10 ms·

Strange that Apple still isn't offering OLED screens when most other laptop makers are this year...

bayindirh 4y ago
They tend to not sacrifice longevity over flashy technologies. They migrated to OLED very late in iPhone when compared to other manufacturers, too. The last thing I want is a burn mark on my laptop screen because of static parts of my IDEs and such.
- atonse 4y ago
  Is OLED even flashy anymore?
  - bayindirh 4y ago
    Not for small screens, but for big, high density, low latency, almost always on screens. So I consider it flashy for TVs and monitors.
- DannyBee 4y ago
  "They tend to not sacrifice longevity over flashy technologies. " What? In what universe is this true? They spent generations of macbooks on flashy keyboards that didn't work, etc. Trying to pain Apple's inability to keep up in certain area as them trying to care about longevity is hilarious. In the end - it's not about longevity at all, it's almost certainly about whether they can get it at the price point they want, in the volume they want. That's it.
  - bayindirh 4y ago
    Well, when they screw up design, they do it in a spectacular fashion, yes. Considering I buy a new MacBook every decade and they just endure the torture I put them through (I don’t abuse them though), I can say that they are pretty well built machines. Same is true for my 7 year iPhone cycle. I pay similar price to top tier laptops of other big brands, and get what I pay for. Use it for a decade, move the machine to spare and get a new one. When one does this with a thinkpad, we applaud them. When someone does it with a MacBook, we don’t believe them. Funny.
    - cantSpellSober 4y ago
      > "when they screw up design, they do it in a spectacular fashion" So they do sacrifice for flashiness? > "I buy a new MacBook every decade" Oh, a lot has happened in the last decade. This is an anecdote about 1 or 2 machines you've owned.
      - klodolph 4y ago
        “Torture” here is the wear and tear that a user inflicts on a device over years of use.
      - bayindirh 4y ago
        No, they make engineering mistakes while trying new things. We call companies stagnant when they don’t try, and we forgive them for trying if they are not Apple. But everyone loves to hate Apple. I’m currently using a 2014 MacBook Pro and a 2020 M1 MacBook Air. I have also seen and supported a lot of intermediate machines at work. We don’t service them unless somebody spills something liquid on their keyboards. So, while I owned a few of these things, I have seen and supported way more machines, and my judgement stands based on this experience.
        cantSpellSober 4y ago
        So we've walked it back from "not sacrificing longevity over flashy technologies" to "mistakes while trying new things". Longevity is a mistake? New things aren't flashy technologies? > "we forgive them for trying if they are not Apple" Believe it or not, every so often Google hardware get criticized! MotionSense was...a mistake made while trying new things.
        bayindirh 4y ago
        > So we've walked it back from... No. Let's not move the goalposts. Those are two different things. One is not incorporating not mature technologies into the product, the other is trying to push a known technology further. They tried and failed for 4 years, and gave up. If OLED was already a mature technology for large HiDPI panels and TVs, people wouldn't have been doing panel endurance tests, and TV manufacturers wouldn't hide panel-life sucking balance and recalibration features into their products. I have used a couple of Macs with butterfly switch keyboards. The problem was not the switch idea itself, but how the key depth has been reduced to make it thinner. They have gone beyond the comfortable depth for speed typing and made a mistake. Also, the minuscule tolerances made it susceptible to jamming due to dirt I didn't like the keyboards with butterfly switches, to be honest. The depth and weight in 2020 MacBook Air (M1) is much, much better. Yes. We criticize every company, but I think everything should be balanced. I'm not a fanboy of any company. There are ones which I enjoy using, and ones I don't prefer to use. The gist is, I try to objectively reflect my opinion on my comments, and I get replies in the tone of "my experience does not match to yours, so you're most probably lying", I'm genuinely disappointed. Because I never think the other party is not telling the truth. I'm just pointing out and saying "I'm in that state, so it's possible". But I never discount others' state and/or experience.
- Oddskar 4y ago
  > They tend to not sacrifice longevity over flashy technologies. Hah! That gave me a good chuckle. There's nothing that screams "longevity" as going out of your way to make all devices utterly irreparable.
  - taylodl 4y ago
    My daily driver is the "irreparable" 2012 MBP Retina. You may remember this machine as the one everybody bitched about because the RAM and SSD were soldered into the mainboard and weren't upgradeable or replaceable? Let's see, it's 2023, hmmmm, seems the machine is coming up on 11 years. IDK about you but I think 11 years is incredible longevity for a laptop. You know, it just might be that making the machine "irreparable" has been key to its longevity.
    - bayindirh 4y ago
      I’m still using my 2008 MacBook Pro‘s MagSafe adapter via MagSafe 2 converter and never unpacked my newer (personal) MacBook Pro’s one. It’s dirty, but not frayed and working as well as the first day. Edit: Do you need photos? :)
    - Oddskar 4y ago
      I will take your word for it, obviously your experience is the same for all of the Macbooks of that generation which are still being used today.
    - ant6n 4y ago
