7 ms·

And just $399 for the 16 GB version!

by w1ntermute 14y ago

mtgx 14y ago
And with that crazy resolution.
- meritt 14y ago
  Why is it we have amazing 16:10 2560-by-1600 in a 10" tablet but commonplace laptops (13-15") rarely surpass 1680x1050 or even worse 1366x768? Sometimes, on high-end models, you can pay an extra $200 to "upgrade" to 1920x1080 (I'll leave my rant about 16:10 vs. 16:9 for another time). Technology is so ridiculous at times.
  - w1ntermute 14y ago
    > Why is it we have amazing 16:10 2560-by-1600 in a 10" tablet but commonplace laptops (13-15") rarely surpass 1680x1050 or even worse 1366x768? Because Windows and Windows apps don't support resolution-independent UI scaling. > Sometimes, on high-end models, you can pay an extra $200 to "upgrade" to 1920x1080 Because they know they can rip you off, and because it's a lot more expensive to produce high resolution displays (or rather, displays of any resolution) when they're being produced in small quantities.
    - akmiller 14y ago
      > Because Windows and Windows apps don't support resolution-independent UI scaling. If I'm not mistaken the new, formerly known as "Metro", UI is vector based and any applications built with the WPF which includes all Windows 8 GUI based applications (at least the non-html one's) are of course vector based so it's simply up to the designer/developer to scale it however they want.
      - seanmcdirmid 14y ago
        Not completely true. The metro app developer will still have to include pixel art at varying resolutions since these do not scale automatically very well.
        countessa 14y ago
        unless you develop metro apps using javascript/html - then you can use vector art.
        JonoW 14y ago
        XAML is very vector orientated, most apps will (should) not include pixel based art-work unless really necessary.
    - vlasta2 14y ago
      > Because Windows and Windows apps don't support resolution-independent UI scaling. This is not true. Windows has had very good support for custom resolutions since Vista. Windows 7 actually looks great when set to higher resolution. Windows applications is another story, but the number of DPI aware applications is growing http://www.rw-designer.com/DPI-aware http://www.rw-designer.com/DPI-aware
      - seanmcdirmid 14y ago
        I didn't see a list of DPI aware applications at the link you gave me, is that a typo?
        vlasta2 14y ago
        that was not the list of applications, but a guide on how to write one with and example at the end
        seanmcdirmid 14y ago
        I want to know what applications are already DPI-aware and could run on say...a Retina MacBook Pro running bootcamp and Windows 8. As far as I can tell, there are no such apps yet, even Microsoft's own Office. But I would be happy to be corrected!
      - eropple 14y ago
        "Windows," if defined as "the windowing library", does. Even Explorer doesn't work correctly at 200% DPI scaling (you get a tiny nav bar and a really long search bar). It's junk. What's worse is that VS2012 is nearly unusable because IntelliSense explodes all over the screen. I have many sads when I have to deal with that on my rMBP.
        vlasta2 14y ago
        you can drag the splitter between the navbar and searchbar to adjust the sizes as you see fit... VS2012 is still a problem though
    - bryanlarsen 14y ago
      Larger screens are much more expensive to produce than small screens unless the defect rate is very low. For this reason new LCD technologies are always perfected on smaller screens before migrating to larger screens.
    - chenster 14y ago
      > Because Windows and Windows apps don't support resolution-independent UI scaling. I upgraded my HP 17" laptop panel to 1920 x 1200 (bought less than $200 on ebay 2 years ago). That was on Windows 7. I don't notice any visual issues. Just upgraded to Windows 8 and all Windows apps look just fine too. So applications aren't real issues here.
      - seanmcdirmid 14y ago
        1920 x 1200 is nowhere near 2x resolution. Its more like 1.2 or 1.3.
        wishfulcoding 14y ago
        Indeed. 1920 x 1200 on a 17" screen is about 133 dpi, not even close to the 300 dpi on the Nexus 10.
    - anigbrowl 14y ago
      Because Windows and Windows apps don't support resolution-independent UI scaling. Yes they do. It's just not automatic - you tweak it in control panel to suit your preferences.
  - tadfisher 14y ago
    Because of the leading desktop operating systems, only Apple has started to divorce screen resolution from UI element sizes, and even that support is half-assed.
  - bo1024 14y ago
    People are giving you software answers, but I think the answer is actually about hardware. Monitor manufacturers realized they could brand their screens as "1080p HD" to match them up to the TV marketing pitch. Why bother trying to make a screen with 1600 vertical pixels when you can just use that magic word, 1080p?
  - veidr 14y ago
    My 15" laptop has native resolution of 2880x1800 (though I typically use it scaled to 1920x1200). It did cost a lot, though, so despite being a best-selling model it may not be 'commonplace'.
  - Sunlis 14y ago
    Apple's Retina displays (in the new Macbook Pros) have very high resolutions. The latest Macbook Pros have either 2560x1600 or 2880x1800 native resolution, depending on when you bought it. http://support.apple.com/kb/HT5266 http://support.apple.com/kb/HT5266
- mtgx 14y ago
  @merrit - Because it has not been a focus of laptop manufacturers. Instead the focus has been faster CPU's or bigger hard drives. Going premium on the display, means you have to cut on something else to deliver the laptop at the same, and I don't think Intel is going to cut on their CPU prices anytime soon. In some laptops, Intel's chips take up to 40% of the BOM price. That leaves little wiggle room for experimenting with high quality displays. The good news is that the popularity of high resolution tablets will also force laptop makers into a trend with higher resolutions, too. Asus for example is one of the leaders of this trend, and has even 11.6" laptops with 1920x1080 resolution.
  - dbecker 14y ago
