iMac with Retina, it appears
As expected, Retina comes to iMac. Higher-res screens are slowing becoming common in the PC space. I have two 4K laptops back at the CNET Lab right now.
(though don't know the name yet, officially)
The all-in-one device, with the brains hidden behind a sleek display, hadn't had a design change in two years.
Plus several desktops/laptops really built for 4K output.
Schiller: There has never been a desktop display like this
And 4K 27-inch monitors are down to maybe $550 now.
Schiller: It is truly remarkable
The iPhone 4, introduced in 2010, sported the first Retina Display, while the higher-resolution screen hit the iPad and MacBook Pro line in 2012.
Schiller: 5120x2880 pixels. 14.7 million pixels on one display. It is the world's highest resolution display
Forget your busted old 4K, this is...5k!
5120x2880
Schiller: We call it the Retina 5K display
Schiller: HD TVs are 1920x1080. There are 7X more pixels on the Retina 5K display than on your HD TV
While a 4K is 4x the pixels of 1080, this is 7x.
Schiller: Let's compare that to the new standard 4K. Apple's display still has more pixels than that
Schiller: Design is just 5 mm thin. It's an incredible feat of engineering
5mm thin at the edge...now let's see the back, pls....
Schiller: New chip to control the display - the timing controller. Apple invented that
Driving a 4K display is hard, driving a 5K one must be harder.
Schiller: Had to create a new material, oxide TFT. Then taking tech from Retina iPad to reduce pixel cross talk and keep the image sharp
Backlight is just as bright but consumes less power
Display uses almost a third less energy (30% to be precise)
Schiller: It is a remarkable feat of engineering
27-inch iMac is easily the best-looking all-in-one desktop design out there, but some photographers I know prefer standalone monitors. Perhaps the 5K display here will lure them back.
Schiller is talking about how "beautiful" the display is
Dan Riccio, SVP of hardware engineering, is now talking in a video
He hasn't really been a visible exec at Apple
Frankly, 4K on a 15-inch laptop feels like overkill, but on a huge 27-inch display, a very high-res display is more defensible.
Riccio: It means you see incredible detail on a scale that just hasn't been done before on a desktop
Riccio is talking through the display technology
Riccio: One of the results is the vivid brightness you see across the display
Riccio: Timing controller tells every pixel what to do and when to do it. T-Con didn't exist that could do that job, so we had to invent it.
But, I ask, what kind of GPU is going to drive this display? I've heard some murmurings of Apple switching back from Nvidia to AMD, but we'll see what they say.
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