HD Displays... A good thing.
To tell you the truth, it was this sole rumor that almost stopped me from going ahead and buying my new 17" PowerBook. I did eventually order it, and am using it to write this post, in fact, but I was sorely tempted by the prospect of a high definition-capable display.
I had to seriously analyze the benefits, both immediate and not-so-apparent... even though I use FCP HD, wouldn't I just as readily have a second, HD-capable external monitor to view footage on if I were serious about editing HD content? Screen real estate is nice, but doesn't the current 1440x900 offer enough to accomodate most of the windows FCPHD/Photoshop CS/Illustrator would like to show? Certainly, I'd love to be able to watch HD-DVDs or Blue Ray discs on my PowerBook in native resolution and not scaled down, but... erm... wouldn't that also require an HD-DVD or Blue Ray drive?
The pieces just weren't fitting together for me to wait.
I do believe, though, that with the introduction of Tiger (I agree: Apple won't release any such Powerbook with HD-native display untiil they've released Tiger as well) there will be plenty of more subtle, not-so-apparent uses for having a HD display. Resolution independence, for instance, and whatever the confounded deal with H264 will be, too.
A lot to look forward to, that's for sure though. I wonder... here's a question: what are the chances of replacing just the display on my current 17" PowerBook with this rumored higher density/HD display when it comes out? Surely that wouldn't be that hard, would it?
(And just for the record, the manual for the 17" does indeed include the reference to 1920x1200. "Depending on how your PowerBook was configured, it may have a wide-screen display that has a 'native' resolution of 1920 x 1200 or 1440 x 900. For either of these native resolutions, other standard resolutions, such as 1024 x 768, are supported.")