WSXGA+ 17-inch PowerBook vs. WXGA+ 17-inch PowerBook
By Peter Rojas 
posted Oct 24th 2005 7:30AM
posted Oct 24th 2005 7:30AM
Ok, so it's just three pics, only two of which are actually side-by-side, but 99mac.se has some snaps one of those
new higher-resolution, 1680 x 1050 pixel 17-inch
PowerBooks alongside an older 1440 x 900 pixel model. The screen is definitely crisper and brighter, but we've got
one question: What in the hell took them so long? Other manufacturers have been offering laptops with WSXGA+ displays
for ages now.
[Thanks, Lenny]
Price, perhaps?
though I doubt it's an issue with the large side-by-side shot, the closeup comparing left side of one with right side of other is useless. You cannot compare opposite sides of LCD displays side by side. The angle at which you view the LCD (horizontally as well as vertically) has a major effect on apparent brightness. Horizontal difference is usually much less than vertical, but it makes a noticeable difference.
I spent an hour with a customer with a pair of 23" cinema displays that was complaining that "the one on the left is darker". Of course, if you switched them, the one on the left was STILL darker. *sigh* (he was comparing the right edge of left display with left edge of right display) When finally forced to compare left edges or right edges with eachother, (by placing displays one behind the other) which allowed both screens to be viewed from the same angle, he finally agreed that they were indeed matched.
This is so long overdue. Apple should have *at least* been offering the higher resolution displays as an option. A PC-using friend of mine, who happens to also be a big fan of OS X, but PowerBooks in particular, complained that the low resolution of PowerBook displays kept him from switching. This took them way too long.
Maybe the fact that usually Apple ships screens that show the real res, not an interpolation?
An Apple PB 1680x1050 has a screen with 1680x1050 pixels.
Not always the same with other brands.
"but we’ve got one question: What in the hell took them so long?"
They were probably trying to figure out exactly what each letter in WSXGA+ stands for, and how they might be able to add an "i" into the mix.
Uh...pretty obviously the older, oft used laptop is going to be less bright than the brand spanking new one. LCDs loose their brightness over time. All of them.
#2 - Sounds like a bit of sour grapes over the fact that other notebook manufacturers (dare i say those nasty, obviously inferior notebooks that run windows) had a feature that it took your "beloved" apple ages to implement.
Not a hater - I just don't buy into the Jobs' reality-distortion field effect that Apple is the best and everything else is inferior.
powerbooki
(nevermind, it sounds real funny in dutch..)
Two reasons:
1) The price on the high res LCDs have been VERY high - until recently / Apple actually wanted a speed bump to coinicide, but nothing has come from Moto to implement - so, there's some of the delay.
2) Most laptops that have high res displays are cheating - either through interpolation (which causes fuzziness) or through a mask (which adds a lot of thickness and weight.
#2, what are you talking about? No one does that. If you can't figure out how to use the native res on a windows laptop, then that's your fault not the manufacturer.
Oh, and 1680x1050 is pathetic on a 17" WS laptop. Dell and Sony and probably a few others have optional 1920x1200 screens on their 17" laptops. For Apple's high end notebook, which costs 2.5 grand, I would expect a little more. I mean come on, DELL can do it!
Who cares about the screen resolution? The real question is: If I buy one is the lower RAM slot going to crap out on me in 13 weeks, like my six month old non WSXGA++EXTRA DOUBLE AWESOME model did?
maybe just because such an hi resolution is not the best for human, have you ever tried to read such small characters ?
in Human ergonomics the ratio followed by apple is said to be the best one (have a look at cuk.ch for an article).
It didn't take Apple so long - it's because you DIDN'T NEED WSXGA+ until they SAID you did. Just like you don't need an FM Tuner in the iPod. Steve Jobs will tell you what you need, when you need it. Ironic that the company that "defeated Big Brother" back in '84 has a CEO who's essentially becoming Big Brother.
@ # 9 - As a recruiting member of the Apple Cult, I must say I agree with you.
OK, so if Apple are so far behind, why can I run a 30" screen at 2560 x 1600 from my PMG5. Has anyone actually tried to use a 17" laptop at 1920 x 1200? It's bloody tiny. On a 23" monitor it's nice, but at 17". Besides, it's not Apple anyway, it's their choice of screen manufacturer. I believe the quality over quantity argument comes into play here. You guys stick with your crappy Dell. I know where my money is going.
1920 x 1200 on a 17" screen makes things annoyingly small for me. I'm not a big fan of squinting. 1680 x 1050 seems right on the money, and it's probably what the 17" PowerBook should have had all along. I'm in no hurry for a laptop resolution arms race until we have 100% resolution independent interfaces. That way I can have a beautiful view of my work and keep my palettes large and usable.
