3 ms·

Woo, black and white update time is down to about 3fps now! Three very flickery frames a second. sigh I have been wanting a color e-ink Mac I can work with un

Woo, black and white update time is down to about 3fps now! Three very flickery frames a second. sigh I have been wanting a color e-ink Mac I can work with under direct sunlight for so long now. I will be waiting many years longer.

daenz 5y ago
Honest question, why? Do you sit in direct sunlight often? Are you looking for extreme battery life?
- egypturnash 5y ago
  I'm a freelance artist. I have a decent studio setup at home but I also really love taking my laptop out to a cafe or a park. When I'm under a tree in the park, there's no power (so yes, battery life helps - it's why I mostly use Mac Airs), and my screen has to fight the sunshine. Which makes battery life even worse because I've gotta run the backlight at full power. Sitting under a tree with a sunscreen attached to the computer helps some, but I would be delighted if I could sit out under the sun.
  - daenz 5y ago
    Personally I'm worried about battery damage to my electronic devices when they get direct sunlight. I've had a phone cook its battery in the sun (battery swelled up), and my kindle gets pretty hot as well. Is that something you're worried about?
    - egypturnash 5y ago
      Nah, not really. The only heat problems I've ever had are the design flaw with my current 2016 Macbook Pro that makes it heat up its batteries when charging. I'm also probably not gonna sit out in the direct sun for hours on end, I tend to stay in one spot working 2h at the absolute most. Gotta get up and take a break to bike around the city every so often.
mdp2021 5y ago
On the one hand, I would suggest if that laptop you are using can be charged with a "powerbank": that would increase your "mileage". On the other, I am suspecting you are referring to an OLED display: contrary to LCDs, I have not yet seen a natural light friendly OLED and I suspect it would be drastically power inefficient.
- egypturnash 5y ago
  No, when I say e-ink I mean e-ink. I want a display that looks like a printed page, lit by reflecting whatever ambient lighting is around. Like the displays shown in the page this post is about except with a better refresh rate and better dot density. Maybe with a front light for working in the dark. I would love to stop staring into a big light panel all day long when I work. Replacing a bunch of complex filters over a big white light with a bunch of tiny lights is still staring into a light panel.
  - mdp2021 5y ago
    > No, when I say There is a misunderstanding there: I meant, your current machine probably uses OLED. I meant that your struggle for working outdoors, hindered by power consumption and screen visibility, can be already supported maybe by a portable power sources and tricks (solar etc.), but if the display you are using is OLED then I guess (by experience, not by numbers which I have unfortunately never checked) that you are using the "least" outdoors-friendly option. > I mean e-ink A bit pedantically, 'E Ink' refers to a producer of ElectroPhoretic Displays (EPD). You probably "dream of" a "good EPD" for working outdoors, but the limits of EPD, as seen in 'E Ink' products, do involve a number of compromises. Contrast can be an issue, and real EPD instances may require care in lighting similarly to (and in a way more than) more traditional displays. Saturation will similarly be a "difficult" area.
    - egypturnash 5y ago
      You are getting lost in implementation details when interpreting my statement. If you insist on being excruciatingly precise, then what I have been wanting for multiple years is a Mac that has a display that works via reflection, rather than emission. I do not care in the slightest whether it is by moving around electrically-charged bits of ink, flipping around tiny little tiles, shivering the atoms of the screen into a new configuration that reflects the desired wavelengths, by broadcasting a magical sigil into my brain that makes me think I'm seeing an image when I'm actually seeing a piece of bare wood with a spell carved into it, or any other implementation details. I merely care that it is working with the sunlight instead of fighting it. And I am sad that the R&D funding for reflective display technologies seems to have largely dried up, leaving only a slow series of underwhelming announcements of new displays from E Ink Holdings, Incorporated. Whose name is sufficiently generic that it would probably be at risk of becoming a generic name for any reflective display technology even if they weren't the only people making any attempt to push it forwards. This is what "I have been wanting a color e-ink Mac I can work with under direct sunlight for so long now. I will be waiting many years longer." is intended to unpack to.

