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Any devs here switched from an old 15.4" MBP to a new 14" MBP? I'm curious how you find the screen size for doing work? My 15.4" can scale to "looks like 1920x

Any devs here switched from an old 15.4" MBP to a new 14" MBP? I'm curious how you find the screen size for doing work? My 15.4" can scale to "looks like 1920x1200" and the 14" to "1800x1169" so there's not a lot of difference. Does the smaller size make it feel cramped?

samcolson4 5y ago
I switched - regretting it and may return mine in favour of the 16". As great as the 14" is (amazing machine), the loss of screen real estate has been felt.
q-base 5y ago
Can you help me understand what that means? Is it not possible to run it at the "full" resolution? Will it be scaled to what equates to the 1800x1169 that you mention? That would equate to less "real estate" than what I have on my T460s FHD screen? Of course the screen would be light years ahead to look at. But just sounds a little bit strange with regards to actual pixels/space on the screen?
- masklinn 5y ago
  > Can you help me understand what that means? Is it not possible to run it at the "full" resolution? Will it be scaled to what equates to the 1800x1169 that you mention? Yes, Apple doesn't provide for running at the native resolution out of the box (utilities like SwitchResX make those options available, though I don't know if they work with the M1s yet), all the display modes they propose are scaled. Historically there was a default mode at 2x scaling with 2 above and 2 below, apparently on the M1s the default 2x scaling is the second-to-last and you only have one mode above. So on the 14" with a physical 3024 x 1964 display, the modes provided natively by macOS are: 1800 x 1169 (1.68x) 1512 x 982 (2x, default) 1352 x 878 (2.24x) 1147 x 745 (2.64x) 1024 x 665 (2.95x) Don't ask me why they selected these wonky-ass resolutions aside from the 2x one though. The 1024 one could make some sense but it seems like adjusted luck: the 16" bottoms out at 1168 instead. Could be a question of pixel density I guess but you'd have to run the computation.
  - gonehome 5y ago
    I think on older machines you could hold down the option key and get a secret menu that let you set more options - not sure if that's still the case though.
masklinn 5y ago
I did not do such a switch, I wondered about the same but in the end I looked at my current devices: a personal 2010 15" at 1680x1050 which has been dying for years now, and a work 14" at 1920x1080 display; the comfort provided by the additional physical real-estate of the 15" way beats the additional logical real-estate of the 14". It took me about 2 days to decide, but in the end I went with a 16", working on the 14" without an external display is really not enjoyable (even ignoring the cramped keyboard). That the 16" also has more battery and better cooling don't hurt any, but they're the cherry on top.

samcolson4 5y ago

I switched - regretting it and may return mine in favour of the 16". As great as the 14" is (amazing machine), the loss of screen real estate has been felt.

q-base 5y ago

Can you help me understand what that means? Is it not possible to run it at the "full" resolution? Will it be scaled to what equates to the 1800x1169 that you mention? That would equate to less "real estate" than what I have on my T460s FHD screen? Of course the screen would be light years ahead to look at. But just sounds a little bit strange with regards to actual pixels/space on the screen?

masklinn 5y ago
> Can you help me understand what that means? Is it not possible to run it at the "full" resolution? Will it be scaled to what equates to the 1800x1169 that you mention? Yes, Apple doesn't provide for running at the native resolution out of the box (utilities like SwitchResX make those options available, though I don't know if they work with the M1s yet), all the display modes they propose are scaled. Historically there was a default mode at 2x scaling with 2 above and 2 below, apparently on the M1s the default 2x scaling is the second-to-last and you only have one mode above. So on the 14" with a physical 3024 x 1964 display, the modes provided natively by macOS are: 1800 x 1169 (1.68x) 1512 x 982 (2x, default) 1352 x 878 (2.24x) 1147 x 745 (2.64x) 1024 x 665 (2.95x) Don't ask me why they selected these wonky-ass resolutions aside from the 2x one though. The 1024 one could make some sense but it seems like adjusted luck: the 16" bottoms out at 1168 instead. Could be a question of pixel density I guess but you'd have to run the computation.
- gonehome 5y ago
  I think on older machines you could hold down the option key and get a secret menu that let you set more options - not sure if that's still the case though.

masklinn 5y ago

I did not do such a switch, I wondered about the same but in the end I looked at my current devices: a personal 2010 15" at 1680x1050 which has been dying for years now, and a work 14" at 1920x1080 display; the comfort provided by the additional physical real-estate of the 15" way beats the additional logical real-estate of the 14". It took me about 2 days to decide, but in the end I went with a 16", working on the 14" without an external display is really not enjoyable (even ignoring the cramped keyboard). That the 16" also has more battery and better cooling don't hurt any, but they're the cherry on top.