      My 2013 MBP is a car wreck. Screen broke at some point had to be replaced. The second battery is now so bad it won’t even turn on anymore when plugged in. I think Bluetooth is dead too. All USB ports are dead too - although that one was “my“ fault since I plugged in a broken cd Rom drive that apparently nuked the USB ports - didn’t think that was even possible. When on, the thing often had the fans blowing at full speed… Im on like my fifth charger, they’re all frayed garbage. definitely not a fun experience at this point. I guess if u keep a laptop stationary at your desk and plugged in at all times, then it could last 11 years. Although the very expensive 8gb of ram from back then is basically useless today.
- cantSpellSober 4y ago
  Like the 30-pin connector's longevity? The lightning connector's? Physical Esc keys?
  - bayindirh 4y ago
    I had three devices with 30-pin connector, and have another three with Lightning connector. I never replaced a female connector, or any cable which connects to these connectors, made by Apple or otherwise.
    - cantSpellSober 4y ago
      Exactly, 30-pin connectors' longevity faded quickly, so they started using Lightning for new devices (on its way out). They sure were flashy though!
      - bayindirh 4y ago
        From my preliminary research, 30-pin lasted a little less than a decade. However, from my understanding, the replacement of 30-pin with Lightning is not because of mechanical reasons. One of my 30-pin devices is still with me, and it works flawlessly. 30-pin connector is in fact a compact ribbon cable with plethora of interfaces and signals (analog audio i/o, FireWire, USB, Video, etc.) [0]. Lightning replaces this with a single digital bus which can be configured for plethora of things [1]. And the connector is both much smaller in both host and cable side, too. For example, Lightning to video out adapters download a firmware from the host and boot first, then they negotiate the protocol and they start talking. Similarly, Lightning to 30-pin converter is a high-quality A/V station inside a small shell. It contains all the hardware required to expand lightning port to a full-capability 30 pin connector [2]. This is why also Apple is hesitant to convert Lightning devices to USB-C. Because it's not a simple USB port disguised in a reversible 8 pin connector. It's a whole software/hardware stack which allows port and connection to morph and adapt. The port's introduction was indeed flashy, but I guess it was iterated for a couple of years inside Apple before introduction, I guess. So, the technology was already mature and boring before it's rolled out. Another similar technology is "quick burst charging" (Charge 5 mins for 2 hours of use kind of thing). Pioneered by Sony almost a decade ago, now offered by everybody else (Apple, JBL, Philips, etc. on their rechargeable devices). The feature is flashy, but it's matured for over a decade by Sony before everybody jumped the bandwagon. [0]: https://www.theiphonewiki.com/wiki/30-pin_Connector https://www.theiphonewiki.com/wiki/30-pin_Connector [1]: https://nyansatan.github.io/lightning/ https://nyansatan.github.io/lightning/ [2]: https://www.techinsights.com/blog/apple-lightning-30-pin-adapter-teardown https://www.techinsights.com/blog/apple-lightning-30-pin-ada...
boplicity 4y ago
Apple laptops unfortunately give me severe eye strain and headaches; I don't know why. I'm on a laptop with a beautiful OLED screen now, and my eyes are much, much happier. I would switch back to Apple if they offered OLED. I doubt they will, though. They're keen on mini-led, which is inferior in my opinion.
- nicoburns 4y ago
  I think they're aiming for micro-led, which is basically the same as OLED but not using inorganic LEDs so they don't degrade. They're using mini-led as a stop-gap.
  - Filligree 4y ago
    QDLED seems like a nice option as well, but I'm not sure how easy it'd be for them to purchase. I'm very happy with my QDLED desktop monitor though.
  - dbbk 4y ago
    The Mini-LED screen is not great though. Sometimes I actually miss LCD. The brightness isn't uniform (it vignettes towards the edge), and you get lighting artefacts when quickly switching from a black screen (eg switching tabs).
- EugeneOZ 4y ago
  I had the same issue (very severe headache), and this is my solution: https://www.reddit.com/r/macbookpro/comments/rh9bdm/semiworkaround_if_you_have_headaches_caused_by/ https://www.reddit.com/r/macbookpro/comments/rh9bdm/semiwork... It's not what expected, it’s disappointing, and I’ll switch to a new type of display as soon as possible.
  - AlanYx 4y ago
    In case PWM is an issue for you, the new Macbook Air M2 might be worth trying since it finally ditches PWM.
- 4y ago
ribit 4y ago
Manufacturing such large volume of high-end OLED displays with parameters Apple needs is not economically feasible at the moment. Other brands can afford it because a) they ship much fewer OLED-equipped laptops than Apple does mini-LED equipped ones and b) the brightness/dynamic range is not the same.
agloe_dreams 4y ago
My work machine is a 14 inch Macbook Pro and my personal machine is a Samsung Galaxy Book Pro 360. The Galaxy Book has a Samsung OLED (I also had a Galaxy Chromebook 4K OLED), it is a beautiful display with up to 400 nits brightness.... The 14 inch macbook pro lays a massive beatdown on it in an extremely hardcore way: Up to 1000 nits full display brightness with HDR capabilities up to 1,600 nits. OLED displays are limited on peak brightness and it is brutal when you see it, the Macbook Pro 14 actually reduces peak brightness to 100 more than a standard OLED display to save battery. but grab a tweak like this: https://www.getvivid.app/ https://www.getvivid.app/ and you can crank it all the way up to 1000.
Tagbert 4y ago
There are strong rumors that Apple plans to bring OLED to the iPads and MacBook Airs starting in 2024. It’s not clear if they will replace the mini-LEDs of the MacBook Pros. Apple promotes the HDR brightness of the mini-LEDs over OLED. The rumors say that Apple plans to use a two layer OLED with essentially two OLED arrays one of top of the other. The reason for this is to stabilize the display as medium sized OLED are made with flexible substrate and can warp under some conditions. The dual layer is also suppose to allow greater brightness and to help prevent burn-in (perhaps by running each layer with less brightness).