    My eyesight isn't great, but I can't tell the difference between the resolution on my "retina" devices and resolution on other screens. Can most people tell the difference? If not, this marketing and competition on resolution may be distracting us from issues that have a bigger impact on our usage experience.
    - rdtsc 14y ago
      I can but when it comes to text. Images not so much.
    - phaus 14y ago
      I have slightly worse than 20/20 vision and I see a huge difference. The retina iPad that I had was amazingly clear compared to my 1600x900 17" laptop screen and my 1200x800 tablet. I recently looked at both the retina macbook and an asus 13" ultrabook in best buy last week. The macbook retina's screen was noticably sharper than the asus' 1080p screen, but 1080p on a screen that size still looks absolutely amazing. I would honestly be happy with either one.
    - niels_olson 14y ago
      I'm 20/40, and it strike me as amazing up close. Desktop distance -- not so much. I have a 27" iMac, and I can barely tell there are pixels. But since iPhone 4, it's been Retina all the way. The Retina 4G iPad arguably changed my life. All of a sudden I can have a full page of a pdf in bed, triple-clicked to negative color, and the text is still perfect. Naturally as soon as the Retina macbook came out, I was in heaven: I can line up two full-width documents, read one and type another (usually one is in LibreOffice, the other is in Papers or Chrome, but emacs is behind LibreOffice). So with a briefcase full of Retina, I'm quite happy. But the 27" iMac still feels like the most spacious screen. The other thing the Apple hardware has going for it is that I can tether my MacBook to my iPad's 4G network via bluetooth, so the iPad doesn't even have to come out of the briefcase to be incredibly useful, and saves me having to have another data plan. I note the Nexus 10 does not come in a 4G model. That seems crazy to me.
- meritt 14y ago
  @mtgx Thanks. Maybe also you could explain why we have to reply to one another in this fashion. HN is the 1366x768 of discussion platforms.
  - tikhonj 14y ago
    This is actually a feature of HN. There is a "cool-down" timer between when you make a post and when people can respond to it. It increases exponentially with the level of nesting. The idea is to discourage flame wars by forcing people to think a bit before replying. I actually think this is a pretty effective strategy. However, it does impede productive discussions and conversations, sometimes. Oh well, c'est la vie.
    - wmf 14y ago
      But instead of waiting, people just reply in the wrong place which both defeats the purpose and makes threads harder to read. I can't think of any better solution, though.
  - w1ntermute 14y ago
    To expand on tikhonj's comment, you can circumvent this "feature" by clicking on the "link" link next to someone's comment - that will allow you to reply to them regardless of the "cool-down" timer.
- grego 14y ago
  Actually 16Gb storage is not enough considering the pixmaps for games etc. will now eat a lot more space. I hit the same issue with my 16Gb iPad 3. This being Android, I'm a bit disappointed that it does not appear to have a microSD slot. There is also a relatively heavy premium for 16Gb more internal flash.
  - harshreality 14y ago
    The rationale for ditching microsd slots is that different volumes (mount points) for the built-in flash and the microsd flash complicates the UI, and creates dissatisfaction when someone runs out of space on one while having plenty of space on the other. The modern usage pattern seems to be get enough built-in storage for what you want to do, then use wifi or usb to transfer stuff between the device and the cloud or a desktop with a larger collection of media.
  - brazzy 14y ago
    > There is also a relatively heavy premium for 16Gb more internal flash. Market segmentation. The goal is to make more money off people who don't care much about the price without losing those customers who do.
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
aw3c2 14y ago
As I understand it in the US the taxes are added after the displayed price, how much would that be in the end? In Europe it seems to cost €399 which is 30% more!
- toby 14y ago
  Sales taxes in the US vary by state. Further, not all merchants will charge sales tax for either state when shipping between states -- this generally depends on whether the merchant is considered to have a business presence in the purchasers state.
- rogerbinns 14y ago
  In the US taxes are a combination of city, county and state. For example there are often city ordinances adding 0.25% to the sales tax to support something or other. For example here are the sales tax rates in California by city or county, varying between 7 and 10%: http://www.boe.ca.gov/cgi-bin/rates.cgi http://www.boe.ca.gov/cgi-bin/rates.cgi The voting is ludicrously complex (Americans like things that way!). For example many bureaucratic positions are elected. Consequently when people go to vote, they have to vote on a lot of things. Here is the California voter guide: http://voterguide.sos.ca.gov/pdf/ http://voterguide.sos.ca.gov/pdf/ Here is what someone in my city would see as their ballot: http://www.votescount.com/nov12/root1106/ballots/bt000039.pdf http://www.votescount.com/nov12/root1106/ballots/bt000039.pd... It starts out with Obama and Romney, heads into Senate & Congress, then the state senate & assembly, then into county positions and finally city positions. Then there are propositions for the state, county and city. After that digression, the California sales taxes for purchases made in person are based on where the store is. Except for cars which are based on the purchaser address. For distance purchases (eg internet, mail order) they are based on where the business decides its tax presence is. Amazon for example took that into account when deciding where to have their presence on opening in California and actually got some tax concessions from the "lucky" cities (yes corporate welfare is well established in the US). For sales where the purchaser and seller are in different states no sales tax can be charged. Most states then have a provision requiring the purchaser to report these purchases and pay a "use" tax whose rate is identical to the sales tax rate. As far as I can tell many do not report this.
- 14y ago

