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Comment by ajmurmann | Hacker News Reader

I feel that the introduction of "HD" came with some issues for computers. Previously we saw a much wider variety in screen resolutions and thus had more choices. "HD" introduced fixed resolutions that non-technical users could relate to. However, those resolutions were optimized for movies and nothing else. Ever since we are dealing with resolutions that make sense for watching movies on big TVs. For TVs and movies 3k doesn't make much sense. Nobody will try to sell you a 3k movie. There is huge marketing money spent on "4k" thus everyday Joe doesn't want to settle for "3k" even if it would be better. It's sad.

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It's sad.

It really is, thanks for bringing this up. I don't know if it's just me but most of the work I do (reading/programming/pcd design) just seems to work best fullscreen on 4:3 or similar ratios. When LCDs weren't mainstream yet you could rather easily get monitors with nice and comfortable (imo) 4:3 resolutions up to 1600x1200. Then came LCDs and the trend shortly continued (though initially at lower resolutions IIRC). Then out of nowhere (?1) came the HD trend and it became a struggle to find non-wide monitors and/or monitors with at least some vertical resolution to work with (seriously what was I supposed to do with 1024 pixels vertically?). Saddest thing is that when the average laptop/pc screen user isn't watching movies he/she is probably browsing a website. Which is the exact opposite of the screen ratio: high and small. And everywhere around the world scroll mouses were being scrolled more..

(1) I really don't know where this came from. Just pushed by the movie industrie? Seems far fetched. Screen producers? They were fine with creating 4:3 LCDs for a while so can't really be that either. Or one of the reasons is maybe that because laptops became more and more popula and due to the keyboard it it makes no sense having a non-wide screen on them?

Try your monitor in 1200x1600 mode

It comes from cheap 1080 panels being used for HDTVs. Example [1]. I bet Walmart sell a ton of these, though likely not to the HN commentariat.

And yes it does suck, but nice 16:10 aspect panels are still around, just a bit pricey.

[1] https://www.walmart.com/ip/RCA-DECG13DR-13.3-720p-60Hz-LED-H...

Yea it's one thing that Apple really did a great thing by branding things as "Retina". It let them avoid a lot of the HD vs 4k vs Full HD marketing buzzwords and sell people something that makes more sense for the device.

you're kidding, right? retina itself is a buzzword and literally means "high pixel density"

Yeah but MBP owners are convinced they have the best screen on the market now because "It's a retina screen" when PC laptops are shipping with 4K and the "retina screen" is 3K.

Inspired branding from Apple

I thought apple owners were convinced they had the best anything anyway?

In this case, it sort of is the best. 4K laptop screens are significantly over 200ppi, which is kind of a waste of you're displaying it to an actual human being at a typical viewing distance. And in return, you get a massive decrease in battery life.

So Apple's screen is "good enough" in resolution, but uses significantly less battery. And as I understand it, has top-end color reproduction and gamut range.

retina itself is a buzzword and literally means "high pixel density"

No, 'Retina' means that the pixel density exceeds what the eye can distinguish at the expected viewing distance.

IMO, it's a much smarter way to market than 1080p, 4k, 5k, etc. since it has real meaning to the consumer instead of chasing what may be arbitrary specs.

It actually makes even more sense for customers than the xHD specs. Retina means mostly double the resolution (per dimension). So it's relative. And across all Mac devices it stands for a good image quality. Compared to that HD/FHD/UHD/... are all absolute. And even though FHD is great on a Smartphone or 8" Tablet you wouldn't consider it a brilliant image quality on a 15" notebook anymore in 2017.

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