Journal Yaztromo's Journal: Can the new iBook replacements really have a 13" widescreen? 4
The rumour sites have been rife with reports about the upcoming Intel-based replacements for Apple's iBook series laptops, including reports that it will have a 13.3" widescreen display.
In particular, ThinkSecret is reporting that the new "MacBook" will have a 13.3" display that runs at a maximum resolution of 1280 x 720. Now assuming square pixels, that would indeed make it a 16 x 9 display.
However, while many people gush over these numbers, no site breaks them down to something actually meaningful -- the actual display dimensions this would entail. So I decided to do the calculations myself. Thanks to Pythagoras and his theorem, we get:
- (16x)^2 + (9x)^2 = 13.3^2
- 256x^2 + 81x^2 = 176.89
- 337x^2 = 176.89
- x^2 = 0.52
- x = 0.72
- 16x = 11.6
- 9x = 6.5
So, if the rumour sites are correct, the new displays will be 11.6 inches wide, but only 6.5 inches tall! (or, for those of us in metric countries, 29.5cm x 16.5cm).
The result would be a laptop that would be quite long and thin (unless the top and bottom have significantly thicker bevels than the current ~0.5" bevels Apple favours) -- it would measure something like 12.5" by 7.5". Quite an odd shape and size for a laptop. I suppose I could see myself using a laptop with a display only 6.5" tall if the system was tiny, but being oughly an inch shorter than my current 12" PowerBook AND about two inches wider? I'm used to working on a 16 x 9 display (a 23" Apple Pro Cinema display), but that just seems weird on a laptop at such a small scale. Personally, I'd rather have a 4 x 3 display, and simply have black bars for those times when I'm playing digital video (with a high enough resolution to permit 720p playback without the need for scaling). I suppose we'll just have to see if what Apple finally announces matches up with what the rumour sites are feeding us (it wouldn't be the first time they've been wrong...).
Yaz.
This is why ... (Score:2)
This is why "widescreen" laptop screens are a ripoff. They offer fewer pixels for a higher price. You end up losing almost half your effective display area for any actual work (the screen menu bar, your app's menu bar, the various toolbars, the status bar - widescreen means they take up proportionately more.
Shakespeare had it almost right - "first we line up the lawyers - then the marketers.'
Re:This is why ... (Score:2)
They are also really poor for working with page-based data. Viewing a letter-formated page or an A4 formatted page means either having fewer lines of text, or for a full-page view, a much smaller viewing area with a lot of horizontal screen waste.
Again, the rumour sites may be wrong. And perhaps these conceptual problems won't seem so big if/when I actually see an Apple machine with such a display, but I remain skeptical.
Yaz.
Re:This is why ... (Score:2)
Re:This is why ... (Score:2)
You won't get any arguments from me there -- as I pointed out, at the office I sit in front of an Apple 23" Pro Cinema Display [apple.com], and I absolutely love it. If I had the extra cash laying around for one, I'd buy myself the 20" model for use with my PowerBook at home. Being able to have all of that extra screen real estate to monitor other processes and applications is wonderful (and I am running dual monitor as well, although the second display is just a standard 4:3 Dell LCD display).
I guess my problem is