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The Worst Thing Ever: Retina Display

People are wild about Retina display but, in actuality, it doesn't make a big difference.

June 6, 2012

Everyone seems abuzz about the possibility of a , likely to be announced next week at Apple's (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 ?

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!"

I suppose if you are right on top of the set, you'd notice. Of course, no broadcaster is going to invest in such gear for decades; they all hated upgrading to HD. And who's got the bandwidth for mass distribution of this sort of signal? I suppose this is all beside the point.

I expect a big Nikon or Canon SLR will eventually be geared to shoot a 24-megapixel (say 8000x3000) movie at 60 frames per second and we can all "ooooh" and "ahhh" at the beautiful movie when someone shows it on a Retina display laptop at the office.

You know, if you want genuine super-high resolution, you can go outside and look at a nature, right? I wonder if anyone realizes that anymore. Does anyone go outdoors and see a tree and remark, "Wow, look at the resolution of that bark! How many pixels do you think this is?"

I think the invention of the Retina display has made the discussion ridiculous.