They tend to not sacrifice longevity over flashy technologies. They migrated to OLED very late in iPhone when compared to other manufacturers, too. The last thing I want is a burn mark on my laptop screen because of static parts of my IDEs and such.

atonse 4y ago
Is OLED even flashy anymore?
- bayindirh 4y ago
  Not for small screens, but for big, high density, low latency, almost always on screens. So I consider it flashy for TVs and monitors.
DannyBee 4y ago
"They tend to not sacrifice longevity over flashy technologies. " What? In what universe is this true? They spent generations of macbooks on flashy keyboards that didn't work, etc. Trying to pain Apple's inability to keep up in certain area as them trying to care about longevity is hilarious. In the end - it's not about longevity at all, it's almost certainly about whether they can get it at the price point they want, in the volume they want. That's it.
- bayindirh 4y ago
  Well, when they screw up design, they do it in a spectacular fashion, yes. Considering I buy a new MacBook every decade and they just endure the torture I put them through (I don’t abuse them though), I can say that they are pretty well built machines. Same is true for my 7 year iPhone cycle. I pay similar price to top tier laptops of other big brands, and get what I pay for. Use it for a decade, move the machine to spare and get a new one. When one does this with a thinkpad, we applaud them. When someone does it with a MacBook, we don’t believe them. Funny.
  - cantSpellSober 4y ago
    > "when they screw up design, they do it in a spectacular fashion" So they do sacrifice for flashiness? > "I buy a new MacBook every decade" Oh, a lot has happened in the last decade. This is an anecdote about 1 or 2 machines you've owned.
    - klodolph 4y ago
      “Torture” here is the wear and tear that a user inflicts on a device over years of use.
    - bayindirh 4y ago
      No, they make engineering mistakes while trying new things. We call companies stagnant when they don’t try, and we forgive them for trying if they are not Apple. But everyone loves to hate Apple. I’m currently using a 2014 MacBook Pro and a 2020 M1 MacBook Air. I have also seen and supported a lot of intermediate machines at work. We don’t service them unless somebody spills something liquid on their keyboards. So, while I owned a few of these things, I have seen and supported way more machines, and my judgement stands based on this experience.
      - cantSpellSober 4y ago
        So we've walked it back from "not sacrificing longevity over flashy technologies" to "mistakes while trying new things". Longevity is a mistake? New things aren't flashy technologies? > "we forgive them for trying if they are not Apple" Believe it or not, every so often Google hardware get criticized! MotionSense was...a mistake made while trying new things.
        bayindirh 4y ago
        > So we've walked it back from... No. Let's not move the goalposts. Those are two different things. One is not incorporating not mature technologies into the product, the other is trying to push a known technology further. They tried and failed for 4 years, and gave up. If OLED was already a mature technology for large HiDPI panels and TVs, people wouldn't have been doing panel endurance tests, and TV manufacturers wouldn't hide panel-life sucking balance and recalibration features into their products. I have used a couple of Macs with butterfly switch keyboards. The problem was not the switch idea itself, but how the key depth has been reduced to make it thinner. They have gone beyond the comfortable depth for speed typing and made a mistake. Also, the minuscule tolerances made it susceptible to jamming due to dirt I didn't like the keyboards with butterfly switches, to be honest. The depth and weight in 2020 MacBook Air (M1) is much, much better. Yes. We criticize every company, but I think everything should be balanced. I'm not a fanboy of any company. There are ones which I enjoy using, and ones I don't prefer to use. The gist is, I try to objectively reflect my opinion on my comments, and I get replies in the tone of "my experience does not match to yours, so you're most probably lying", I'm genuinely disappointed. Because I never think the other party is not telling the truth. I'm just pointing out and saying "I'm in that state, so it's possible". But I never discount others' state and/or experience.
