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Comment by BugsJustFindMe | Hacker News Reader

> I'm still waiting to be able to buy a 2000 ppi display like IBM's R&D announced creating back in the late 1990s or so...

You're not thinking of this and mistakenly adding an extra 0, are you? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_T220/T221_LCD_monitors#His...

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They were right. Retina displays aren’t even the high PPI ones anymore. They are the equivalent of second generation laser printers.

> They were right.

Who was right about what?

> They are the equivalent of second generation laser printers.

What does this even mean?

Roentgen and Retina displays are in the neighborhood of 200 ppi, which is about when laser printers became 'clear' and legible, which was the thesis behind Roentgen.

But now you've got smart phones pushing in the region of 400 PPI. It's smoother, and make Apple displays look like laggards. But they're beyond the point where most eyes notice the difference without magnification.

The PPI required for the "Retina" effect is largely dependent on viewing distance, which is why Apple vary the PPI according to the device, they aren't a blanket ~200 PPI as you suggest.

The Apple Watch and most iPhones (including the original Retina display on the iPhone 4) are around 300-400 PPI, with the X being 458. Only Apple's "Retina" laptop/iMac displays have been around 220, which normally looks great given the increase in the viewing distance.

Wikipedia has a pretty nice breakdown of the PPI of all Retina displays Apple has shipped:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Retina_Display

Higher dpi maybe required for those kids these days whom hold their phones a few centimeters / inches from their eyes. I call it sera rubens myopia, Latin for glowing myopia.

But now you've got smart phones pushing in the region of 400 PPI. It's smoother, and make Apple displays look like laggards.

I think Apple displays look completely fine (much better than average, in fact, since they focus so much on color accuracy).

The ridiculous Android PPI arms race is one reason why iPhones are way ahead in all performance benchmarks. What's the point of all those extra pixels you can't even see if the GPU can barely manage to fill them?

There is a lot more to screen quality than PPI. Color fidelity, refresh rates, etc. Retina was great when other displays weren't, now that most devices have retina level displays going beyond that level isn't adding as much as making sure your color reproduction is accurate and your device can update the screen in a rate fast enough that animations don't judder.

I will say I'm perfectly happy with the PPI on Apple devices. If I seemed to be condoning the people chasing numbers to increase sales, that wasn't my intention.

I do joke though that some day Apple will introduce iGlasses, which will be AR glasses with electronically adjustable refractive indexes. When it detects a smartphone in front of your field of view it will zoom in 2x and do image stabilization so you can see your 500 ppi screen.

Like a high tech version of the computers in Brazil...

1G started in 1976 with the IBM 3800 at 240 dpi.

HP’s first 2G laser (LaserJet w/ Canon CX engine) was 300 dpi in 1984.

Also I had a 600 dpi LJ 4 which was released in 1992.

Thanks for clarifying the laser printer thing. The connection was super unclear. Now who was right, and what were they right about?

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