Why is it we have amazing 16:10 2560-by-1600 in a 10" tablet but commonplace laptops (13-15") rarely surpass 1680x1050 or even worse 1366x768? Sometimes, on high-end models, you can pay an extra $200 to "upgrade" to 1920x1080 (I'll leave my rant about 16:10 vs. 16:9 for another time).
> Why is it we have amazing 16:10 2560-by-1600 in a 10" tablet but commonplace laptops (13-15") rarely surpass 1680x1050 or even worse 1366x768?
Because Windows and Windows apps don't support resolution-independent UI scaling.
> Sometimes, on high-end models, you can pay an extra $200 to "upgrade" to 1920x1080
Because they know they can rip you off, and because it's a lot more expensive to produce high resolution displays (or rather, displays of any resolution) when they're being produced in small quantities.
> Because Windows and Windows apps don't support resolution-independent UI scaling.
This is not true. Windows has had very good support for custom resolutions since Vista. Windows 7 actually looks great when set to higher resolution. Windows applications is another story, but the number of DPI aware applications is growing http://www.rw-designer.com/DPI-aware
"Windows," if defined as "the windowing library", does. Even Explorer doesn't work correctly at 200% DPI scaling (you get a tiny nav bar and a really long search bar). It's junk.
What's worse is that VS2012 is nearly unusable because IntelliSense explodes all over the screen. I have many sads when I have to deal with that on my rMBP.
I want to know what applications are already DPI-aware and could run on say...a Retina MacBook Pro running bootcamp and Windows 8. As far as I can tell, there are no such apps yet, even Microsoft's own Office. But I would be happy to be corrected!
> Because Windows and Windows apps don't support resolution-independent UI scaling.
I upgraded my HP 17" laptop panel to 1920 x 1200 (bought less than $200 on ebay 2 years ago). That was on Windows 7. I don't notice any visual issues. Just upgraded to Windows 8 and all Windows apps look just fine too. So applications aren't real issues here.
> Because Windows and Windows apps don't support resolution-independent UI scaling.
If I'm not mistaken the new, formerly known as "Metro", UI is vector based and any applications built with the WPF which includes all Windows 8 GUI based applications (at least the non-html one's) are of course vector based so it's simply up to the designer/developer to scale it however they want.
Not completely true. The metro app developer will still have to include pixel art at varying resolutions since these do not scale automatically very well.
Larger screens are much more expensive to produce than small screens unless the defect rate is very low. For this reason new LCD technologies are always perfected on smaller screens before migrating to larger screens.
Because of the leading desktop operating systems, only Apple has started to divorce screen resolution from UI element sizes, and even that support is half-assed.
People are giving you software answers, but I think the answer is actually about hardware. Monitor manufacturers realized they could brand their screens as "1080p HD" to match them up to the TV marketing pitch. Why bother trying to make a screen with 1600 vertical pixels when you can just use that magic word, 1080p?
My 15" laptop has native resolution of 2880x1800 (though I typically use it scaled to 1920x1200). It did cost a lot, though, so despite being a best-selling model it may not be 'commonplace'.
Apple's Retina displays (in the new Macbook Pros) have very high resolutions. The latest Macbook Pros have either 2560x1600 or 2880x1800 native resolution, depending on when you bought it.
@merrit - Because it has not been a focus of laptop manufacturers. Instead the focus has been faster CPU's or bigger hard drives. Going premium on the display, means you have to cut on something else to deliver the laptop at the same, and I don't think Intel is going to cut on their CPU prices anytime soon. In some laptops, Intel's chips take up to 40% of the BOM price. That leaves little wiggle room for experimenting with high quality displays.
The good news is that the popularity of high resolution tablets will also force laptop makers into a trend with higher resolutions, too. Asus for example is one of the leaders of this trend, and has even 11.6" laptops with 1920x1080 resolution.
My eyesight isn't great, but I can't tell the difference between the resolution on my "retina" devices and resolution on other screens. Can most people tell the difference?
If not, this marketing and competition on resolution may be distracting us from issues that have a bigger impact on our usage experience.
I'm 20/40, and it strike me as amazing up close. Desktop distance -- not so much. I have a 27" iMac, and I can barely tell there are pixels. But since iPhone 4, it's been Retina all the way. The Retina 4G iPad arguably changed my life. All of a sudden I can have a full page of a pdf in bed, triple-clicked to negative color, and the text is still perfect. Naturally as soon as the Retina macbook came out, I was in heaven: I can line up two full-width documents, read one and type another (usually one is in LibreOffice, the other is in Papers or Chrome, but emacs is behind LibreOffice).
So with a briefcase full of Retina, I'm quite happy. But the 27" iMac still feels like the most spacious screen. The other thing the Apple hardware has going for it is that I can tether my MacBook to my iPad's 4G network via bluetooth, so the iPad doesn't even have to come out of the briefcase to be incredibly useful, and saves me having to have another data plan. I note the Nexus 10 does not come in a 4G model. That seems crazy to me.
I have slightly worse than 20/20 vision and I see a huge difference. The retina iPad that I had was amazingly clear compared to my 1600x900 17" laptop screen and my 1200x800 tablet. I recently looked at both the retina macbook and an asus 13" ultrabook in best buy last week. The macbook retina's screen was noticably sharper than the asus' 1080p screen, but 1080p on a screen that size still looks absolutely amazing. I would honestly be happy with either one.
Actually 16Gb storage is not enough considering the pixmaps for games etc. will now eat a lot more space. I hit the same issue with my 16Gb iPad 3.
This being Android, I'm a bit disappointed that it does not appear to have a microSD slot. There is also a relatively heavy premium for 16Gb more internal flash.
The rationale for ditching microsd slots is that different volumes (mount points) for the built-in flash and the microsd flash complicates the UI, and creates dissatisfaction when someone runs out of space on one while having plenty of space on the other.
The modern usage pattern seems to be get enough built-in storage for what you want to do, then use wifi or usb to transfer stuff between the device and the cloud or a desktop with a larger collection of media.
This is actually a feature of HN. There is a "cool-down" timer between when you make a post and when people can respond to it. It increases exponentially with the level of nesting. The idea is to discourage flame wars by forcing people to think a bit before replying.
I actually think this is a pretty effective strategy. However, it does impede productive discussions and conversations, sometimes. Oh well, c'est la vie.
But instead of waiting, people just reply in the wrong place which both defeats the purpose and makes threads harder to read. I can't think of any better solution, though.
To expand on tikhonj's comment, you can circumvent this "feature" by clicking on the "link" link next to someone's comment - that will allow you to reply to them regardless of the "cool-down" timer.
