[philnotfil]

pcmag.com

Time magazine ran the headline, "What If Apple's New MacBook Pros Don't Have Retina Displays?"—implying that it would be a disaster and could be a gigantic letdown. Puh-leeze.

The reason for the super-high resolution screen is so you can get some detail on a 3.5-inch cell phone screen or on a smaller display in a cameras viewfinder. Ever since the introduction of the so-called Retina display, all we hear about is Retina this and Retina that.

The Worst Thing Ever: Retina Display
People are wild about Retina display but, in actuality, it doesn't make a big difference.

John Dvorak By John C. Dvorak
June 6, 2012 03:16pm EST
62 Comments

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Retina display magnified

Everyone seems abuzz about the possibility of a new MacBook Pro, likely to be announced next week at Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC).

Many fret that the world as we know it may end it if the new MacBooks don't have a Retina display. Cripes.

Time magazine ran the headline, "What If Apple's New MacBook Pros Don't Have Retina Displays?"—implying that it would be a disaster and could be a gigantic letdown. Puh-leeze.

The reason for the super-high resolution screen is so you can get some detail on a 3.5-inch cell phone screen or on a smaller display in a cameras viewfinder. Ever since the introduction of the so-called Retina display, all we hear about is Retina this and Retina that.

I put my AMOLED Android screen next to Apple's Retina display all the time and my display looks better. Nobody denies it. So what's the fuss and why does everyone now want this Retina display on a larger format?

I sure don't. For one thing, it would be a disaster for performance. Those extra pixels have to be addressed, you know, and since you do not want text that appears to be one pica high, a lot of effort would go into the scaling of everything. In a side-by-side comparison at a three-foot distance, it is doubtful that the Retina display on a 15-inch screen would look much different than 1920x1080.

Panasonic once asserted that at any normal viewing distance from a flat panel TV, nobody could tell the difference between 720p and 1080p unless the display was bigger than 50-inches. I'm certain, though, that all the iPhone mavens would want a Retina display TV because I hear a loud buzz demanding 4K TVs. These are sets that would typically be anywhere from 4096x1714 to 3996x2160 to 4096x3112. Really? You want that? "Yeah, man!"