And just $399 for the 16 GB version!

mtgx 14y ago

And with that crazy resolution.

meritt 14y ago
Why is it we have amazing 16:10 2560-by-1600 in a 10" tablet but commonplace laptops (13-15") rarely surpass 1680x1050 or even worse 1366x768? Sometimes, on high-end models, you can pay an extra $200 to "upgrade" to 1920x1080 (I'll leave my rant about 16:10 vs. 16:9 for another time). Technology is so ridiculous at times.
- w1ntermute 14y ago
  > Why is it we have amazing 16:10 2560-by-1600 in a 10" tablet but commonplace laptops (13-15") rarely surpass 1680x1050 or even worse 1366x768? Because Windows and Windows apps don't support resolution-independent UI scaling. > Sometimes, on high-end models, you can pay an extra $200 to "upgrade" to 1920x1080 Because they know they can rip you off, and because it's a lot more expensive to produce high resolution displays (or rather, displays of any resolution) when they're being produced in small quantities.
  - akmiller 14y ago
    > Because Windows and Windows apps don't support resolution-independent UI scaling. If I'm not mistaken the new, formerly known as "Metro", UI is vector based and any applications built with the WPF which includes all Windows 8 GUI based applications (at least the non-html one's) are of course vector based so it's simply up to the designer/developer to scale it however they want.
    - seanmcdirmid 14y ago
      Not completely true. The metro app developer will still have to include pixel art at varying resolutions since these do not scale automatically very well.
      - countessa 14y ago
        unless you develop metro apps using javascript/html - then you can use vector art.
      - JonoW 14y ago
        XAML is very vector orientated, most apps will (should) not include pixel based art-work unless really necessary.
  - vlasta2 14y ago
    > Because Windows and Windows apps don't support resolution-independent UI scaling. This is not true. Windows has had very good support for custom resolutions since Vista. Windows 7 actually looks great when set to higher resolution. Windows applications is another story, but the number of DPI aware applications is growing http://www.rw-designer.com/DPI-aware http://www.rw-designer.com/DPI-aware
    - seanmcdirmid 14y ago
      I didn't see a list of DPI aware applications at the link you gave me, is that a typo?
      - vlasta2 14y ago
        that was not the list of applications, but a guide on how to write one with and example at the end
        seanmcdirmid 14y ago
        I want to know what applications are already DPI-aware and could run on say...a Retina MacBook Pro running bootcamp and Windows 8. As far as I can tell, there are no such apps yet, even Microsoft's own Office. But I would be happy to be corrected!
    - eropple 14y ago
      "Windows," if defined as "the windowing library", does. Even Explorer doesn't work correctly at 200% DPI scaling (you get a tiny nav bar and a really long search bar). It's junk. What's worse is that VS2012 is nearly unusable because IntelliSense explodes all over the screen. I have many sads when I have to deal with that on my rMBP.
      - vlasta2 14y ago
        you can drag the splitter between the navbar and searchbar to adjust the sizes as you see fit... VS2012 is still a problem though
  - bryanlarsen 14y ago
    Larger screens are much more expensive to produce than small screens unless the defect rate is very low. For this reason new LCD technologies are always perfected on smaller screens before migrating to larger screens.
  - chenster 14y ago
    > Because Windows and Windows apps don't support resolution-independent UI scaling. I upgraded my HP 17" laptop panel to 1920 x 1200 (bought less than $200 on ebay 2 years ago). That was on Windows 7. I don't notice any visual issues. Just upgraded to Windows 8 and all Windows apps look just fine too. So applications aren't real issues here.
    - seanmcdirmid 14y ago
      1920 x 1200 is nowhere near 2x resolution. Its more like 1.2 or 1.3.
      - wishfulcoding 14y ago
        Indeed. 1920 x 1200 on a 17" screen is about 133 dpi, not even close to the 300 dpi on the Nexus 10.
  - anigbrowl 14y ago
    Because Windows and Windows apps don't support resolution-independent UI scaling. Yes they do. It's just not automatic - you tweak it in control panel to suit your preferences.
- tadfisher 14y ago
  Because of the leading desktop operating systems, only Apple has started to divorce screen resolution from UI element sizes, and even that support is half-assed.
- bo1024 14y ago
  People are giving you software answers, but I think the answer is actually about hardware. Monitor manufacturers realized they could brand their screens as "1080p HD" to match them up to the TV marketing pitch. Why bother trying to make a screen with 1600 vertical pixels when you can just use that magic word, 1080p?
- veidr 14y ago
  My 15" laptop has native resolution of 2880x1800 (though I typically use it scaled to 1920x1200). It did cost a lot, though, so despite being a best-selling model it may not be 'commonplace'.
