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Comment by FirmwareBurner | Hacker News Reader

16:9 displays were inevitable due to the economies of scale form the TV industry. It's a shame they had to be 1366x768 for so long.

I remember many eons ago in the last 2000s to early 2010s when I wanted a 16:10 monitor for my PC and the price difference between 1920x1080 and 1920x1200 or between 2560x1440 and 2560x1600 was massive, that it made no sense to get the few extra vertical pixels of the 16:10 unless you were loaded and money was no issue.

Even 4k 16:9 monitors a few years after launch, were cheaper than 16:10 2560x1600 ones which have already been on the market far longer. Crazy.

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There was a narrow window when TV and monitor products used the same panels.

TVs got bigger very quickly after LCD took over-- there were a few years where they had ~22-25" sets as the small "dorm room" size models, but you walk into Best Buy and there's barely anything smaller than 32" now.

Conversely, mainstream desktop screens didn't get much above 27" before you started going exotic, so the typical monitors you're putting on a million desktops are not using the same panels as TVs.

I suppose you could say that a "master glass" could be cut into 16:9 panels for both TVs and monitors, but wouldn't it require the two panel sizes to use the same pixel density?

>I suppose you could say that a "master glass" could be cut into 16:9 panels for both TVs and monitors, but wouldn't it require the two panel sizes to use the same pixel density?

Also they shared the same COGs(chip-on-glass) to drive the TFT panels. That's why laptops had the same HDTV 1366x768 resolutions.

We’re talking 13 to 15-inch screens in laptops. I do not believe for one second that there were economies of scale in those screens in the 2010s with those sizes. People were not buying 13-inch TVs more than they were buying laptops. What happened is that desktops switched to 16:9 for economies of scale and the manufacturers switched on laptops for marketing purposes.

Look at how Apple never went 16:9 except for one model, the 11-inch MacBook Air.

>I do not believe for one second that there were economies of scale in those screens

It's irrelevant what you believe if you're wrong. Laptop LCD displays can be cut form the same master glass as TV LCD displays more economically if they share the same aspect ratio and also share the same COGs(chip-on-glass) that drive the exact same TV resolutions 1366x768 and 1920x1080.

>Look at how Apple never went 16:9 except for one model, the 11-inch MacBook Air.

Apple never competed on the price war. For them, $5 extra on the BOM didn't matter at their margins compare to the likes of Acer/Asus/etc.

I call BS on that, as Macbooks somehow always kept being 16:10. In fact you could easily buy 16:10 panels, I know because for many years I upgraded old 16:10 Thinkpads with modern displays.

Nothing what I said is BS, the price differences on external 16:10 monitors were significantly more expensive than 16:9 ones. Look it up.

> old 16:10 Thinkpads with modern displays.

Yes you're talking about the really old 16:10 ones from the mid to late 2000s, right before they switched to 16:9 cause they were cheaper to make due to the HD TV era. Add then today they switched back to 16:10.

So no, it's no BS that scale allows for much cheaper products, but Apple could stick to 16:10 since they never catered to cheap and it would probably cost them more in SW dev and tooling to reengineer their OS GUI and chassis for 16:9 than to keep the production lines as is since their product line back then had like 3 laptops total.

And maybe start with good faith before screaming BS. No need to be rude just because people have different opinions and experiences than you.

And worth mentioning that Apple, unlike most PC manufacturers, don't have 100 different models, with 20 different configurations of each model lying around. Their 13" laptop has always had the same 2560x1600 resolution (until recently).

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