6 ms·

You're wrong. It's a 16:10 screen. CEO: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35280523 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35280523

Aachen 4y ago
Ugh. After over a decade of work, everything was finally adapted to or made for 16:9, now they're going after hipster ratios? Not a deal breaker but a bummer. Interesting that phones are going the other way, so now we can enjoy letterboxes on both platforms and not be able to reach the notification drawer. What was so wrong with 16:9 that we needed another competing standard that's just slightly off...
- Tsiklon 4y ago
  16:10 has been around and relatively popular for at least 17 years. The original 2006 MacBook Pro had a 16:10 1440x900 panel
  - epmaybe 4y ago
    Most if not all MacBooks today are still 16:10 ratio..
    - rsynnott 4y ago
      Strictly speaking they're not; the bit below the notch is, but you get a bit of extra space around the notch to accommodate a menu bar.
  - goosedragons 4y ago
    16:10 goes ALL the way back to some of the earliest widescreen LCDs. The original Apple Cinema Display was 1600x1024 in 1999. This was predated by the SGI 1600SW with the same resolution in 1998.
    - justin66 4y ago
      The Matrox Millenium II supported 1920x1200 in 1997. Manual for the Mac version, but the PC version has this resolution as well: https://www.matrox.com/sites/default/files/en_millennium_ii_mac2_installation_guide.pdf https://www.matrox.com/sites/default/files/en_millennium_ii_...
  - WesolyKubeczek 4y ago
    IIRC it's so since Titanium PowerBooks which were the first to go widescreen at Apple, so it's 2001. Then aluminum PowerBooks with 16:10 screens, too. Intel MacBook Pros continued the trend.
    - rsynnott 4y ago
      ... Wait, really? Huh. I thought the Powerbooks were 4:3 til the end, but yeah, just looked and you're right. (I had a G4 iBook at the time, which was 4:3).
- PaulWaldman 4y ago
  I welcome the extra vertical space and couldn't care less about watching video content full screen. Do that many people buy these laptops as portable Netflix players?
  - Aachen 4y ago
    You never watch any video content on anything but a TV? Make any content like a game or website? Having a universal ratio makes all these things a lot simpler. Until 4k became more popular maybe five years ago, the vast majority of devices were 1920x1080, plus a series of budget 1366x768 devices but that's the same ratio. Upscaling an integer factor to 4k is also convenient and doesn't cause any issues, just makes everything sharper. It's when you start to mess with the ratio that you need to suddenly account for different people having different things in view. You can't simply scale a hero image (or game scene or so) to 20:9 without everything becoming contorted, you need to start to crop, but then you're hiding information so now you need to add optional parts that don't look out of place when shown and can also be hidden without consequence.
- rsynnott 4y ago
  > now they're going after hipster ratios? Eh? 16:10 is a pretty standard ratio; all Apple laptops have used it since about 2007, for instance (until very recently, when they've gone a little taller) but also many other vendors (usually on the high end; for whatever reason manufacturers do tend to treat taller than 16:9 as a bit of a premium option). It was also effectively the standard ratio for widescreen desktop monitors for most of the noughties. 16:9 on a small laptop screen really is _very_ tight; honestly I kind of miss 4:3 laptop screens but that ship has definitively sailed. Is your concern about video? Watching TV is probably not most peoples' major use of laptops, and in any case a lot of content is made at ratios _wider_ than 16:9 these days.
  - codedokode 4y ago
    4:3 is definitely better for coding and working with documents because programs and documents usually span vertically, not horizontally. It is disappointing that manufacturers target people watching videos instead of people who do work.
  - Aachen 4y ago
    > 16:10 is a pretty standard ratio; all Apple laptops ... At 10% of the market, I'd not say that's standard.
- codedokode 4y ago
  What 16:9 is good for? It is inconvenient for any work: for coding, reading articles or working with documents more height is better. Please explain for what kind of activity wide, but low height screen is the most suitable? The only thing that comes to mind is killing time by watching videos on social networks sites.
  - chrismorgan 4y ago
    I tile windows side-by-side. I split Vim side-by-side. I use Tree Style Tab in Firefox and hide the horizontal tab bar. (If I’m tiling a browser beside something else, I close the tab sidebar most of the time.) 16:9 is fine, so long as you’re set up to be able to use that width. On my 13.5″ Surface Book, I appreciated its 3:2 aspect ratio, because it was already too narrow to comfortably tile things horizontally anyway, so why not go even more in the tall direction? On my current 15.6″ 16:9 laptop, I tile and split frequently because it’s comfortable. 16:10 would still be fine, but I do this enough that I believe I’d honestly very slightly prefer 16:9 for its extra centimetre of width (~5 columns in my terminal), even at the cost of 1.5cm of height (~2 rows). There are advantages and disadvantages to the different ratios in different scenarios. (Still, I do think that most people would find 16:10 a happier medium at this size. But me, I can effectively use 16:9, though I don’t think I’d want to go any wider.)
  - oriolid 4y ago
    Watching TV on a screen where black is so bad that letterboxing is not an option
  - Aachen 4y ago
    > What 16:9 is good for? It is inconvenient for any work: for coding, reading articles or working with documents more height is better. Is it? Gee, I wonder why it's the only screen ratio I've seen people use since we moved away from CRT screens until a few years ago when 4k and friends became popular and there was suddenly no standard resolution to expect anymore. Curious that we're all using this inferior ratio for literally all those things all the time.
    - 4y ago
- oriolid 4y ago
  To me looks like the era of standard aspect ratios ended some years ago and the new standard is varying aspect ratio and notches or holes somewhere
- wkat4242 4y ago
  I don't think the screen aspect on a PC is that much of a problem though? It's not necessary to run stuff full screen anyway, unlike on Android. I think it's pretty great because it means less scrolling. I would really prefer to see 4:3 again.

