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Widescreen iBook?
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I doubt the 12 inch model will be dropped. Some people find a 12 inch notebook the easiest to use and carry, for example.jeriqo said:
wrldwzrd89 said:
The only way I see the 12 inch line getting dropped (in both the iBook and PowerBook series) is if Apple moves to an even more compact portable, perhaps a 10.4" or I suppose a 13.3" could also ''replace'' the 12 inch. It wouldn't be wise for Apple to have two or three seperate models of ultra-portable notebooks, to costly considering the sales for each model in that size would be cut in half relative to current 12" sales (assuming general consumer drift of 50% to new product size).
I have a 12 inch, love it and would buy one again and again. There are others who feel the same way, Apple knows it. Ultra-ports aren't going anywhere but (perhaps) smaller and more powerful in the future, don't worry.
When displayed on a 4:3 CRT, it doesn't produce square pixels (which is probably what you really wanted to say.) On an LCD panel, they can manufacture it to whatever dimension they want and produce square pixels from any resolution.jeriqo said:
Microsoft didn't invent it. It was used on workstations before any PC owner could afford a video card with such a capability.jeriqo said:
shamino said:
Regardless if it is on a LCD panel manufactured to a given size, 1280 divided by 1024 yields a result of 1.25, which is 5:4, NOT 4:3 which is what jeriqo was referring to I believe.
I really don't care about widescreen or not. I just want more pixels than 1024x768. With today's software, it's just not enough. For some apps, it doesn't even leave you enough room to display the entire menu bar!Mitthrawnuruodo said:
True, but does anybody really care if a laptop's panel is 5:4 instead of 4:3? It's not like you're going to be showing TV broadcasts on it. As long as the pixels are square, nothing else should matter.efoto said:
(Unless you're doing HD video work - then you need enough pixels to display it without scaling or scrolling. But nobody is going to be doing that on an iBook.)
shamino said:
It does get really annoying when you have to start vertically stacking horizontal menu bars...pretty pathetic in some regards. Then again, you did purchase a 12 for ultra portability, some sacrifices come with it. I am willing to live them, but everyone has different limits.
Edit: 1000th post, wooty woot woot.
At 1024 dots across (the size of current iBooks), a 12" screen (9.6" wide) is 106.67 pixels per inch. At 1280 dots across, it's 133.33 dots per inch.iPoster said:1280x1024 on a 12" display? Hope it would come with a magnifying glass so you can read the fonts in applications, and identify the icons...
Which isn't much different from what I run my desktop screens at home - 2048x1536 on a 20" display (128 dpi) and 1600x1200 on a 17" display (125 dpi).
When you consider the fact that LCD displays are much sharper than CRTs, this hypothetical 12" display should be easier to use than what I use right now.
shamino said:
Agreed, I was simply proving jeriqo's point that 1280x1024 is not 4:3 no matter which screen you put it on....if the screen is 4:3 and stetches it perhaps, but then it really isn't 1280x1024 anymore.
I personally don't care if my screen is 4:3 or 5:4 or 16:9 or whatever, it could prove a little annoying getting custom-made wallpapers to gel nicely with new sizes (lots of re-cropping and re-downloading in some cases) because it won't look good if you take a 1024x768 wallpaper and stretch it, at least I hate how that looks....I can't stand blurry stretched wallpapers.
shamino said:
Right, but you are not running those monitors are ''native'' resolutions. A 20" LCD runs native at 1600x1200. I personally prefer to over-res too, I like things smaller and seeing more, but it isn't native on LCDs and over-resing makes images look horrid on an LCD. A CRT is a different story, but last I checked the CRT-PowerBooks were out of stock
That may be what they're saing today, but I suspect the reason for widescreen movies is far more mundane than that.BlizzardBomb said:
A 4:3 movie (or more precisely, 1.37:1 - what 35mm film uses when there's a soundtrack present) fills the photographic negative. As such, a projector with normal lenses will project a 4:3 image on a screen.
This is no big deal for home movies or small theaters - a 4:3 screen will pretty much fill the back wall of the theater.
But with large theaters, the back wall is much wider - because there are more seats in the room. But you can't magnify a 4:3 movie to cover the entire wall, because it will end up running onto the floor and ceiling.
Widescreen ratios (whether done via wider film (like 70mm), matting, or anamorphic lenses) solve this problem. The movie can now cover the width of the back wall of the theater, making for a more pleasurable viewing experience.