- Sunlis 14y ago
  Apple's Retina displays (in the new Macbook Pros) have very high resolutions. The latest Macbook Pros have either 2560x1600 or 2880x1800 native resolution, depending on when you bought it. http://support.apple.com/kb/HT5266 http://support.apple.com/kb/HT5266
mtgx 14y ago
@merrit - Because it has not been a focus of laptop manufacturers. Instead the focus has been faster CPU's or bigger hard drives. Going premium on the display, means you have to cut on something else to deliver the laptop at the same, and I don't think Intel is going to cut on their CPU prices anytime soon. In some laptops, Intel's chips take up to 40% of the BOM price. That leaves little wiggle room for experimenting with high quality displays. The good news is that the popularity of high resolution tablets will also force laptop makers into a trend with higher resolutions, too. Asus for example is one of the leaders of this trend, and has even 11.6" laptops with 1920x1080 resolution.
- dbecker 14y ago
  My eyesight isn't great, but I can't tell the difference between the resolution on my "retina" devices and resolution on other screens. Can most people tell the difference? If not, this marketing and competition on resolution may be distracting us from issues that have a bigger impact on our usage experience.
  - rdtsc 14y ago
    I can but when it comes to text. Images not so much.
  - phaus 14y ago
    I have slightly worse than 20/20 vision and I see a huge difference. The retina iPad that I had was amazingly clear compared to my 1600x900 17" laptop screen and my 1200x800 tablet. I recently looked at both the retina macbook and an asus 13" ultrabook in best buy last week. The macbook retina's screen was noticably sharper than the asus' 1080p screen, but 1080p on a screen that size still looks absolutely amazing. I would honestly be happy with either one.
  - niels_olson 14y ago
    I'm 20/40, and it strike me as amazing up close. Desktop distance -- not so much. I have a 27" iMac, and I can barely tell there are pixels. But since iPhone 4, it's been Retina all the way. The Retina 4G iPad arguably changed my life. All of a sudden I can have a full page of a pdf in bed, triple-clicked to negative color, and the text is still perfect. Naturally as soon as the Retina macbook came out, I was in heaven: I can line up two full-width documents, read one and type another (usually one is in LibreOffice, the other is in Papers or Chrome, but emacs is behind LibreOffice). So with a briefcase full of Retina, I'm quite happy. But the 27" iMac still feels like the most spacious screen. The other thing the Apple hardware has going for it is that I can tether my MacBook to my iPad's 4G network via bluetooth, so the iPad doesn't even have to come out of the briefcase to be incredibly useful, and saves me having to have another data plan. I note the Nexus 10 does not come in a 4G model. That seems crazy to me.
meritt 14y ago
@mtgx Thanks. Maybe also you could explain why we have to reply to one another in this fashion. HN is the 1366x768 of discussion platforms.
- tikhonj 14y ago
  This is actually a feature of HN. There is a "cool-down" timer between when you make a post and when people can respond to it. It increases exponentially with the level of nesting. The idea is to discourage flame wars by forcing people to think a bit before replying. I actually think this is a pretty effective strategy. However, it does impede productive discussions and conversations, sometimes. Oh well, c'est la vie.
  - wmf 14y ago
    But instead of waiting, people just reply in the wrong place which both defeats the purpose and makes threads harder to read. I can't think of any better solution, though.
- w1ntermute 14y ago
  To expand on tikhonj's comment, you can circumvent this "feature" by clicking on the "link" link next to someone's comment - that will allow you to reply to them regardless of the "cool-down" timer.
grego 14y ago
Actually 16Gb storage is not enough considering the pixmaps for games etc. will now eat a lot more space. I hit the same issue with my 16Gb iPad 3. This being Android, I'm a bit disappointed that it does not appear to have a microSD slot. There is also a relatively heavy premium for 16Gb more internal flash.
- harshreality 14y ago
  The rationale for ditching microsd slots is that different volumes (mount points) for the built-in flash and the microsd flash complicates the UI, and creates dissatisfaction when someone runs out of space on one while having plenty of space on the other. The modern usage pattern seems to be get enough built-in storage for what you want to do, then use wifi or usb to transfer stuff between the device and the cloud or a desktop with a larger collection of media.
- brazzy 14y ago
  > There is also a relatively heavy premium for 16Gb more internal flash. Market segmentation. The goal is to make more money off people who don't care much about the price without losing those customers who do.

