
iMac with Retina 5K display - davidbarker
http://www.apple.com/imac-with-retina/
======
ChikkaChiChi
Thank you, Apple!

They put the "Retina" display in the iMac. This means people will buy it.
Higher volume means whoever (LG, I think?) is manufacturing the screens will
have to produce more, driving the cost down. That means they will sell
variants. Then their competition will also sell competitive options because
nobody will want 1080p on a computer screen anymore.

Monitor technology has been stalled for years. This is going to be a gigantic
kick in the pants to the industry!

~~~
tracker1
The main concern with consumer adoption of separate 4k/5k+ screens will be
dual-link dvi and hdmi 2... since standard hdmi can only drive 4k at 30hz
refresh.

~~~
tormeh
Or you can use DisplayPort. Nothing wrong with that alternative, license-free
standard.

~~~
wlesieutre
Wait for DisplayPort 1.3 for this. It currently uses multi-stream transport to
feed the display as if it's two half screens daisy chained together. Sometimes
it works, other times it's a trainwreck. At least know what you're getting in
to.

Dell's 4K screens came up here yesterday. Here's what I had to say about
those:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8459298](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8459298)

I like DP better than HDMI politically, but if you have a screen with HDMI 2.0
support that's a much safer bet than DisplayPort 1.2 is.

~~~
reitzensteinm
Actually, it's not intrinsic to DisplayPort 1.2 that 4k displays must be
driven with MST, it's just that for a long time the electronics to decode the
full signal were not available, hence the hack.

Starting with the Samsung U28D590D[1], many 4k displays use single stream
transport on DP 1.2.

Also, for 5k, you actually _have_ to wait for DisplayPort 1.3 (if you want
60hz), because there's not enough bandwidth, multi stream transport or not.
There's a neat bandwidth calculator at [2].

4k is 11.94 GBit/s without overhead, 5k is 21.23 GBit/s. DisplayPort 1.2 and
1.3 are 17.28 Gbit/s and 25.92 Gbit/s respectively.

This unfortunately means no 120hz 5k displays on even DP 1.3 without
compression (which is supported).

[1] [http://www.pcper.com/reviews/Displays/Video-Perspective-
Sams...](http://www.pcper.com/reviews/Displays/Video-Perspective-
Samsung-U28D590D-28-4K-Single-Stream-60-Hz-Monitor-Review)

[2][http://emsai.net/projects/widescreen/bandwidth/](http://emsai.net/projects/widescreen/bandwidth/)

~~~
nsxwolf
So does that mean no 60Hz 5K displays for the 2013 Mac Pro?

~~~
reitzensteinm
Correct. Thunderbolt 2 includes support for DP 1.2[1]. And in any case, only
has 20 Gbit/s of bandwidth in total, which isn't enough for 5k even without
taking overhead into account.

Which makes this announcement quite strange. If this iMac doesn't support
Thunderbolt 3 (or whatever standard Apple is planning), it'll never be usable
as an external monitor.

IMO, it would have been more Apple-y to launch this and refreshed Mac Pros
simultaneously with TB 3, allowing Mac Pros to drive two (or more) 5k displays
while the rest of the PC world is still tripping over 4k. But I guess this
segment isn't a priority for them any more.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thunderbolt_%28interface%29#Thu...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thunderbolt_%28interface%29#Thunderbolt_2)

~~~
nsxwolf
Not even if they use 2 thunderbolt 2 channels to drive it?

~~~
reitzensteinm
The bandwidth would certainly be there, and there's precedent with monitors
requiring dual HDMI to get to 60hz, but I'm not aware of the same thing being
done with DisplayPort.

With DisplayPort 1.3 now released, I'd be pretty surprised if manufacturers
messed around with dual DP 1.2 inputs for displays like Dell's upcoming 5k.
Such things are tolerated when there is no alternative, but when it's just a
matter of requiring a new video card for a tenth the price of the high end
display, that's the only sensible option. This is extreme early adopter tech
after all. 5k is yesterday's 4k.

And needless to say, if I'm speculating it's too messy for Dell, Apple won't
touch it with a ten foot pole :)

Still, stranger things have happened. If the demand turns out to be there, the
products will follow - it's certainly technically possible.

~~~
nsxwolf
The 30" Cinema Display had 2 DVI connectors, which was nasty but necessary. So
maybe Apple wouldn't be too disgusted by the thought of dual TB.

But if DP 1.3 is around the corner, and dual TB would be an ugly hack that is
mutually exclusive with the new standard, I could see them steering clear from
that.

~~~
pilif
_> The 30" Cinema Display had 2 DVI connectors, which was nasty but
necessary._

not true. It has one DVI connector, albeit a dual-link one (the DVI connector
supports two concurrent channels).

Source: Me looking at the machine my 30" cinema display is connected to.

~~~
rsynnott
Interestingly, the first one had one connector, with two DVI channels, _before
dual-link DVI existed_. Remember this thing?
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Display_Connector](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Display_Connector)

In principle, Apple could do something similar again, with an adaptor for two
Thunderbolt 2 connectors (from separate buses!) In practice, they'll probably
just wait for Displayport 1.3, tho.

~~~
gnu8
Patently false claim. The DVI standard always included dual-link, even before
Apple added USB and power connections, changed the connector, and passed it
off as a unique invention of theirs.