Of course, when shown in smaller theaters, it isn't that great, since you now have lots of unused screen space on the top and bottom. Which is why movies are sometimes released in multiple aspects to different theaters. This was particularly easy back when everybody used a soft-matte process (where the movie is full-frame 35mm and the projector masks off the top and bottom edges.)
These monitors are CRTs. I'm talking about my desktop systems.efoto said:
You're right that laptops look best at the LCD's native resolution.
True. If the image has more pixels than the panel, stuff has to get dropped, and it looks terrible.efoto said:
But going the other direction (hi-res LCD and lower-res image) isn't necessarily a problem. I've seen some displays (like Apple's and some of Dell's) where the results are great. I've seen others where it's painful.
In other words, I think it would work fine to put a high-resolution panel into a 12" laptop. Those who think the native resolution is too high can lower it. If the display is designed properly, this shouldn't cause any major problems.
shamino said:
I misunderstood you at first, I get your point now. We are argueing the same, I just suck at it
I agree that a high-res panel in the portables would be welcome because dropping down (preserving the aspect ratio) usually looks fine on LCDs that are of decent quality but going up looks aweful. As soon as you said those resolutions for those size monitors I knew you were speaking CRT, just not going to happen on LCD.
I would think a 1280x1024 (or modified for widescreen, whatever they choose) would be pretty sweet now that I think about it more.
shamino said:
Maybe Microsoft didn't invent it, but problem is, most users having a 17 inch 4:3 monitor under windows use 1280x1024 resolution.. which does not produce square pixels.
Even worse, I've seen 4:3 LCD panels with default resolution at 1280x1024.
And finally, 5:4 is even less "wide" than 4:3.. so who wants it anyway..
True. Which is why I've tweaked many Linux/XFree86 configurations to generate 1360x1024, which does have square pixels.jeriqo said:
Or if I'm on Windows, where I don't have this option, I adjust the monitor to compress the image so that the pixels are square. Everything looks a little letterboxed, but it's quite useable.
Yeah, that's a pretty bad idea.jeriqo said:
A 12" laptop with a 4:3 screen has 9.6" of horizontal space. A 5:4 screen in the same kind of laptop would also have 9.6" of horizontal space. The display will be just as wide as before. It will simply be a little taller, which really isn't a problem.jeriqo said:
More pixels in both dimensions means you can see more on-screen, regardless of the proportions.
Macosxrumors.com is speculating about the future of the ibook, and does not mention widescreen. However, they discuss upgrading the graphics card to a Mobility 9600, in order ot suppord Quartz extreme. But if this is true, then the ibook is still lacking support for coreimage... Thoughts? I would hate to see the ibook revision still leaving the graphics card lacking.... Though 512 mb standard memory would be nice!
shamino said:
I agree however one could also argue that a ''little taller'' which you mention would be a very bad thing in portables, specifically I think the 12 inch model. Having the same width as current but adding length towards the users (effective on the keyboard/palmrest area) would make the portable look a little strange IMO. I like the current setup, and I wouldn't mind the screen to be a little taller, but I would want wider with it too. Doing both of those, the logical step is to move to a larger computer, because essentially that is what would happen if I increased both width and height dimensions.
Like I said, I enjoy my 12 and prefer it just how it is. If they want to put in a higher-res panel then great, as long as it can be but down to 1024x768 and look good, I doubt they would get any complaints from old or new users. The option for high-res would be nice, but making it standard might piss a lot of people off, not everyone prefers to squint.
Either they or you have it mixed up. The iBook's current graphics card supports Quartz Extreme just fine. A Mobility 9600 would support (hardware-accelerated) Core Image as well as Quartz Extreme.Aaon said:
Well, considering that the Radeon 9600 series is CoreImage compatible, and the GeForce 5200 is not, that pretty much says it all for me.dietcokevanilla said:
Sorry. New models will always be better than the old models, no matter when you decide to buy.dietcokevanilla said:i just purchased a powerbook last weekend so don't want to suddenly see the ibook getting better hardware!
Toe said:
Right now... their isn;t much of difference between the iBook and The PowerBooks and I think thats one of the main reasons that we're moving to Intel. Once we get both the iBooks and the PowerBooks onto Intel processors, we will have fast widescreen iBoooks and Turbo-fast dual core PowerBooks. (Pentium M = iBook, Pentium M Yohan= PowerBooks, Sorry PPC fans, but I cant wait!
)jeriqo said:
I dont think they will, its more likely for them to drop the 14" instead of the 12. The only way that I see them droping the 12 is if they come out with a same spec TabletBook. (12" Touch Screen, 30gb HD, Combo Drive, 256mbs of Ram, 1.4GHz Pentium M)