One part of Apple's launch advertising was saying how the retina display has pixels so small you cannot see them by naked eye.
NOW, that only made me realize I don't get that on desktop. Thanks a lot. :( I'm now acutely aware of how fuzzy the on-screen fonts are even on a state of the art monitor (typing this on a 27" Cinema Display that's anyways way too big for my needs).
I might return this monitor - don't envy just yet...
What I really would like is a 24-25 inch non-cinema (not 16:9 ratio) monitor that shows PDFs, program code and any stuff with "retina quality" crispness.
There is none, it seems. Advice on the web seems to point at viewing from a longer distance. But I'm used to being rather close to the display. Why, oh why. Apple please make a "retina display" experience. Make it soon. :)
Addendum:
Seems Apple may be doing exactly this.
"The developer build of Lion released this week came with fresh HiDPI mode references,
suggesting that Apple may expect 200ppi+ laptop and desktop displays to become available during Lion’s lifetime."Now, a 4:1 resolution enhancement of Cinema display would make it 5120 x 2880 resolution. I think that's way beyond what DisplayPort can handle. My guess is these new displays (if/when they arrive) will use the just released Thunderbolt connection directly.
Addendum 2
I continued wondering how the Thunderbolt technology can affect display markets, and how a 5000x2000 pixel display could be implemented. Here's one way.
Thunderbolt is essentially PCI Express, and such could be used as the bus interface between the CPU and the GPU. The *display* could have the GPU.
This makes tremendous sense since with rising pixel count the data bandwidth between the CPU and the GPU will likely (I haven't calculated specifics) be way smaller than the bandwidth of pushing pixels to the screen. Make the display smart, essentially make it a display adapter card (with a display). And voilá - no PPI limitations to the forecoming future!
Things s.a. font blitting will then happen in the display. And the solution will be compatible with everything - not just OS X - since the concept of a PCI Express display adapter is OS independent. So... when can I get one? :)
