[mmurray]

Has anyone seen the iBook screen ? Is it usable ? I know
LCD's are usually easier to read than CRT's but I find 1024 x 768 on
an iMac too hard on the eyes so I wonder about a 12" screen.
But then I use reading glasses.

What do people think ?

Michael

[jagga]

I think it depends on the refresh rate. On my imac, the refresh rate at 1024 is only 60Hz which gives me a headache. If the iBook can sport like 75Hz or higher, I dont think it will be too bad.

jagga

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[JLannoo]

Originally posted by jagga:
I think it depends on the refresh rate. On my imac, the refresh rate at 1024 is only 60Hz which gives me a headache. If the iBook can sport like 75Hz or higher, I dont think it will be too bad.

jagga

While your right that anything under 75hz is a nightmare on a CRT.
Your dealing with an LCD on the iBook. Refresh is not applicable in the manner you describe...different tech. 60hz on a flat panel is rock solid and very easy on the eyes however on a CRT that same 60hz would quickly give me and most a killer headache



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[Kalessin]

Basically, you have a higher dot density (smaller dots).

So turn up your Zoom if you need too.. but like as not, antialiasing and such features will work better on the new iBook because the individual pixels are not as noticeable.

Kalessin

[davidmd]

LCDs don't have refresh rate, since there is no electron beam racing across the screen to keep the phosphors lit. There is a backlight, which shines through the colored pixels. They are MUCH more crisp than a CRT, and I wouldn't worry about the iBook's resolution versus size. I have seen VAIOs with 10.4 inchers running at 1024x768, and it was small, but not at all straining. I know what you mean about the iMac screen, because I've used one at 1024, but seriously, I wouldn't worry about it. I think that iBook would be a great companion to my Cube... I just don't have the money now!

davidmd

[davidmd]

double post. Where did flood control go?! The temptation of the back button gets me every time!

[This message has been edited by davidmd (edited 05-02-2001).]

[tsm]

Pardon my igorance, but I have a question about screen size as well. I'm really concerned that the
ibook screen will be to small for my faulty eyes -- I just switched my imac to 1024 X 768 just to see
what it's like and it's way too small for me even on the bigger screen. I usually use 800 X 600, and
my old laptop used that screen size as well. I'm assuming it's possible to switch to 800 X 600 on the
new ibooks, too, but I don't know for sure.

Again, comments welcome, and I pardon my ignorance.

Best,
tsm.

[ibr80]

I dont care what the resolution is 12.1 is just too small.

[Frumpy]

They really should've called this the new Apple iSubook or somethin. It's a subnotebook with all of the features of a regular bulky one, for much less money. If you need a bigger screen, then go get yourself a powerbook!!!

[Joel]

Originally posted by tsm:
Pardon my igorance, but I have a question about screen size as well. I'm really concerned that the ibook screen will be to small for my faulty eyes -- I just switched my imac to 1024 X 768 just to see what it's like and it's way too small for me even on the bigger screen. I usually use 800 X 600, and my old laptop used that screen size as well. I'm assuming it's possible to switch to 800 X 600 on the new ibooks, too, but I don't know for sure.

An interesting thing is that I found that OS X looks better with higher resolutions. Aqua seems larger in OS X than Platinum does in OS 9, so the decrease in size you get is less "Ack! Where's my magnifying glass!?!" and more "Aaah.... That's better." Of course, this doesn't help people NOW unless you plan on buying and installing OS X yourself, but come July when it's shipping with OS X pre-loaded (and hopefully with more laptop friendly features), it's worth considering.

- Joel

[icruise]

I usually use 800 X 600, and
my old laptop used that screen size as well. I'm assuming it's possible to switch to 800 X 600 on the
new ibooks, too, but I don't know for sure.
______________________________

It is possible to switch, but the nature of LCD screens means that it won't look particularly goood -- text and so forth will look fuzzy. This is not something you would want to do for regular use, but is useful for a game or something that only runs in 800X600. I personally don't think the screen will be too small at all.

Increase the font size to 12 or 14 point and the iBook screen should be fine.

anyway, LCDs that apple uses seem to have a fixed refresh rate of 75hz meaning the pixels are updated 75 times persecond, but LCDs dont' flicker, because the technology is totally different. The image is solid, there is no curvature or blurring either, so it will be much sharpter than a CRT.

I think 12.1 is kinda small, but you can use a lower resolution, but then the images won't be as sharp. Increasing the font size would be enough though.