Apple should probably offer BTO choices, but I don't think they feel a real need to do that.
The 12" PowerBook is officially weak. This really feels like Apple is busting ass working on Intel laptops and isn't breaking a sweat over upgrading the current line.
Where can I buy a desktop 17" WSXGA+ display?
I'd LOVE to get one, but as far as I can tell, these panels are only used for laptops. Or are they?
Thanks for any pointers to desktop displays with a native resolution larger than 1280x1024.
is there someplace i can get GOOOD wallpapers at 1680x1050? i want a bunch too chose from, not just one artist you like. there's got to be descent mult-artist site that also has WIDEScreen. little help? my old 20" cinema display (same rez as new 17 in PB) is looking bored. THANKX!
x Tim.
Apple monitors usually are phisically fitted to show the res they claim.
Everybody is able to shoot a much higher res using interpolation.
Since Apple computers are made mainly for graphics, then they state "one card pixel, one screen pixel".
Example: you can shoot out a 2960x1600 on a 19" desktop screen, but only the Cinema Display 30" shows every single pixel phisically.
Hanno, Desktop displays usually have lower resolution for a given screen size due to the fact they are usually placed further away than a laptop screen. You can buy a 20" LCD with 1600x1200 anywhere.
It's just a guess, but everyone I know who has a big screen on their windows laptop also seems to have to carry around with them a power supply the size of a lunch pail, and gets battery life of under 2 hours. Apple has always been able to match performance with function, the smaller screen I would imagine is a trade off for better battery performance, weight, heat, etc. If all you care about is screen real estate, then be 'that guy' who runs out and get a new one.
-
Regardless of whether this person or that person is 'fine' with reading a certain resolution, the fact is that A LOT of people find anything reading tiny text on rezs over 1280 on a screen that small to be a painful expereince. (me included).
Apple tries to shy away from releasing products that even grandpa would find difficult to use in any way.
eh.
1440X900 was fine, i hate it when text and palettes are impossible to read. just because you can have higher resolutions doesn't mean you have to, i'd prefer it to be a BTO option.
Scott Barker -- the Inspiron 9300 (available with a 1920x1200 screen) has a reasonably-sized power adaptor and gets four hours of battery life with the GeForce Go 6800 (which I might add is vastly superior to the MR 9700). It is slightly heavier overall than the PB G4 17", and the industrial design isn't as good, but functionally it's the same as the PowerBook (other than the different OS).
#2 and #13..
What the heck are you guys talking about?? The screens offered by dell, hp (my toshiba tablet has 1440x1050 ACTUAL pixels) with the 1920x1200 are actually that. No interpolation. They offer video cards with the capability to display that resolution (as well as lower). Why on EARTH would a manufacturer go to all the trouble to equip a laptop with a high res screen, only to "shoot" a low res image onto it ON PURPOSE.
The only interpolation that goes on here, ESPECIALLY on an LCD is at LOWER resolutions. For instance, if you have a panel with a native resolution of 1900x1200 and for some reason, your computer can only display a 1024x768 then it will display the lower resolution, interpolated onto the higher one.
You cannot "interpolate" to a higher resolution than native on an LCD because those pixels do not exist, if you do, the results are nasty.
Are you guys that much in love with your beloved macs that you pull facts out of your asses to support the cause?
The ONLY time i've ever seen a higher resolution than native on an LCD was on a pocket pc. That was horrible. 640x480 on a 320x240 native res screen through software emulation. NOBODY else does that and then sells it on a laptop. There are VGA pocketpc's now, but thats another story.
*shakes head*
@#1 - Well I've had my Dell 9100 notebook with 1920x1200, 3Ghz-P4 for a year now paid $1000 delivered, so no, I don't think price is the issue.
@#11 - My laptop's a development machine and it's really nice being able to see a full code window at the same time as the running app side-by-side. It's also nice to be able to have a large browser window open and still have desktop space to see other running apps. As for font-squinting, most apps and certainly the desktop in Windows will allow you to run larger fonts.
Apple didn't up the screen resolutions because doing so would make everything too small. Since most images on the web are 72dpi and we've kind of settled on 96dpi now (since Microsoft decided that was the standard) for text in browsers the old 1440x900 screens at about 100dpi more or less matched the display resolutions expected by most applications and designers.
1920x1200 in a 17" laptop is a third higher resolution so those images are now almost half the size the designer originally intended. If you up the text size so you can read it, the difference between image size and text size is even more pronounced. Especially if the designer has worked in points instead of pixels like a good designer should.
Device independent user interfaces solve one problem but you've still got to scale the content up too, like Opera does. Oddly they got it right way back.