Oddskar 4y ago
> They tend to not sacrifice longevity over flashy technologies. Hah! That gave me a good chuckle. There's nothing that screams "longevity" as going out of your way to make all devices utterly irreparable.
- taylodl 4y ago
  My daily driver is the "irreparable" 2012 MBP Retina. You may remember this machine as the one everybody bitched about because the RAM and SSD were soldered into the mainboard and weren't upgradeable or replaceable? Let's see, it's 2023, hmmmm, seems the machine is coming up on 11 years. IDK about you but I think 11 years is incredible longevity for a laptop. You know, it just might be that making the machine "irreparable" has been key to its longevity.
  - bayindirh 4y ago
    I’m still using my 2008 MacBook Pro‘s MagSafe adapter via MagSafe 2 converter and never unpacked my newer (personal) MacBook Pro’s one. It’s dirty, but not frayed and working as well as the first day. Edit: Do you need photos? :)
  - Oddskar 4y ago
    I will take your word for it, obviously your experience is the same for all of the Macbooks of that generation which are still being used today.
  - ant6n 4y ago
    My 2013 MBP is a car wreck. Screen broke at some point had to be replaced. The second battery is now so bad it won’t even turn on anymore when plugged in. I think Bluetooth is dead too. All USB ports are dead too - although that one was “my“ fault since I plugged in a broken cd Rom drive that apparently nuked the USB ports - didn’t think that was even possible. When on, the thing often had the fans blowing at full speed… Im on like my fifth charger, they’re all frayed garbage. definitely not a fun experience at this point. I guess if u keep a laptop stationary at your desk and plugged in at all times, then it could last 11 years. Although the very expensive 8gb of ram from back then is basically useless today.
cantSpellSober 4y ago
Like the 30-pin connector's longevity? The lightning connector's? Physical Esc keys?
- bayindirh 4y ago
  I had three devices with 30-pin connector, and have another three with Lightning connector. I never replaced a female connector, or any cable which connects to these connectors, made by Apple or otherwise.
  - cantSpellSober 4y ago
    Exactly, 30-pin connectors' longevity faded quickly, so they started using Lightning for new devices (on its way out). They sure were flashy though!
    - bayindirh 4y ago
      From my preliminary research, 30-pin lasted a little less than a decade. However, from my understanding, the replacement of 30-pin with Lightning is not because of mechanical reasons. One of my 30-pin devices is still with me, and it works flawlessly. 30-pin connector is in fact a compact ribbon cable with plethora of interfaces and signals (analog audio i/o, FireWire, USB, Video, etc.) [0]. Lightning replaces this with a single digital bus which can be configured for plethora of things [1]. And the connector is both much smaller in both host and cable side, too. For example, Lightning to video out adapters download a firmware from the host and boot first, then they negotiate the protocol and they start talking. Similarly, Lightning to 30-pin converter is a high-quality A/V station inside a small shell. It contains all the hardware required to expand lightning port to a full-capability 30 pin connector [2]. This is why also Apple is hesitant to convert Lightning devices to USB-C. Because it's not a simple USB port disguised in a reversible 8 pin connector. It's a whole software/hardware stack which allows port and connection to morph and adapt. The port's introduction was indeed flashy, but I guess it was iterated for a couple of years inside Apple before introduction, I guess. So, the technology was already mature and boring before it's rolled out. Another similar technology is "quick burst charging" (Charge 5 mins for 2 hours of use kind of thing). Pioneered by Sony almost a decade ago, now offered by everybody else (Apple, JBL, Philips, etc. on their rechargeable devices). The feature is flashy, but it's matured for over a decade by Sony before everybody jumped the bandwagon. [0]: https://www.theiphonewiki.com/wiki/30-pin_Connector https://www.theiphonewiki.com/wiki/30-pin_Connector [1]: https://nyansatan.github.io/lightning/ https://nyansatan.github.io/lightning/ [2]: https://www.techinsights.com/blog/apple-lightning-30-pin-adapter-teardown https://www.techinsights.com/blog/apple-lightning-30-pin-ada...