deleted 14y ago

[deleted]

aw3c2 14y ago

As I understand it in the US the taxes are added after the displayed price, how much would that be in the end? In Europe it seems to cost €399 which is 30% more!

toby 14y ago
Sales taxes in the US vary by state. Further, not all merchants will charge sales tax for either state when shipping between states -- this generally depends on whether the merchant is considered to have a business presence in the purchasers state.
rogerbinns 14y ago
In the US taxes are a combination of city, county and state. For example there are often city ordinances adding 0.25% to the sales tax to support something or other. For example here are the sales tax rates in California by city or county, varying between 7 and 10%: http://www.boe.ca.gov/cgi-bin/rates.cgi http://www.boe.ca.gov/cgi-bin/rates.cgi The voting is ludicrously complex (Americans like things that way!). For example many bureaucratic positions are elected. Consequently when people go to vote, they have to vote on a lot of things. Here is the California voter guide: http://voterguide.sos.ca.gov/pdf/ http://voterguide.sos.ca.gov/pdf/ Here is what someone in my city would see as their ballot: http://www.votescount.com/nov12/root1106/ballots/bt000039.pdf http://www.votescount.com/nov12/root1106/ballots/bt000039.pd... It starts out with Obama and Romney, heads into Senate & Congress, then the state senate & assembly, then into county positions and finally city positions. Then there are propositions for the state, county and city. After that digression, the California sales taxes for purchases made in person are based on where the store is. Except for cars which are based on the purchaser address. For distance purchases (eg internet, mail order) they are based on where the business decides its tax presence is. Amazon for example took that into account when deciding where to have their presence on opening in California and actually got some tax concessions from the "lucky" cities (yes corporate welfare is well established in the US). For sales where the purchaser and seller are in different states no sales tax can be charged. Most states then have a provision requiring the purchaser to report these purchases and pay a "use" tax whose rate is identical to the sales tax rate. As far as I can tell many do not report this.
14y ago