daenz 5y ago

Honest question, why? Do you sit in direct sunlight often? Are you looking for extreme battery life?

egypturnash 5y ago
I'm a freelance artist. I have a decent studio setup at home but I also really love taking my laptop out to a cafe or a park. When I'm under a tree in the park, there's no power (so yes, battery life helps - it's why I mostly use Mac Airs), and my screen has to fight the sunshine. Which makes battery life even worse because I've gotta run the backlight at full power. Sitting under a tree with a sunscreen attached to the computer helps some, but I would be delighted if I could sit out under the sun.
- daenz 5y ago
  Personally I'm worried about battery damage to my electronic devices when they get direct sunlight. I've had a phone cook its battery in the sun (battery swelled up), and my kindle gets pretty hot as well. Is that something you're worried about?
  - egypturnash 5y ago
    Nah, not really. The only heat problems I've ever had are the design flaw with my current 2016 Macbook Pro that makes it heat up its batteries when charging. I'm also probably not gonna sit out in the direct sun for hours on end, I tend to stay in one spot working 2h at the absolute most. Gotta get up and take a break to bike around the city every so often.

mdp2021 5y ago

On the one hand, I would suggest if that laptop you are using can be charged with a "powerbank": that would increase your "mileage". On the other, I am suspecting you are referring to an OLED display: contrary to LCDs, I have not yet seen a natural light friendly OLED and I suspect it would be drastically power inefficient.

egypturnash 5y ago
No, when I say e-ink I mean e-ink. I want a display that looks like a printed page, lit by reflecting whatever ambient lighting is around. Like the displays shown in the page this post is about except with a better refresh rate and better dot density. Maybe with a front light for working in the dark. I would love to stop staring into a big light panel all day long when I work. Replacing a bunch of complex filters over a big white light with a bunch of tiny lights is still staring into a light panel.
- mdp2021 5y ago
  > No, when I say There is a misunderstanding there: I meant, your current machine probably uses OLED. I meant that your struggle for working outdoors, hindered by power consumption and screen visibility, can be already supported maybe by a portable power sources and tricks (solar etc.), but if the display you are using is OLED then I guess (by experience, not by numbers which I have unfortunately never checked) that you are using the "least" outdoors-friendly option. > I mean e-ink A bit pedantically, 'E Ink' refers to a producer of ElectroPhoretic Displays (EPD). You probably "dream of" a "good EPD" for working outdoors, but the limits of EPD, as seen in 'E Ink' products, do involve a number of compromises. Contrast can be an issue, and real EPD instances may require care in lighting similarly to (and in a way more than) more traditional displays. Saturation will similarly be a "difficult" area.
  - egypturnash 5y ago
    You are getting lost in implementation details when interpreting my statement. If you insist on being excruciatingly precise, then what I have been wanting for multiple years is a Mac that has a display that works via reflection, rather than emission. I do not care in the slightest whether it is by moving around electrically-charged bits of ink, flipping around tiny little tiles, shivering the atoms of the screen into a new configuration that reflects the desired wavelengths, by broadcasting a magical sigil into my brain that makes me think I'm seeing an image when I'm actually seeing a piece of bare wood with a spell carved into it, or any other implementation details. I merely care that it is working with the sunlight instead of fighting it. And I am sad that the R&D funding for reflective display technologies seems to have largely dried up, leaving only a slow series of underwhelming announcements of new displays from E Ink Holdings, Incorporated. Whose name is sufficiently generic that it would probably be at risk of becoming a generic name for any reflective display technology even if they weren't the only people making any attempt to push it forwards. This is what "I have been wanting a color e-ink Mac I can work with under direct sunlight for so long now. I will be waiting many years longer." is intended to unpack to.