Mac Pro/OS X 4K Display Compatibility 'Like the Wild West', Some 4K Monitors Unsupported

[friedmud]

The a situation is not as dire as it seems... the 32" Sharp does work properly... it's just that there is no hidpi scaling mode in case you want to use the higher pixel density but still have everything appear larger (closer to the size things currently are on a regular 30" monitor).

Personally, I have 4k monitors so I have more real estate so they are fine the way they currently are. But of course I use my 15" rMBP at the "1920x1200" setting... So I guess I'm just ok with small UI elements.

All depends on your preferences...

 

[wiz329]

Hm, you don't say. The original NeXT Computer and the NeXTstation both came with a keyboard and mouse. In fact, they even came with a display.

Whether someone prefers to use another keyboard or mouse with the MP is irrelevant. A Mac should be always be usable out of the box, aside from the display. I don't think cost was the issue here; this is just some guy in marketing thinking the packaging should be tiny.

Why should it be "usable out of the box" and if that is indeed the case, why is the display an exception?

It just seems like some arbitrary standard you've made up yourself.

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Not quite. There's 6 TB ports that share 4 controllers. So if you are using 2 ports, they use 2 controllers. If you use 4 ports, they use 4 controllers. If you use 6 ports, they use 4 controllers, so things might slow down if you're using all 6 at max. But if you use 4 at max and 2 are idle, you'll never notice any slowdown.

Think of it like a highway. You have 4 lanes, and 6 on-ramps. If all 6 on-ramps are full, you'll have trouble. But if all 6 on-ramps are only at 2/3 capacity, there won't be a traffic jam.

Nope. The original poster had it right.

First, there are only 3 TB controllers, not 4. Also, it matters which bus you are plugging into. If you are only using 2 TB ports, but both are on the same bus (using the same controller), you very well might see "slowdown."

That is why you shouldn't just plug into whichever ports you want to randomly. You should populate each controller separately before plugging a second device into each controller.

 

[2128506]

And if you buy that one Porsche with the windshield cracking, do you go around and say that BMW's have better windshields?

If Porsche will refuse to replace it with new windshield and claim that cracks are "not an issue" and are "normal" - I definitely will. And no matter the outcome that would mean that Porsche has issues with quality control - which usually affects significant part of products, not just one defective item.

Which is exactly what is going on with Apple and ghosting panels.

 

[Dr. Weezil]

"Like the old west..."

You mean disputes were largely settled privately and peacefully without the intrusion of a monopolistic state claiming exclusive right to mete out justice and interpretation of laws?

 

[Chupa Chupa]

I did get the disambiguation there, and I had a fair amount of experience with those and others. They were popular, but nothing in that price range used a TN panel, which was why I commented on it. If you recall from that era, Apple's aluminum cinema displays started above $1000. The 20" started at $1300. They were probably one of the better ones in that price range, but not by much. Predominantly I had wanted to point out that few displays above $1000 used TN panels. I won't say none, because I'm not sure of that, especially in larger sizes. It's not really practical to compare Apple to the low end ones that cost half as much.

Go back to 2000. Apple's 22" widescreen was a stunner and there was very little like it on the market. Apple charged a pretty penny for it but it had one of the best panels too. Again, my point to the poster was that Apple knows something about designing displays & its silly to say it doesn't. It WAS NOT a comparison of Apple displays vs non Apple displays.

 

[ed724]

What the article missed...this is a 4K display....you plug it in to your Mac Pro, and it displays everything at 4K resolution...it works.

It is not a Retina display, nor does it do Retina scaling, NOR was it even meant to.

It displays a 4K resolution picture, and workspace.

The display at this resolution may have tiny text and UI elements, but it was not meant to operate at any other resolution (as of now). You must learn to deal with this. I think that is what they are complaining about here...people have gotten extremely spoiled by Retina scaling, and this display is flat out HIRES, so the UI elements are small.

It does everything its advertised to do.

I think the article missed this.

Thanks for explaining some of the ignorant postings here.

 

[LordVic]

No consumer? Well, I can't speak for the billions of other consumers out there but the 55" 4K Sony TV I saw was stunningly sharper than any HDTV I've every seen. But here is the rub -- I didn't know it was 4K when I saw it. It captured my attention in the store, but I thought it was just a top of the line set. A salesperson came up to me and told me it was 4K.

A lot of this perceived difference isn't necessarily coming from the higher resolution, but from other advances in display technology. From better more consistent and brighter backlighting, to smaller gaps in the LCD tech, to better, faster response times, and improved contrast and black levels.

These might have had a bigger influence on the display quality than pure pixel count.

 

[hayesk]

heck. it doesn't even seem to want to handle 720p identically accross displays even though they're both on HDMI! my 720p projector comes through as crystal clear. my 720p 27" TV is fuzzy and skewed.