boplicity 4y ago

Apple laptops unfortunately give me severe eye strain and headaches; I don't know why. I'm on a laptop with a beautiful OLED screen now, and my eyes are much, much happier. I would switch back to Apple if they offered OLED. I doubt they will, though. They're keen on mini-led, which is inferior in my opinion.

nicoburns 4y ago
I think they're aiming for micro-led, which is basically the same as OLED but not using inorganic LEDs so they don't degrade. They're using mini-led as a stop-gap.
- Filligree 4y ago
  QDLED seems like a nice option as well, but I'm not sure how easy it'd be for them to purchase. I'm very happy with my QDLED desktop monitor though.
- dbbk 4y ago
  The Mini-LED screen is not great though. Sometimes I actually miss LCD. The brightness isn't uniform (it vignettes towards the edge), and you get lighting artefacts when quickly switching from a black screen (eg switching tabs).
EugeneOZ 4y ago
I had the same issue (very severe headache), and this is my solution: https://www.reddit.com/r/macbookpro/comments/rh9bdm/semiworkaround_if_you_have_headaches_caused_by/ https://www.reddit.com/r/macbookpro/comments/rh9bdm/semiwork... It's not what expected, it’s disappointing, and I’ll switch to a new type of display as soon as possible.
- AlanYx 4y ago
  In case PWM is an issue for you, the new Macbook Air M2 might be worth trying since it finally ditches PWM.
4y ago

ribit 4y ago

Manufacturing such large volume of high-end OLED displays with parameters Apple needs is not economically feasible at the moment. Other brands can afford it because a) they ship much fewer OLED-equipped laptops than Apple does mini-LED equipped ones and b) the brightness/dynamic range is not the same.

agloe_dreams 4y ago

My work machine is a 14 inch Macbook Pro and my personal machine is a Samsung Galaxy Book Pro 360. The Galaxy Book has a Samsung OLED (I also had a Galaxy Chromebook 4K OLED), it is a beautiful display with up to 400 nits brightness.... The 14 inch macbook pro lays a massive beatdown on it in an extremely hardcore way: Up to 1000 nits full display brightness with HDR capabilities up to 1,600 nits. OLED displays are limited on peak brightness and it is brutal when you see it, the Macbook Pro 14 actually reduces peak brightness to 100 more than a standard OLED display to save battery. but grab a tweak like this: https://www.getvivid.app/ https://www.getvivid.app/ and you can crank it all the way up to 1000.

Tagbert 4y ago

There are strong rumors that Apple plans to bring OLED to the iPads and MacBook Airs starting in 2024. It’s not clear if they will replace the mini-LEDs of the MacBook Pros. Apple promotes the HDR brightness of the mini-LEDs over OLED. The rumors say that Apple plans to use a two layer OLED with essentially two OLED arrays one of top of the other. The reason for this is to stabilize the display as medium sized OLED are made with flexible substrate and can warp under some conditions. The dual layer is also suppose to allow greater brightness and to help prevent burn-in (perhaps by running each layer with less brightness).