“Apple is likely to launch its new MacBook Pro lineup with a display resolution of 2880 by 1800 in the second quarter of 2012, setting a new round of competition for panel specifications in the notebook industry, according to sources in the upstream supply chain,” Yenting Chen and Steve Shen report for DigiTimes.
“While the prevailing MacBook models have displays with resolutions ranging from 1680 by 1050 to 1280 by 800, the ultra-high resolution for the new MacBook Pro will further differentiate Apple’s products from other brands,” Chen and Shen report.
Read more in the full article here.
Can’t wait for a 15″ and maybe 17″ MacBook Air or Pro with SSD, USB 3, no disk drive, and other updating. Time to be bold Tim!
USB 3? Thunderbolt.
Thunderbolt is already a given. Give me USB 3 over USB 2 any day. I use a USB 3 card in my Mac Pro and it’s great, way faster than USB 2. Unfortunately the Thunderbolt peripherals market is still woefully under marketed. Tim Cook needs to lead the way here.
I agree Jobs was great but shut too many doors, Tim needs to crack them open a little.
That would leave the competition in the dust. What visual professional wouldn’t want to be able to work with that resolution? And with pixel doubling, Macs can finally increase resolution without shrinking everything.
Would that be a New Year’s resolution, then?
I hope it is glossy only… just to drive the complainers nuts
what “sources”? I don’t like this kind of conjecture
That high resolution would be amazing but not even close to retina display resolutions.
The threshold for a “retina display” depends on the viewing distance of the observer. The angular resolution of the ideal human eye is about one arc minute at the center of the visual field and the resolution degrades rapidly towards the peripheries of vision. So the threshold at which a person loses the ability to discern individual pixels is a factor of distance. A person typically holds an iPod/iPhone closer than an iPad, and an iPad closer than a laptop.
The issue that concerns me is how the OS X environment and applications will adapt to a wide range of display resolutions. Apple has long talked about resolution independence, but has not yet fielded a general solution. For example, iOS devices are locked into a 3:2 aspect ratio and Apple has pixel-doubled to maintain square pixels and enable some level of cross-device (upwards) app flexibility. Although that is a crude and limited approach, it certainly beats the resolution fragmentation of the Android device environment.
So there!
one can hope that the GPU’s they decide to use would have enough muscle for some really awesome performance.
Maybe if Apple Removes the ODD, and has a Hybrid Blade SSD/HDD solution they would have plenty of room for a more powerful GPU, and a bigger battery
Also, it could be retina display resolutions – keep in mind that laptops are further away from your eyes then an iPhone or iPad, so it would be easier to achieve the magical “retina” resolutions required.
I think this rumor is nonsense, with the current Mac OS X Lion (which will be less than one year old in 2Q 2012). It has no provision for adjusting the size of the Menu Bar, and some other GUI elements, such as the text in dialog boxes. Some GUI elements, such as the Dock, are resolution “independent.” But other GUI elements are resolution “dependent.”
The current highest pixel density Mac display is about 130 pixels per inch. The 27-inch iMac display is more typical, and it’s about 109 PPI. And the Menu Bar is already getting uncomfortably small. If “retina” means, doubling the X and Y numbers, the Menu Bar will appear 2x smaller at “native resolution.” That would be unusable.
There may be prototype Macs with such ultra-high resolution displays, but they will NOT become actual products until the next major revision of the Mac’s OS (after Lion’s run). That’s when I think Macs will get FULL (or at least “more complete”) resolution independence, to allow those ultra-high resolution displays. So maybe 2013…
I agree. I have the 27″ connected to a 15″ MBP until (I hope) a new MP is introduced, and the size of the menu bar is right on the limit of what I’d accept on a daily basis.
Higher resolutions sound great-until you actually have to use them. I passed on the optional higher-resolution 15″ option for this reason. It might appeal to many users, but I have no desire to essentially be looking “long’ distance” from 18″-20″ away if I’m dealing with a resolution-dependent OS.
As someone who designs parts in 3D CAD, albeit in Win7 on Boot Camp, the increased resolution would be terrific, ONLY if Windows 7 handles the increased resolution with appropriate menu item sizing.
Currently Mac OSX and Win 7 handle going to higher res screens without anything that bothers me, so I trust Apple’s engineers in getting it right.
3D now often requires distinguishing pixel by pixel pick points and hopefully that would make for less zooming in and out.
Bad reporting by Digitimes. I already have a MacBook Pro that is well above 1680×1050; it is 1920×1200. That’s 30% more pixels.
I’ll snag myself one of those!