> Hi-Dpi displays are the norm these days for third party
Are they? Nearly every monitor in my company's mainly mac based office is a 1080p dell. All the monitors I personally own are 1x.
I would even go so far as to say that the majority of people who want to buy a monitor for doing text based things (ie business) will buy a bog standard monitor.
It's taken a while party because of cost and perhaps a bit more because of the horrible ways Windows and Linux deal with HiDPI. You wouldn't want heterogenous DPIs or non-integer scales on those platforms. On Linux it seems heterogenous DPI is still very experimental and ugly. On Windows some apps are buggy and others are ugly when dealing with heterogenous DPI. On Windows non integer scale does actually work, but it makes some apps size things horrifically. Needless to say Microsoft's multiple approaches to DPI scaling have made a mess, and Linux never really had a unified way of dealing with it.
If you're on a MacOS platform, with the current price of HiDPI IPS displays, the time is right to grab just about anything. If you're on Windows or Linux, it's still a great time so as long as you're keeping all monitors the same DPI and probably integer scale.
You're absolutely right, but I'd wager it's mostly because they haven't been exposed to 120Hz yet. The moment Apple introduces a 120Hz screen on their iPhones, people are going to want it everywhere. Much like HiDPI displays.
I absolutely love scrolling on 120Hz displays. It feels so much more natural when the letters aren't blurry as they move under your fingers. Indeed, the iPad Pros have the feature, but they aren't nearly as popular as iPhones. I tried on the Razer Phone, can't wait to have it on mine.
100-200 Hz displays are the next logical step for laptops and mobile phones.
Check out iPad Pro devices with 120 Hz display. It makes a big difference in readability of scrolling text (try to read a web page while it's scrolling), responsiveness and smoothness of motion.
These days even mobile phones can drive external monitors at 4k 60 Hz. I think it's reasonable to expect next gen MacBook Pros to be able to drive two 4k monitors at 120 Hz+.
And the majority of people (and businesses) won't care.
The ones that do already have "Hi-DPI terminal windows and really sharp text" as an almost-mandatory requirement.
Think about it. Sub-pixel text rendering (and AFAIK it's just text, not images w/ subpixel positioning? although that's an incredibly interesting idea for a hack!). Maybe subpixel vectors/lines?
Either you care about high-quality lines or you don't... what Apple's basically doing here is moving the cost to the hardware instead of the software, and the win is simplified, faster, less-energy-using device.
I'm not personally agreeing with Apple's decision, I'm responding to your disbelief that "hi-dpi is the norm". It's the norm for anyone who primarily uses an iPhone. It's the norm for anyone using modern MacBooks (don't make me source my dates on retina displays). It's the norm for "executive" users (ie: software developers, graphics users, finance, book editors, etc.).
If you're happy w/ a bog-standard 1080p output device, then obviously you're not "in search of" the best quality text you can get.
However, thinking it through, I would _really_ like then a "subpixel mode" for either the OS as a whole (kindof like an FSAA?), or especially certain windows. Maybe there's a way to do that as a hack?
>I'm not personally agreeing with Apple's decision, I'm responding to your disbelief that "hi-dpi is the norm". It's the norm for anyone who primarily uses an iPhone. It's the norm for anyone using modern MacBooks
That's Apple's market, not people holding on to 10 year computers. Not even those that still buy the MBA.
1x Monitor is only acceptable for gaming in my opinion. I cannot believe people are working on 200$ screens. I mean you can also code on an 80 char terminal in theory, but why would you
16:9 monitor is only acceptable for watching movies in my opinion. I cannot believe people are working on TV screens. I mean you can also code on a Commodore 64 in theory, but why would you?
Historically 16:10 monitors have had the same width as 16:9 ones (e.g. 1920×1200 vs 1920×1080) so there's no difference as far as having things side by side.
I think you're being sarcastic, but I honestly can't. I recently bought a new workstation with a $3k budget, and I regret going with a laptop because the budget wasn't enough for me to get an adequate laptop that will still perform well in 3-5 years and get nice monitors.
I was being sarcastic, but also not taking into account currency conversion rates (and possibly the availability of stuff in your country)
Regardless of that, if all you're doing is General Business™ then surely all you need to do is grab an all-in-one box, shove as much 3rd party ram in it as will fit & then nab a couple of monitors and an unbranded mechanical keyboard off amazon.
I did a lot of work on a £700(~$900) Optiplex with 16gb of ram and that was more than capable of running ubuntu on 3 monitors while being small enough to fit into a handbag
Are they? Nearly every monitor in my company's mainly mac based office is a 1080p dell. All the monitors I personally own are 1x.
I would even go so far as to say that the majority of people who want to buy a monitor for doing text based things (ie business) will buy a bog standard monitor.