[UniversalTruth]

Originally Posted by homerdog

It looks perfect with black levels

This is due to its "naturally darker image" which is generally considered as a disadvantage not advantage. Next to the other disadvantages of that technology including heat, price, size, etc..

This discusion is intrusive unless you find a way to build tablets, notebooks, even consumer computer displays using it...

[Blazkowicz]

no problem, here's a laptop with a plasma display

[Grall]

Heh, I remember an even earlier Toshiba laptop that had twin 3.5" floppy drives (no harddrive at all!) and a "slimline" (for its time) chassis. It might have been a plasma display on that one as well, I can't quite recall. Black/yellow monochrome is a possibility, although could have been monochrome LCD as well maybe. Not sure there were large-ish (around 9-10 inches?) dot matrix LCDs in the second half of the 80s.

Gods, laptops were insanely expensive back then. NiCd cells for batteries as well. Yummy stuffs, and memory effect... Ungkh.

[Davros]

back in the day, I used to work on a green screen terminal and I had a black mesh screen filter that was great for improving contrast and black levels, I wonder if they would work today

[Blazkowicz]

there were machines with like four lines, 40 column unlit LCD, with tremendous battery life from a pair of AA batteries. "BASIC calculators", then "organizers" or whatever you call them, "handheld computers" maybe.

the lack of networking helped. also if any additional storage is available it might be a memory card with 16KB S-RAM. never got to play with such a computer but they look fun. closest modern thing in term of battery life should be e-book readers, which do have a "retina" display of some sort but I'm wary of the slow e-ink.

would it be reasonable to make an unlit, high dpi monochrome LCD these days?

[Dooby]

Just went and messed with a new mac book pro. In less than a minute, found a load of places in the UI that arent full DPI yet. Looks so bad when it doesn't look good. 15" screen is far too small too, hadn't realised. Nice idea Apple, but poorly implemented. Wake me up when I can get a 4K 30" screen.

[ERP]

Mine finally showed up and I'm pretty happy with it.
Text is really nice, if you've seen a Gen3 iPad next to an IPad 2 it's a similar difference, the only downside at this point is a few pieces of software don't support it, notably Chrome, though I guess the Canary build has it fixed.
Parallels is also still running everything at 1/2 res, though you can select native resolution, Windows 7 isn't really designed to work well with that level of DPI.
I spend 90% of my time in a text editor anyway, and it looks good.

[Mize]

Originally Posted by homerdog

Yeah. My friend has a Samsung D8000 64 inch plasma. It looks perfect with black levels, as in I can't tell if the screen is on or not if you cover up the power LED

I've seen LED backlit LCDs produce the same effect, but
A) The ones with local dimming are ridiculously expensive.
B) Even the ones with local dimming don't look as good as a nice plasma. IMO of course.

Plus the nicest LCDs can't do a starry night sky very well. You might say that's a pathological case, but many of my favorite movies happen to take place beyond the boundaries of Earth's atmosphere

In general, I don't really know the reason why plasma TVs look better to me. Even the shitty ones.

Plasma TVs look better for the same reason Super AMOLED black levels look so good. When a pixels is OFF it's actually OFF whereas LCD has to block the light that is always being emitted. Newer regionally-lit LED backlights do better for LCD, but it cannot approach the black of Plasma or OLEDs.

[Scott_Arm]

Originally Posted by ERP

...
I spend 90% of my time in a text editor anyway, and it looks good.

That's one expensive text editor

[Arwin]

Originally Posted by Scott_Arm

That's one expensive text editor

Yeah well, even if nothing else but text benefitted on the iPad 3, I'd still pay the premium for it. You easily forget how much time you spend looking at text on these things ...

Also, if you show people the right thing, they'll all notice, like the digital version of the newspaper that I get, or any other text-heavy thing, stands out immediately.

That's not to say that photos don't stand out either - it's quite amazing.

[ERP]

Yep I think the IPad3's killer app is the PDF reader, I can actually read an academic paper without having to scroll all over the place.

Purty text is worth a lot to me, you'd be surprised how much of your time you spend looking at it.

[Scott_Arm]

Originally Posted by ERP

Yep I think the IPad3's killer app is the PDF reader, I can actually read an academic paper without having to scroll all over the place.

Purty text is worth a lot to me, you'd be surprised how much of your time you spend looking at it.

Oh, I'm not disagreeing with any of this. I just poking fun.

[Randomoneh]

Yeah, Retina doesn't mean it matches the limit of normal, healthy human eyes.

This is confirmed by numerous tests by NHK and others where angular resolution limit was ~200 pixels per degree (apparent pixel size ~0.3 arcminutes) compared to 60 pixels per degree for "Retina".

[Grall]

While healthy eyes (which mine don't quite qualify as anymore, unfortunately) can resolve smaller details, you don't percieve pixels on a "retina" display as discrete pixels. Characters and on-screen graphics appears as completely smooth, print-quality, if looked at from a proper viewing distance.