High resolution is generally a much easier thing to have usefully on LCDs than CRTs. Modern LCDs do not have a (useful to talk about) refresh rate, and they have no focus or convergence issues. If you're thinking strictly in terms of 9 and 12pt fonts, you're right that 1024x768 will be hard for many people to read simply because the characters are very small. But, keep in mind that you can change the font sizes or magnification in most apps, and the greater dot density will make these characters look much better than smaller font sizes on lower res screens. Trying high res on your iMac screen will not at all be an accurate representation of what you will see on an LCD.

Importantly, the Quartz rendering engine in OS X is _perfect_ for high-dpi displays, since it is an easy-to-scale vector-based engine. All OS X needs is a few controls for allowing more user control over general display magnification, and high resolution displays will be beautiful for all.

[itomato]

Originally posted by Joel:
An interesting thing is that I found that OS X looks better with higher resolutions. Aqua seems larger in OS X than Platinum does in OS 9, so the decrease in size you get is less "Ack! Where's my magnifying glass!?!" and more "Aaah.... That's better." Of course, this doesn't help people NOW unless you plan on buying and installing OS X yourself, but come July when it's shipping with OS X pre-loaded (and hopefully with more laptop friendly features), it's worth considering.

- Joel

That's right. For those of you in doubt who are running X and 9, take note of your resolution now. Reboot into the other, and set your resolution to be the same. OS X should look like the display is one notch down from what it really is. 1024x768 looks like 800x600, etc.

The only thing I wonder about is the font smoothing. I use a CRT, but I was looking at [yuck]Win ME[/yuck] on an LCD yesterday, with it's 'Clear Type' thing on, and the text was nearly unreadable. There are differences, granted. But still...



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Hi mmurray,

If you find looking at 1024*768 difficult please don't buy the iBook without testing it in person once, i am young and can take the strain but i know my parents have a huge problem and i canot even imagine how it must feel.

Please take time to investigate the ne iBook before purchasing it. I don't think i would enjoy using a screen that small

[HeatMiser]

Originally posted by ibr80:
I dont care what the resolution is 12.1 is just too small.

Too small for what? For you? It's not too small for the hundreds of thousands who've bought the current iBook, or for the millions who've bought laptops with the same screen size from other boxmakers.



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Antialiased (smoothed) fonts don't look great on an LCD screen - the pixels are square and crisp, which unfortunately works against smoothing (as well as photographic images and most of the design touches in Aqua). This is because antialiasing is done with grey or desaturated colour pixels added at the edges of objects. I generally turn off font smoothing on Powerbooks and desktop LCDs. As for images, the fineness of the pixels pretty much makes up for their squareness, so a properly scaled Aqua display ought to be excellent on this iBook.

Microsoft's "Cleartype" is a slightly different method of antialiasing that's supposed to make use of the slight misalignment of the red, green and blue elements of an LCD screen, as well as the relatively small size of the pixels on most LCDS (it's similar to the way I and others used to hand-smooth lines using the colour half-pixels on an Apple II CRT display). Unfortunately it doesn't always work out that well, because the distance between those elements varies between difference LCD panels, and is actually inverted for some relative to others (the transistors per pixel are ordered BGR instead of RGB). The best would be an intelligent melding of both methods at once that knew about the particular screen characteristics, but that's yet to appear anywhere.

This isn't really a big problem, though - most fonts look fine if you size them to the LCD in question and leave smoothing off (the exception is fonts designed explicitly to be smoothed, like Charcoal - so don't use those). You can set your display dpi in Internet Explorer, for instance, so you'd just set it to 106dpi for the iBook and all would be well (except for some slightly smaller than normal images and icons - so encourage your web site designers to use real fonts for link text, not prerendered images).

[hal4sn]

I think people are failing to take note of laptop limitations. You can't have a small laptop with a huge screen.

Not to be mean, but if you get a laptop because it's portable, then you must except the fact that you will need a external screen if you plan to do a lot of work, or suffer from eye strain.

I feel the new resolution is acceptable and you should be able to do most of your "portable" work by being used to the icons and general knowledge of your system. When it comes time to needing to read lots of text or work on photoshop documents, then connect it to a external monitor.

[tsm]

Dear all,

Thank you for your very helpful comments and suggestions (except for the guy who told me to buy a
powerbook). Many of you suggested that it might be better to keep the new machine at 1024x768 and
increase font size -- however, on the imac I'm using currently (with OS 9) the only font that I can change
the size of is the 'views font.' The 'small system font' (for text & labels) seems to be the one that I would
really want to increase, but there's not a way to do it that I can see.