That's because of two things:
Many 720p TVs are actually 1366x768, not 1280x720
There are overscan settings in your TV that are named differently for each brand and you might not have it set properly. You want to set it to native scanning (sometimes called 1:1, "Just Scan") to show the exact signal.

 

[JHankwitz]

This is really bad... how much effort would it have taken Apple to get this right for their most high-paying customers. Shame.

It takes a heck of a lot of effort. And, selling to high-end customers doesn't make it any easier. The driver software for this has to be mind boggling.

 

[Dinø]

I don't think this is an issue at all. Of course Apple can't guarantee every monitor will support OS X Retina technologies but I'm sure the best displays will make a conscious effort to do so. With this in mind, it doesn't surprise me the Dell cannot do OS X Retina.

Monitors don't know anything about OS X, Retina, or the content they are displaying. They are as dumb as the above post.

 

[Renzatic]

Thanks for explaining some of the ignorant postings here.

It's ignorant in and of itself. There's no such thing as a retina display. There's no extra technology behind it, no special needs that have to be addressed for it to be called "retina". It's just a high density display with a buzzword attached to it.

Scaling is handled on the OS end. The screen is drawn at a higher resolution, then downscaled to the resolution of the display. That's all software.

Here how it works.

Any monitor can handle this.

 

[N64]

Tell me again why HDMI (a) replaced DVI or (b) on some PCs even skipped DVI, ie, they went from VGA to HDMI directly and (c) was used instead of DP?

HDMI was developed for the entertainment industry, not for computers, just look at the original consortium, all entertainment industry companies. Somehow PCs got pressured into using it instead of DVI because it made hooking up a PC with a TV easier and because it made the enforcement of DRM easier.

I don't see any reason to use HDMI over DP.

HDMI has sound, which is handy. I know DP has it too, but DVI doesn't. But HDMI is more trouble than it's worth because the cables seem to always fall out since they don't have screws.

Sadly, not only HDMI but DVI and DP (didn't know about DP) have HDCP. This is the kinda thing there needs to be a class-action lawsuit about. You buy a perfectly good TV and a perfectly good cable box, and you can't watch your shows because the HDCP glitches out at some point unless your TV is really new. At least that's what's happening to me. Pirates can get around it anyway, and it's clearly meant just to control the consumers.

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Disagree. My family has owned every model iMac since 2009 (including the latest 2013) and no ghosting issues ever.

Your term "horrible" is a gross over exaggeration. Every iMac display has been excellent in my experience.

What about hard drives? I've had such a bad experience with iMac hard drives that I'm never buying an iMac again.

 

[LordVic]

Don't you dare tell me about "Apple Monitor".

I am typing this on an 27" iMac that has flickering screen and yellow tint and uneven lighting. Had to buy Apple Care just for this. Apple store says if they see screen flicker then they will replace it. So it happens randomly and can't reproduce the issue when needed. Waiting for a day when I can record it using my iPhone as proof and take it to them!

maybe you just have very noticable blinking?
(I kidding, I kidding!)

 

[N64]

What the article missed...this is a 4K display....you plug it in to your Mac Pro, and it displays everything at 4K resolution...it works.

It is not a Retina display, nor does it do Retina scaling, NOR was it even meant to.

It displays a 4K resolution picture, and workspace.

The display at this resolution may have tiny text and UI elements, but it was not meant to operate at any other resolution (as of now). You must learn to deal with this. I think that is what they are complaining about here...people have gotten extremely spoiled by Retina scaling, and this display is flat out HIRES, so the UI elements are small.

It does everything its advertised to do.

I think the article missed this.

The thing you missed is that the display does not control the retina scaling. That's purely the OS, which scales all the GUI elements for you before outputting them at high resolution so you don't need to squint to use it.

I'm no display expert, but it seems like it should work fine for the OS to use the display at full resolution then let the user either set the GUI size manually or enter the physical screen dimensions so it can calculate the scaling itself.

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Does using Retina DisplayMenu not fix this? It lets you set the HiDPI to many different settings.

 

[Renzatic]

I'm no display expert, but it seems like it should work fine for the OS to use the display at full resolution then let the user either set the GUI size manually or enter the physical screen dimensions so it can calculate the scaling itself.

If everything were vectors, that'd be the way to go. Thing is, even the OSes that have vector support out of the box don't do it ubiquitously. Windows is a good example of this. When you turn on DPI scaling there, the desktop looks fine, but the tons of apps that still do things the old fashioned bitmapped way end up looking janky afterwards.

Windows, Apple, or Linux. One of them needs to make a big push towards true resolution independence. Apple's in the best position, since they can make a change and actually have their developers take advantage of it in a timely fashion. But right now, they're actually the farthest behind on this front. They just do everything 2x scaling of their previous generation, and leave it at that.

 

[tbrinkma]

How close were you standing when you saw it? Unless you have superhuman vision, there's no way a 55" 4K TV is going to look better than 1080P at any normal living room sitting distance.

