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Comment by electrograv | Hacker News Reader

This may be a bit off-topic, but I have to wonder why I see laptop screens with much higher resolution than desktop monitors. It just seems so backwards (in terms of practical use) that as screen size increases, the screen resolution seems to decrease. So now in many ways most desktop rigs are inferior to a 15" laptop as far as productivity goes.

My intuition for the cause, is that the more surface area of the screen, the harder it is to consistently manufacture the panels without defects. But I'm not convinced because I'd imagine such incredibly high resolutions on laptop panels must be pretty demanding technology as well.

I just want 2880x1880 30" monitors for my office :)

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I don't think that really holds. I had a cheap 2048x1152 23" monitor in 2009. Excepting very rare 2048x1536 15" laptop displays, it was comparable in pixel count to the previously-top 1920x1200 laptop resolution. The iMacs have had a 2560x1440 27" option since 2009 and I'd expect the next update to go higher. There have been 2560x1440 or similar 30" displays for a while, my boss was using one in early 2009 or so, 2880x1880 or higher can't be far off.

Since you're comparing with "most desktop rigs", you should also remember that most 15" laptops are 1280x800 or 1440x900.

you should also remember that most 15" laptops are 1280x800 or 1440x900.

Today, most are the appalling 1366x768. I have to give Apple major points for sticking with decent resolutions and 16:10.

I love when this gets brought up because Apple was one of the first to move from 4:3 to 16:10 in the first place.

You want to sell more monitors than your competitors. Do you a) advertise a higher resolution and DPI than them or b) advertise a larger screen? B has been winning out nearly every time, as most consumers will either not care/understand about the DPI, or will understand the resolution but subconsciously think better of the monitor which is larger.

However, with laptops, you can only keep making them so big (and indeed, it seems that the 17″ MacBooks are getting axed). Similar to phones, the only innovation that makes sense in this market is to increase DPI.

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