8 ms·

Does anyone else find the 1x and 2x conventions confusing? I never realized it till I got a bit confused reading the article. Also: I'm a bit surprised at the

by nchlswu 14y ago

Does anyone else find the 1x and 2x conventions confusing? I never realized it till I got a bit confused reading the article. Also: I'm a bit surprised at the reverence Dustin Curtis is given for the pixel fitting article.

ilaksh 14y ago
Its not just confusing, its misleading. The marketing copy is being confused for technical terminology. At 2880 pixels wide, the new MacBook Pro resolution is about 1.5 times as many pixels across the screen as a typical high resolution display at 1900 pixels.
- AlexandrB 14y ago
  > At 2880 pixels wide, the new MacBook Pro resolution is about 1.5 times as many pixels across the screen as a typical high resolution display at 1900 pixels. A typical high resolution display of what physical size? Using the resolution is meaningless, it's the DPI that's important in this case. Also, the 2x is not really marketing copy. It's the number of physical pixels that make up each geometric "point" in an Apple retina display. Ideally applications and operating systems would be truly resolution-independent and this ratio could be any decimal number. In such a world, you could chose how to use your screen's resolution - for more space or for smoother rendering of on-screen elements. Apple's solution is a hack that uses an integer ratio to make backwards compatibility easier. With a 2x ratio you can blow up a point from a non-retina app to exactly 4 pixels, avoiding some hairy rendering issues.
  - scotty79 14y ago
    Resolution is only thing that matters. It tells how much information you can cram into a screen. If pixels are too large move back. If they are too small move closer. If your screen is glued to the keyboard. Detach it. Like in asus transformer.
    - stan_rogers 14y ago
      The point of these displays is to (eventually) get away from slavery to the pixel. Just because a printer can render, say, 4800 dpi, doesn't mean you want to render your body copy in a 1pt text (which it can do with better letter-shape fidelity than any of my old dot-matrix impact printers); you still print at 9 or 10 points and enjoy sharper and better-defined type. Moving to high-linear-resolution screens does the same thing—you don't cram more stuff into the screen, you cram a better version of the same stuff into the screen.
      - scotty79 14y ago
        Decorative visual information is still information and how much you can fit in a screen depends on it's resolution not dpi. To enjoy smoother visuals you just have to move away a bit from big screen.
  - tharax 14y ago
    Isn't that ratio 4x then? Or am I not understanding retina displays correctly?
    - wmf 14y ago
      2x linear, 4x area. I could swear we had this discussion yesterday.
- wmf 14y ago
  The default mode is 1440x900 doubled, hence all the talk about 2x.
- teilo 14y ago
  Apple's standard 15" has always been 1440x900. Their hi-rez 15" has been 1680x1050.

by nchlswu 14y ago

ilaksh 14y ago

Its not just confusing, its misleading. The marketing copy is being confused for technical terminology. At 2880 pixels wide, the new MacBook Pro resolution is about 1.5 times as many pixels across the screen as a typical high resolution display at 1900 pixels.

AlexandrB 14y ago
> At 2880 pixels wide, the new MacBook Pro resolution is about 1.5 times as many pixels across the screen as a typical high resolution display at 1900 pixels. A typical high resolution display of what physical size? Using the resolution is meaningless, it's the DPI that's important in this case. Also, the 2x is not really marketing copy. It's the number of physical pixels that make up each geometric "point" in an Apple retina display. Ideally applications and operating systems would be truly resolution-independent and this ratio could be any decimal number. In such a world, you could chose how to use your screen's resolution - for more space or for smoother rendering of on-screen elements. Apple's solution is a hack that uses an integer ratio to make backwards compatibility easier. With a 2x ratio you can blow up a point from a non-retina app to exactly 4 pixels, avoiding some hairy rendering issues.
- scotty79 14y ago
  Resolution is only thing that matters. It tells how much information you can cram into a screen. If pixels are too large move back. If they are too small move closer. If your screen is glued to the keyboard. Detach it. Like in asus transformer.
  - stan_rogers 14y ago
    The point of these displays is to (eventually) get away from slavery to the pixel. Just because a printer can render, say, 4800 dpi, doesn't mean you want to render your body copy in a 1pt text (which it can do with better letter-shape fidelity than any of my old dot-matrix impact printers); you still print at 9 or 10 points and enjoy sharper and better-defined type. Moving to high-linear-resolution screens does the same thing—you don't cram more stuff into the screen, you cram a better version of the same stuff into the screen.
    - scotty79 14y ago
      Decorative visual information is still information and how much you can fit in a screen depends on it's resolution not dpi. To enjoy smoother visuals you just have to move away a bit from big screen.
- tharax 14y ago
  Isn't that ratio 4x then? Or am I not understanding retina displays correctly?
  - wmf 14y ago
    2x linear, 4x area. I could swear we had this discussion yesterday.
wmf 14y ago
The default mode is 1440x900 doubled, hence all the talk about 2x.
teilo 14y ago
Apple's standard 15" has always been 1440x900. Their hi-rez 15" has been 1680x1050.