This is what Apple didn't always say but should have said. It's easier and simpler to explain to people to simply pull a fast one and say the display matches (or even exceeds) the eye's retina. Apple is good at exaggeration, then again, so are many other corporations as well.

[(((interference)))]

I'm looking to get one of these and run Windows 8 on it.

Anyone done that already?

I have pretty good eyesight so I shouldn't have too many problems with Windows' and Windows apps lack of proper scaling for the display. I'm thinking running it in native res with 125% DPI scaling would be alright?

[ERP]

I've run Win7 like that and it's acceptable.

[(((interference)))]

Yeah, I don't think the scaling issues would be too much of a problem unless you set the DPI really high like to 200 or something (making it look like a 1440x900 display).

Otherwise I could guess I could just move across to Mac, but I just got CS6 for Windows and don't really want to run that in Parallels or any of the other nifty Windows software that isn't available on Mac.

I'm looking to get the 512GB SSD version; would you know how much disk space is available for use out of the box(and not taken up by the OS). I want to know how much space I can allocate to the Windows partition (probably as much as I can get away with).

Also, this is going to be a desktop replacement like my current Dell XPS and so it'd mostly be sitting on my desk.

I know the Macbooks have some fancy adaptive charging tech for the batteries, is this smart enough to stop charging the batteries when they are full and let the Macbook use power from the adaptor rather than the batteries constantly being drained and recharged when plugged in.
Which means i'll have to remember to unplug the MacBook and let the battery drain to give it a full recharge cycle to avoid wearing out the battery?

One other thing, does Apple release updated Boot Camp drivers (for example will it release new drivers to support Windows 8?) if can you update the drivers on the Windows partition after a Boot Camp install or only before you partition the SSD to create the Windows install? (ie so i'm better waiting off til Apple updates the drivers to officially support Windows 8 before I setup Boot Camp Windows)

[Pressure]

Originally Posted by (((interference)))

Yeah, I don't think the scaling issues would be too much of a problem unless you set the DPI really high like to 200 or something (making it look like a 1440x900 display).

Otherwise I could guess I could just move across to Mac, but I just got CS6 for Windows and don't really want to run that in Parallels or any of the other nifty Windows software that isn't available on Mac.

I'm looking to get the 512GB SSD version; would you know how much disk space is available for use out of the box(and not taken up by the OS). I want to know how much space I can allocate to the Windows partition (probably as much as I can get away with).

Also, this is going to be a desktop replacement like my current Dell XPS and so it'd mostly be sitting on my desk.

I know the Macbooks have some fancy adaptive charging tech for the batteries, is this smart enough to stop charging the batteries when they are full and let the Macbook use power from the adaptor rather than the batteries constantly being drained and recharged when plugged in.
Which means i'll have to remember to unplug the MacBook and let the battery drain to give it a full recharge cycle to avoid wearing out the battery?

One other thing, does Apple release updated Boot Camp drivers (for example will it release new drivers to support Windows 8?) if can you update the drivers on the Windows partition after a Boot Camp install or only before you partition the SSD to create the Windows install? (ie so i'm better waiting off til Apple updates the drivers to officially support Windows 8 before I setup Boot Camp Windows)

Well, Adobe can and will change the copy of Creative Suite for you, if you want it to work natively in Mac OS X.

The newest version of Boot Camp drivers works fine in Windows 8. If you are running it virtualized you don't have to worry about drivers, as VMware or Parallels will take care of that.

[(((interference)))]

Ok, I might just get Parallels instead of using Windows 8 natively - does anyone have experience with running Photoshop, or Office in Parallels/VMware?

I can't crossgrade to a Mac edition of Creative Suite since I run it on my Windows machine at work as well

[ERP]

Parallels needs a lot of memory to run well on a Mac, at least 8 GB, but if you have the memory it's pretty good.
I run office natively on the Mac, but I run VS all the time under parallels, I also occasionally run visio under parallels.
Without the memory it sucks.

[Grall]

Originally Posted by (((interference)))

I know the Macbooks have some fancy adaptive charging tech for the batteries, is this smart enough to stop charging the batteries when they are full and let the Macbook use power from the adaptor rather than the batteries constantly being drained and recharged when plugged in.

It should be, but batteries in laptops apparantly still don't really like it when you run on wall plug power constantly, and need to be charge-cycled every once in a while. Else the charge remaining indicator won't be calibrated (since li-ion batteries degrade constantly wether you use them or not.)

There's quite a procedure detailed by Apple on how to go about calibrating the battery for the older Macbook Pros, I'm not sure if it applies to the retina version though.

[Pressure]

I would recommend VMware instead of Parallels but if you really need Office and Creative Suite, I fully recommend you get the native versions.