In print work too, having a weirdo ultra-high monitor resolution isn't that useful as things on your screen look the wrong size at 100%.
@23 - amen
Yeah, WTF on Liosandro and Rus's posts. my 1920x1200 screen has 2,304,000 ACTUAL pixels. I can see what some of the people are saying about 1920x1200 being hard to read on a 17" screen, but my screen displays the exact same amount of visual information as a 23" Cinema Display, just at a much lower size and much higher DPI.
You guys must have some great vision...I have 20/13 left and 20/10 right and 1920x1200 would make me go blind...I only use 1024x768 on a 19" display...
Wow. Just wow.
I've spent a lot of time listening to
a. Retards who don't like high-res LCDs
b. Apple fans*
But this thread combines both in new and fascinating ways. Here's why Apple hasn't done high-res screens. Two reasons, really. First, from what I hear, upper management is like a lot of you guys, and is goddamn blind. Literally. They think it will make stuff on the screen too small (protip: you can increase text and icon size, you morons). The second reason I actually sort of agree with. Dell, for example, can afford to do multiple screen sizes in their laptops. They're a big enough company and they ship enough units to make that practical. Apple can't really afford the luxury of offering that much customization, and they probably just don't want to because it goes against their policy of simplicity.
It has nothing to do with price. Other laptops don't "cheat" (interpolation doesn't work on an LCD - the pixels are either there or they aren't). It doesn't take any more power - a larger screen will take more power because it needs a bigger backlight. Adding pixels to the same size screen takes such a marginal amount more power it's not even worth mentioning.
So let's recap - real reasons they did it:
-Management needs glasses
-So do most people, and increasing resolution to Dell-like levels would frustrate some users
-It's not an option to have different resolutions because of company policy and manufacturing ability
BS reasons they didn't do it:
-It's too expensive (no!)
-It takes too much power (no!)
-High resolution laptop LCDs don't actualy exist, other companies just fake it (lol)
Every time I see someone with their 20" LCD set to 800x600 I want to scream. Seriously, anyone with 20/20 vision should be able to read text that size from 2-3 feet away. If you can't read it, you really need glasses because you're just damaging your vision more until you get them.
*I have a Powerbook and two iPods and I'm a huge fan of OSX.
Ok, so if you increase the text and icon size, then why is increased resolution an advantage? Essentially, you're just making your high resolution screen look like a lower resolution one...
I don't even care one way or another as regards the mac side of this. I just know that all the Dell laptops we use at work look ridiculous at native resolution...and I'm one of the last people that needs glasses, lol...
You can change the resolution on macs, but why? It's usually perfect when you fire it up.
2. Who cares?
There is definitely a reason to have higher res on a laptop.
Higher res means more real estate. I would love to get the new higher res PB as this would make running FCP really sweet. As it is, the plethora of windows one must use in FCP are hard to fit on my current machine's monitor.
are these the shiny screens?
Really. Dell in Singapore offers screens at WUXGA+, the 1920x1200 for the Inspiron 6000, a 15.4" screen. Have fun.
"Higher res means more real estate. I would love to get the new higher res PB as this would make running FCP really sweet. As it is, the plethora of windows one must use in FCP are hard to fit on my current machine's monitor."
And if you can read it, then that's great. I run dual 21" CRT monitors at home and triple 19" LCDs at work. Screen real estate is awesome.
My point was that if you increase the font and icon size you're defeating the purpose of having more real estate by making everything bigger, whereby it takes up more space and you have mirrored the look of your 800x600 display at 1600x1200...
Screen Real estate is all fine and dandy, but there are other reasons.
Would you decrease the resolution of real life, or just pull the newspaper closer to your face to make the letters larger?
would you want poorer vision because things are looking tiny?
When you print a photo (which has higher resolution than your computer screen, minimum 2 mpx do have that) do you look at it and say "I wish I could see the pixels"?
F%"king idiots
#13 & #32 pretty much sum things up (read these if you haven't), apple lags in high resolution (and track pads/mice too, they just figured out scrolling?), and one would expect their slick products to take the lead here, especially at the price they charge.
The comment about upper management being blind I'm not sure about, if they are it's because they're "blinded" by the piles of stock options & automatic bonus programs they're sitting on, and the consequences of rocking capt steve's boat.
But there is hope, with an iPod that plays tv programs (someone said "never" on apple & TV), a WUGA screen could be coming in a few years. And how will apple play the pentium/windows game with their new systems (there is more to this)...
WXGA 1280 x 800 (12" & low-end 15")
WXGA+ 1440 x 960 (low-end 17") new pb15
WSXGA+ 1680 x 1050 (mid-res 15") new pb17
WUGA 1920 x 1200 (hi-res 15" or 17") n/a pb