Touche Apple - retina display on laptops\desktops

[djbriandamage]

So Apple just announced a laptop with a screen resolution of 2880 x 1800. Wowsers.

This is exactly the kind of technology I was hoping for when I bought my Samsung Galaxy Nexus phone. It's a 4.65" screen with higher resolution (720x1280) than many televisions. I mean, just view this screenshot from my phone on your PC monitor. It takes up almost my whole monitor, so just imagine the sharpness on my relatively tiny phone screen:
http://d.demodulated.com/Screenshot_...4-11-14-22.png

I can't wait for this to come to desktop PC monitors. The pixel density is so tight that you can hardly see pixels, even without antialiasing. Such a high resolution would reduce the importance of running applications at the monitor's native resolution (it shouldn't look blurry or wavy), and it makes text and diagonal lines look smooth and sharp.

What do you guys think? Game changer or just another iterative step up?

[CommunistHamster]

I was wondering when we'd see the pixel densities from mobile devices end up in "proper" hardware. I can't think of any games that my PC could run at that resolution that would benefit from that resolution though, but give it a few years.

[djbriandamage]

Yeah, I'm concerned software UI will not scale well when presented on screens with double the resolution they're intended for. Too many websites are optimized for 800x600, for example.

But man would I love to play that old wireframe Star Wars arcade game from the 80's on a hella high resolution screen!

[Rii]

I don't see PC manufacturers following Apple's lead here.

It took Intel's Ultrabook platform to drag PC manufacturers away from a race to the bottom (favouring low resolution and poor quality TN panels over IPS, for instance) and yet AMD's CEO has a good point: there isn't room for dozens of PC equivalents to Apple's MBA/MBP. The high-end is surging at the moment off the back of Intel's subsidies and the impending launch of Windows 8, but in the end there will be more losers than winners. Those that lose will go back to doing what they've always done: competing on price. In that light, Apple's adoption of Retina-class displays for MBP (and probably MBA as well in the next year or so) simply allows the majority of PC manufacturers to put more distance between themselves and the Apple juggernaut.

As for desktop monitors, 4K was coming anyway, but this might bring things forward somewhat. You'll be paying a pretty penny tho.