Thanks for your time,
tsm.

Just saw the new iBook at the Portland, OR Mac Expo this morning. The screen image, while just a tad small, is very legible with a sharp, bright image and lots of screen real estate.

It's a very impressive notebook in person. Apple's got a winner on their hands...

[sehix]

Originally posted by ibr80:
I dont care what the resolution is 12.1 is just too small.

Maybe not...the current iBook's screen is fine for me, and at 51, the eyes aren't what they used to be.

I *want* a new iBook.

[macintostie]

I think it wont matter much if you use a 15 inch iMac screen or a 12.1 inch laptop screen because I generally sit closer to a laptop screen than a normal desktop computer (so the laptop screen appears a little bit larger). With the 13.8 inch viewable display of the iMac it doesn't differ mich

[Visnaut]

Originally posted by toh:
Antialiased (smoothed) fonts don't look great on an LCD screen - the pixels are square and crisp, which unfortunately works against smoothing (as well as photographic images and most of the design touches in Aqua). This is because antialiasing is done with grey or desaturated colour pixels added at the edges of objects. I generally turn off font smoothing on Powerbooks and desktop LCDs. As for images, the fineness of the pixels pretty much makes up for their squareness, so a properly scaled Aqua display ought to be excellent on this iBook.

I'm quite surprised with this, I find anti-aliasing to be the best on LCDs. I suspect those who don't like anti-aliasing on LCD's are using MacOS 8.5-9.1's built in anti-aliasing. I don't blame you, it's butt-ugly. Not all anti-aliasing is the same, which is why I use SmoothType. It's silky smooth on my ASD 15"... those who've never liked anti-aliased text on an LCD should give it a try!

And although I haven't used OSX much, i was able to tell that it's font smoothing is even better as well, which is backed up by all the screenshots I take a look at in full-screen mode! Hope this helps...

[PeterG]

If you ask me, there's no difference. I would believe (and am sure) that an LCD display is crisper and brighter than ANY CRT, and as such higher resolutions would look better. (I remember reading somewhere that there's a formula you use to find out how proportional an LCD screen is to a CRT-it's something like a 10" LCD is comparable to a 13" CRT or something like that, I can't remember EXACTLY!)

Peter

[vmarks]

Originally posted by itomato:
That's right. For those of you in doubt who are running X and 9, take note of your resolution now. Reboot into the other, and set your resolution to be the same. OS X should look like the display is one notch down from what it really is. 1024x768 looks like 800x600, etc.

See, this is one of the ONLY things I dislike about OS X.
I want a slider to adjust the zoom of the widget set, the same way I can grow and shrink the dock.

Dang it, I bought a computer with 1024x768, and I WANT to have everything small so that I can take the most advantage of it!

I have great eyesite now, and I like my screens to be pushed to the maximum... My desktop stays at 1600x1200, and I wish I could get 2048x1600. All the better for the work I do with my digital camera. all the better for seeing more of my clips in iMovie, or workspace in Final Cut. I know I could add an extra video card and monitor, but I'd want to run it at it's highest resolution as well.

My dream setup:
TiBook G4 with a DVD-CDRW combo drive.
And a zoom slider to select the size of the menu bar and other widgets in OS X.

I just came back from an executive briefing at Apple, and after Steve's announcement, they showed us one of the new iBooks. I don't wear glasses, so maybe 10x7 on a 12" screen is more usable for me than someone else, but I only got to hold it for half a minute. I wonder if the compact screen would be harder to look at for long periods of time.

Yes, 10x7 on the 12" screen makes everything small. Yes, it's usable. Yes, the new iBook rocks. No, they didn't give me one.

[druber]

hey tsm, i'm from b-town as well. look for the iubookstore to get a demo machine. not necessarily a given, but..

since circuit city sells the ibook1, anyone know if they'll be stocking the new ibook?

[tsm]

druber,

We're off the topic here I know, but I talked to a guy at the iu store and he said they _might_ get
a new ibook a week or so before the general population does. He said about 4 weeks. I'm anxious
to take a look at the screen since I'm not sure if 1024 x 768 will work with 33 year old eyes.

tsm.

[druber]

hey, better than nothing. i'll have to drop by the bookstore at the end of may. seems a common theme that things look a little questionable from the pics on the web. in person, it's a whole new story. since i don't have the $$ right now anyway, it'll be easy to wait for mwny, see if we can get some colors.
you have icq or anything? easier to talk that way and not get OT..
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