In all likelyhood, it's a combination of the fact that he was standing 2-4 feet from the display model and the fact that the 'high end' sets (whether they are actually high end, or are just what the shop wants to push right now), are usually closer to the 'top' of the chain of signal splitters used send a signal to the multitude of display TVs. As a result, these models have *markedly* better picture quality than the displays further down the chain. They're usually also set to their brightest settings, and have their visual profile set to 'vibrant', even though it's not the most accurate color rendition.

If you really want to demo TVs, you need to bring your own video source, and make sure the sets are configured equivalently.

 

[thekev]

Go back to 2000. Apple's 22" widescreen was a stunner and there was very little like it on the market. Apple charged a pretty penny for it but it had one of the best panels too. Again, my point to the poster was that Apple knows something about designing displays & its silly to say it doesn't. It WAS NOT a comparison of Apple displays vs non Apple displays.

Okay yeah I get that. 2000 was right before I started using them, although I used a 21" CRT at the time. I preferred that in terms cost to quality ratio at the time.

 

[rezwits]

I don't understand how...

I don't understand how you think you are going to get 5120 x 2880 from a monitor when the limit of the monitor is 3840 x 2160?

We just got a new size with 4K, 4096x and 3840x and all of the sudden you are just saying waa waa waa it doesn't do 5120 in HiDPI?

2560 x 1440 is 720p Retina(HiDPI).

It's sad cause you get three 4K monitor support but you want MORE

I would stick with a nice 32" at 1920x1080 HiDPI, and get razor smooth readable text for working on whatever project... Seems pretty sick at that level...

I mean I understand you can trick the monitor sometimes with SwitchResX but switchResX hasn't been updated for Mavericks Yet, when it does you might, BUT it would still not line up with the dots and be blurry at some points, so waste...

Laters...

 

[tbrinkma]

Of course I was standing less than 6 ft away in a big box store. But even still the clarity was stunning w/ 4K material vs 1080p sets. It was the most lifelike TV picture I've ever seen.

So, you're just selectively ignoring part of the comment you were claiming is incorrect?

No consumer will ever notice the difference between HD and 4k television at average viewing distances on televisions under 70".

4K delivery is Unnecessary.

 

[N64]

"Like the old west..."

You mean disputes were largely settled privately and peacefully without the intrusion of a monopolistic state claiming exclusive right to mete out justice and interpretation of laws?

If you say so, Mr. Jones.

 

[LordVic]

If you say so, Mr. Jones.

I think all disputes should be settled with 1v1 duals to death.

IN THE RIGHT CORNER, WEIGHING IN AT 180LBS, BRANDISHING THE APPLE I-BOOM-STICK... TIM 'THE STALWART DEFENDER' COOK!

IN THE LEFT CORNER, WEIGHING IN AT 150LBS, WITH HIS SAMSUNG S-BOOM-STICK, ... oh whoever is current CEO fo samsung.


LETS GET READY... TO RUMBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBLE..



actually.. might make for more entertaining TV than we got now

 

[Renzatic]

I don't understand how you think you are going to get 5120 x 2880 from a monitor when the limit of the monitor is 3840 x 2160?

It's all because of the confusion surrounding effective resolutions and whatnot. Like scaling on the Retina MBP. It's gonna display at 2880x1800 regardless of how you set it, but to get the "effective resoluton" of 1680x1050 (aka icon and text sizes for a normal nonretina display at that screen size), it's drawing the screen at 3360x2100, then downscaling it to fit in 2880x1800.

Truth be told, it's kind of a sloppy, brute force way to go about changing screen element sizes.

 

[Chupa Chupa]

So, you're just selectively ignoring part of the comment you were claiming is incorrect?

No, I admited I was standing about 6 ft from the set. Average viewing distance is a nonexistent concept. Everyone views at different distances and not necessarily because of screen size. I have a 100" projector screen and my sofa is 8ft away, but the 32" in my bedroom is 10" from the head of my bed.

I never said I though 4K was ridiculous if one isn't more than 6ft away. I'd love a 4K if 4K sports feeds ever come available. I'll replace my current 1080 projector, and you know what...the screen will still be 8 ft away from the seating area and the screen will look stunning.

 

[thekev]

Truth be told, it's kind of a sloppy, brute force way to go about changing screen element sizes.

It is. I suspect part of it is an issue of standardization. Proliferation of higher resolution displays would help. My interest lies predominantly in being able to paint with a higher resolution screen. It's really nice to be able to be able to paint on something where the screen dpi meets that of printed media. It's also nice that we are getting to a point where images and video can be appreciated at high resolutions on some consumer devices. I do expect it to fully catch on with larger displays. 1920x1200 on a 24" is tolerable and available. It's not ideal though. Even with the difference in viewing distances, the pixels are much more obvious compared to an iphone.

 

[cambox]

And people are saying this is the year of 4k? Sad!