thompson 6y ago

Same here. I'm using my Dell 3008WFP (also 30" @ 2560x1600) until something genuinely bigger & better comes out. I bought it over a decade ago and it still works great for programming.

_ph_ 6y ago
I still use mine at work, and am extremely happy with it. The font rendering on my iMac 5k is better of course, but for work, the additional screen estate (especially vertically) is hard to beat. I am of course contemplating the 38" Dell with 3840x1600 :).

kd5bjo 6y ago

> an equivalent workspace to a 1080p display—unusable for productivity and development. I have to disagree here. I use (and have used) a 1080p display for years and don’t feel the need for anything larger. That might be an artifact of my early years on 80x25 character displays, though.

Koshkin 6y ago
> 80x25 character displays I am sure Doom and other great pieces of software were written on one of those.
- AlanYx 6y ago
  Not to take away from your point, but Doom was actually written on a NeXTstation and cross-compiled for PCs, so at a minimum they were using 1120x832 resolution (2 bit greyscale).

codydh 6y ago

I'm also hanging on to my 30" Apple Cinema (and adapters to work with a new USB-C MBP). The LG 5K seems like a decent replacement though, I'm not totally clear why it seems so unpopular.

nicksergeant 6y ago
I've been using two LG 5k monitors for years and they are excellent. They got a bad reputation when they were released for build quality issues, but I haven't had a single issue.

aplummer 6y ago

I use a Pro Display XDR for programming / design work, I think you forgot this one. It seems like it would fit your needs (with the obviously premium price) as it’s 32”. It’s overkill for most, but still the best display I’ve ever used and I love it. I actually tried an Asus 4K 120hz for much less but the fan noise was a deal breaker even if the screen didn’t break on arrival (it did). Disclosure: Apple employee

PStamatiou 6y ago
+1, love my XDR for coding and designing: https://paulstamatiou.com/stuff-i-use/ https://paulstamatiou.com/stuff-i-use/
- bredren 6y ago
  Thanks for this. You don't comment on the 60 vs 120 hz that is highlighted in OP opinion piece. Any thoughts on XDRs apparent lack of support for 120?
  - PStamatiou 6y ago
    Color accuracy is far more important to me than 120hz capable. The faster displays today tend to be subpar at color accuracy, illumination uniformity, etc.
- silviogutierrez 6y ago
  Great post! Noticed you have the Logitech webcam. I think it'd be helpful if you: - Added a picture of the back of your 6k with the webcam. I'm sure it changes the look, however short the cable is. - Address the lack of speakers. I see you mention using a bluetooth speaker or your home audio setup. What's it like using the MacBook Pro speakers? - Added a picture of your setup + speaker if that's what you use regularly. I love your minimalist look and have a similar one, but have been holding on to my LG 5k because of the speaker/webcam.
slezyr 6y ago
Apple-only monitor? That's ridiculous. You can change its settings only from apple device.

pkamb 6y ago

30" Cinema Display has better than 5k iMac resolution, but at 1x. 160 extra vertical pixels. Still the best monitor around. $3000 MSRP now available used for $200-300.

dont__panic 6y ago

On the other side of things, running dual 4k displays for anything remotely intensive (a browser, IDE, instant messaging, mail client, and terminal in my case) can bring some machines to a crawl or run the fans at high speeds indefinitely. I think graphics technology has to catch up to hiDPI before I'd go past 4k. And let's not even get into the fact that 4k 60hz is a struggle and a half -- you need HDMI 2.0 or displayport to make it work at all, and many modern laptops lack either port, forcing you to use USB-C/thunderbolt with adapters that have poor spec support and even worse documentation. Even if someone offered me dual 5k displays to replace my dual 4k ones, I would turn them down right now. Before we move on to 5k displays, we need to get 4k60 down. And while I'm on my soapbox... where the hell is 4k90 or 4k120? I only bought my 4k monitors last month, with virtually unlimited budget, but they just don't exist. I imagine they've fallen victim to the same issue: the cables to support it just barely exist, and certainly can't be doubled up for dual monitor setups without a mess of wires plugged directly into a laptop or desktop.

lifty 6y ago
If you use a Mac, a 5k monitor with integer scaling (2x) will take fewer GPU resources to run than a 4K with fractional scaling (1.5x). This why I refuse to switch to a 4K monitor for now. Will do the leap to a 5k monitor but the options are very slim now.

clarry 6y ago

Why is everyone so attached to scaling? What is this shit software that 1) everyone relies on and 2) whose UI and font size can't be adjusted like any normal software (or web page) since the 90s? Is this yet another brainfart from Apple?

robertoandred 6y ago
Probably something to do with the fact that macOS has handled high-dpi perfectly since 2012 and Windows is still struggling.
- WorldMaker 6y ago
  Windows has great High DPI support. It's Windows applications that often haven't seen upgrades since before even 2012. Windows' commitment to backward compatibility is the struggle. Windows hasn't had the option to just change processor architectures every dozen years on a seeming whim and subsequently force all software to be rewritten or die.
  - robertoandred 6y ago
    Mac apps didn't have to be upgraded to work with high dpi.
    - WorldMaker 6y ago
      macOS X was released in 2001 with the "Cocoa" application UI library. While "Carbon" helped older Mac OS applications run for a limited time on OS X, no applications today use any graphics stack older than Cocoa's 2001 release, as the drop of all support for PPC-targeted apps insured that in macOS' switch to x86. (Cocoa had High DPI support baked in from NextStep, even if it took ~11 years to be "needed".) Win32 was first beta tested by developers in 1992, and has had to remain stable and backwards compatibile to those first early 90s versions. There are still 32-bit apps written in 1992 that are expected to run unmodified on Windows 10 today. The last processor-architecture related API drop that Windows has been allowed by public perception and corporate strategy was Win16 support was dropped on 64-bit processors. (Hence why Windows on ARM has struggled and the current iteration of Windows on ARM now involves a 32-bit x86 emulator as a core feature.) Mac apps did have to be upgraded, it's just that Apple has been much better at requiring upgrades. There's barely no comparison here. There is no way that you can possibly find today a version of macOS that still supports Mac Classic applications unmodified from the 90s (for instance 94's Glider Pro v1) with High DPI support, yet Windows absolutely must run applications from Windows 95. Sure, Windows sometimes still stumbles in High DPI support for pixel-perfect applications written three decades ago in the 90s, but it at least tries, macOS shrugged and gave up.