Aachen 4y ago

Ugh. After over a decade of work, everything was finally adapted to or made for 16:9, now they're going after hipster ratios? Not a deal breaker but a bummer. Interesting that phones are going the other way, so now we can enjoy letterboxes on both platforms and not be able to reach the notification drawer. What was so wrong with 16:9 that we needed another competing standard that's just slightly off...

Tsiklon 4y ago
16:10 has been around and relatively popular for at least 17 years. The original 2006 MacBook Pro had a 16:10 1440x900 panel
- epmaybe 4y ago
  Most if not all MacBooks today are still 16:10 ratio..
  - rsynnott 4y ago
    Strictly speaking they're not; the bit below the notch is, but you get a bit of extra space around the notch to accommodate a menu bar.
- goosedragons 4y ago
  16:10 goes ALL the way back to some of the earliest widescreen LCDs. The original Apple Cinema Display was 1600x1024 in 1999. This was predated by the SGI 1600SW with the same resolution in 1998.
  - justin66 4y ago
    The Matrox Millenium II supported 1920x1200 in 1997. Manual for the Mac version, but the PC version has this resolution as well: https://www.matrox.com/sites/default/files/en_millennium_ii_mac2_installation_guide.pdf https://www.matrox.com/sites/default/files/en_millennium_ii_...
- WesolyKubeczek 4y ago
  IIRC it's so since Titanium PowerBooks which were the first to go widescreen at Apple, so it's 2001. Then aluminum PowerBooks with 16:10 screens, too. Intel MacBook Pros continued the trend.
  - rsynnott 4y ago
    ... Wait, really? Huh. I thought the Powerbooks were 4:3 til the end, but yeah, just looked and you're right. (I had a G4 iBook at the time, which was 4:3).
PaulWaldman 4y ago
I welcome the extra vertical space and couldn't care less about watching video content full screen. Do that many people buy these laptops as portable Netflix players?
- Aachen 4y ago
  You never watch any video content on anything but a TV? Make any content like a game or website? Having a universal ratio makes all these things a lot simpler. Until 4k became more popular maybe five years ago, the vast majority of devices were 1920x1080, plus a series of budget 1366x768 devices but that's the same ratio. Upscaling an integer factor to 4k is also convenient and doesn't cause any issues, just makes everything sharper. It's when you start to mess with the ratio that you need to suddenly account for different people having different things in view. You can't simply scale a hero image (or game scene or so) to 20:9 without everything becoming contorted, you need to start to crop, but then you're hiding information so now you need to add optional parts that don't look out of place when shown and can also be hidden without consequence.
rsynnott 4y ago
> now they're going after hipster ratios? Eh? 16:10 is a pretty standard ratio; all Apple laptops have used it since about 2007, for instance (until very recently, when they've gone a little taller) but also many other vendors (usually on the high end; for whatever reason manufacturers do tend to treat taller than 16:9 as a bit of a premium option). It was also effectively the standard ratio for widescreen desktop monitors for most of the noughties. 16:9 on a small laptop screen really is _very_ tight; honestly I kind of miss 4:3 laptop screens but that ship has definitively sailed. Is your concern about video? Watching TV is probably not most peoples' major use of laptops, and in any case a lot of content is made at ratios _wider_ than 16:9 these days.
- codedokode 4y ago
  4:3 is definitely better for coding and working with documents because programs and documents usually span vertically, not horizontally. It is disappointing that manufacturers target people watching videos instead of people who do work.
- Aachen 4y ago
  > 16:10 is a pretty standard ratio; all Apple laptops ... At 10% of the market, I'd not say that's standard.
codedokode 4y ago
What 16:9 is good for? It is inconvenient for any work: for coding, reading articles or working with documents more height is better. Please explain for what kind of activity wide, but low height screen is the most suitable? The only thing that comes to mind is killing time by watching videos on social networks sites.
- chrismorgan 4y ago
  I tile windows side-by-side. I split Vim side-by-side. I use Tree Style Tab in Firefox and hide the horizontal tab bar. (If I’m tiling a browser beside something else, I close the tab sidebar most of the time.) 16:9 is fine, so long as you’re set up to be able to use that width. On my 13.5″ Surface Book, I appreciated its 3:2 aspect ratio, because it was already too narrow to comfortably tile things horizontally anyway, so why not go even more in the tall direction? On my current 15.6″ 16:9 laptop, I tile and split frequently because it’s comfortable. 16:10 would still be fine, but I do this enough that I believe I’d honestly very slightly prefer 16:9 for its extra centimetre of width (~5 columns in my terminal), even at the cost of 1.5cm of height (~2 rows). There are advantages and disadvantages to the different ratios in different scenarios. (Still, I do think that most people would find 16:10 a happier medium at this size. But me, I can effectively use 16:9, though I don’t think I’d want to go any wider.)
- oriolid 4y ago
  Watching TV on a screen where black is so bad that letterboxing is not an option
- Aachen 4y ago
  > What 16:9 is good for? It is inconvenient for any work: for coding, reading articles or working with documents more height is better. Is it? Gee, I wonder why it's the only screen ratio I've seen people use since we moved away from CRT screens until a few years ago when 4k and friends became popular and there was suddenly no standard resolution to expect anymore. Curious that we're all using this inferior ratio for literally all those things all the time.
  - 4y ago
oriolid 4y ago
To me looks like the era of standard aspect ratios ended some years ago and the new standard is varying aspect ratio and notches or holes somewhere
wkat4242 4y ago
I don't think the screen aspect on a PC is that much of a problem though? It's not necessary to run stuff full screen anyway, unlike on Android. I think it's pretty great because it means less scrolling. I would really prefer to see 4:3 again.