Office is cheap and you can get the full Adobe Creative Suite for $49 a month via Adobe Creative Cloud, which doesn't care whether you use Windows or Mac. In that way, you always have access to the newest version and it is cheaper than buying a single user license of the Creative Suite.

[SimW]

was expecting a much much cooler update from apple for teh macbook!

[(((interference)))]

Originally Posted by ERP

Parallels needs a lot of memory to run well on a Mac, at least 8 GB, but if you have the memory it's pretty good.
I run office natively on the Mac, but I run VS all the time under parallels, I also occasionally run visio under parallels.
Without the memory it sucks.

All the Retinas has 8GB of RAM so that should be ok. Which version of Parallels are you running? Parallels 8 is apparently 30% faster than v7.

Originally Posted by Grall

It should be, but batteries in laptops apparantly still don't really like it when you run on wall plug power constantly, and need to be charge-cycled every once in a while. Else the charge remaining indicator won't be calibrated (since li-ion batteries degrade constantly wether you use them or not.)

There's quite a procedure detailed by Apple on how to go about calibrating the battery for the older Macbook Pros, I'm not sure if it applies to the retina version though.

Yeah, I'll look at the manual to be sure.

Originally Posted by Pressure

I would recommend VMware instead of Parallels but if you really need Office and Creative Suite, I fully recommend you get the native versions.

Office is cheap and you can get the full Adobe Creative Suite for $49 a month via Adobe Creative Cloud, which doesn't care whether you use Windows or Mac. In that way, you always have access to the newest version and it is cheaper than buying a single user license of the Creative Suite.

Really? Most people seem to think Parallels is better and it has more market share. Parallels 8 runs consistently faster than Fusion 5 too, especially in 3D performance: (Apparently, benchmarks in Geekbench with the latest versions of both titles is less than 5% off native OS X performance.)
http://www.macobserver.com/tmo/artic...hmark-showdown
http://arstechnica.com/apple/2011/10...on-4-reviewed/

I also want to run my Windows apps in coherence mode in Parallels as if they were native OS X apps, i'm not sure if Fusion 5 has the same feature.

Originally Posted by Pressure

I would recommend VMware instead of Parallels but if you really need Office and Creative Suite, I fully recommend you get the native versions.

Office is cheap and you can get the full Adobe Creative Suite for $49 a month via Adobe Creative Cloud, which doesn't care whether you use Windows or Mac. In that way, you always have access to the newest version and it is cheaper than buying a single user license of the Creative Suite.

The OS X version of Office 2013 will only come out in Oct/Nov 2013 and am currently using the Office 2013 consumer preview on my old laptop so will have to buy a version of Office within 2 months after the retail version of 2013 is released.

I can get a Office 2011 for Mac for $40 which is pretty cheap, so maybe i'll just get that.
I am a bit concerned that the Acrobat for Office from CS6 won't work with the Mac Office suite though, so maybe it'll be better to get Windows version of Office 2013 and run that virtualized together with CS6.

And I don't want to get Creative Cloud because it is far more expensive than buying a perpetual license since I can get the student version. I might consider getting a Mac version of CS when CS7 comes out but i'm not shelling out the $350 when I just got CS6 for Windows.

Alternatively, I could just go with my initial plan and run Windows 8 natively through Boot Camp and not use OS X. Though i'm a bit concerned about the spotty scaling support in Windows and Windows apps (for example Photoshop etc completely ignores the DPI scaling settings in Windows meaning it will render everything at 2880x1880 with no resizing of the GUI, making everything tiny.)

Maybe I'll just do some testing once I get the laptop, Parallels has a trial option so I can see how that compares to running Windows natively.

What are the general advantages/disadvantages with running Mountain Lion over Windows 8. I'm not familiar with Mac OS at all, compared to Windows is it less of an OS for power users? (like iOS).
I've heard about some of its idiosyncracies like apps not having a 'Save as' option so you have to copy and paste the file if you want to save it to a new folder.

[Florin]

Originally Posted by (((interference)))

Really? Most people seem to think Parallels is better and it has more market share. Parallels 8 runs consistently faster than Fusion 5 too, especially in 3D performance: (Apparently, benchmarks in Geekbench with the latest versions of both titles is less than 5% off native OS X performance.)
http://www.macobserver.com/tmo/artic...hmark-showdown
http://arstechnica.com/apple/2011/10...on-4-reviewed/

I also want to run my Windows apps in coherence mode in Parallels as if they were native OS X apps, i'm not sure if Fusion 5 has the same feature.

That's interesting and certainly merits another look at Parallels for me. Although I've been very satisfied with Fusion, and I much appreciate being able to run the same images I use in other VMware products like ESXi and Workstation, I've only little experience with 3D apps in VMs.

Fusion does support 'Unity' mode for seamless desktop integration though.