------
pptr1
I am really curious about the technology behind the 5k iMac. I am not sure if
there is any off the shelf GPU out there that can drive that display using
retina type rendering. It's interesting they did a custom controller for the
display timing (Timing Controller (TCON)) . They must have had to do deep
customizations to use the AMD R9 M290X (comparable to the Radeon HD 7870) to
drive it. If this is not innovative I am not sure what is, in terms of an
engineering standpoint.

~~~
rasz_pl
wow, you swallowed a lot of bullshit marketing :(

>did a custom controller for the display timing (Timing Controller (TCON))

Apple doesnt produce displays, they dont design TCONs - Tcon is a pcb sitting
directly behind glass driving individual crystals, and is designed and
manufactured by the same company making the display. Also every Tcon is
custom, and build to drive particular type of screen.

Yes, when Dan Rissio says "we manufactured this screen' he is LYING TO YOU.
They bought whole thing from LG or Sharp.

AMD doesnt support DP 1.3 yet, so only way for 5K resolution is bonding two 3K
screens together, this is so innovative IBM did it 15 years ago in T220.

> retina type rendering

you mean scaling down? this is what GPUs do best, out of the box.

Yes, this screen is amazing. But dont act like its something revolutionary
touched by Noodly Appendage.

~~~
vegabook
auto-correlated downvote trend on a perfectly reasonable point: AAPL is not
very innovative as Dell is launching the same monitor. Sure the driver logic
might have been the subject of some consulting but if anybody thinks it will
not appear within weeks on competitor brands they're kidding themselves.
Everything about this display is _not_ proprietary AAPL tech.

~~~
glhaynes
As is discussed above, though, even if such displays appear, who will have
anything to plug them into? Yes, some people will be able to go find a
specific kind of video card to plug into their homebuilt rig to drive it, but
who will be offering something like this that normies (95%+ of the market)
will comfortably and confidently be able to just go and buy? That counts for
something.

~~~
rasz_pl
Any card with two outputs will do, just like IBM T220 from 2000y.

------
bsimpson
FWIW, the only other 5k monitor I can find is from Dell. It's also $2500.[1]

In other words, buy a Retina Cinema Display, get the computer to power it for
free.

[1]:
[http://www.maximumpc.com/dells_5k_monitor_pre_reviewed_2014](http://www.maximumpc.com/dells_5k_monitor_pre_reviewed_2014)

~~~
nawitus
Can you buy the monitor separately? It looks like a dream display to me,
assuming that it's glossy which is usual for Apple. It's very difficult to
find glossy monitors these days. I just can't go back to matter after getting
spoiled with glossy.

~~~
Rovanion
Honest question: Why do you prefer a reflective surface over a matte on a
screen? In my experience it only reflects the room and makes the content
harder to see.

~~~
rayiner
Glossy requires you to exercise better control of room lighting, but the matte
coating causes white backgrounds to sparkle and text to be hazy. Especially on
a retina-level display where the text is otherwise so sharp. I used a 2414Q in
a Microsoft store, and text looks nowhere near as sharp as it does on my
Macbook Pro Retina, despite similar pixel density.

~~~
4ad
Microsoft uses different text rendering algorithms than apple. You should
compare a picture with text generated on OS X, not text as seen in
applications.

------
Fuzzwah
I'm normally firmly in the "I hate websites that mess with the normal
scrolling of a page" crowd.

The scrolling transition at the top of this page really impressed me.

~~~
zaroth
Zoom out the whole page to 33% shows an interesting perspective on the design.

Monitors keep getting wider, web pages keep getting narrower and longer :-)

~~~
ryanSrich
This is because your eyes never get wider. So it makes sense that the content
would never get wider either. I feel like web apps are the only real use case
(aside from experimentations) where using a fluid-width (the content grows
with the screen) is appropriate.

------
sillysaurus3
I was curious what the exact resolutions were. A quick google search claims:

"4k monitor": 3824 x 2160

"5k monitor": 5120 x 2880

That's a lot of pixels.

It might be a good idea to be skeptical about spending >$1,500 on a 27-inch
monitor in Q4 2014. It's difficult to notice any pixelation on a 27" screen at
a resolution of 2560x1440, so clearly the reason to upgrade to 5120x2880 is
for the extra screen workspace. But unless you have very good vision, you're
probably not going to be able to read text at 5120x2880 without zooming.
What's the advantage?

For $1,000 you can buy two 27" 2560x1440 monitors, which is a huge amount of
workspace. Also, a single $300 midrange GPU can drive both monitors at full
resolution. A couple years ago, that was cutting-edge tech, but it cost
~$2600. Also, two monitors offer a better user experience than one monitor,
since window management is a bit easier.

Would anyone mind explaining whether the pros of a 5k monitor outweigh the
hefty pricetag?

~~~
mej10
> It's difficult to notice any pixelation on a 27" screen at a resolution of
> 2560x1440

Not once you are used to a retina display. I have both a retina Macbook Pro,
and a 27" iMac. It is actually really obvious, especially when looking at
text.

> you're probably not going to be able to read text at 5120x2880 without
> zooming

This is correct, unless you use the standard retina resolution which is like
2560x1440 except doubled, so everything is the same size just much nicer
looking.

------
mrb
This might be off-topic, but I instantly recognized the waterfall image at
[http://www.apple.com/imac-with-retina/](http://www.apple.com/imac-with-
retina/) as being
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sk%C3%B3gafoss](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sk%C3%B3gafoss)
/
[https://www.google.com/search?q=Skógafoss&tbm=isch](https://www.google.com/search?q=Skógafoss&tbm=isch)
:)

~~~
maxmwood
Ah well spotted :) Icelands waterfalls seem very popular. "Dettifoss" is
another featured in the opening scenes of Prometheus.

------
gmays
Hopefully they'll release an updated 5K version of the Thunderbolt Display.
They haven't updated it in years, I was really hoping for it today.

~~~
broabprobe
This seems like a rather large oversight.

~~~
barumrho
They have to update their notebooks with Thunderbolt 3 before they can release
5K Thunderbolt Display. Thunderbolt 2 doesn't have enough bandwidth to push
the pixels.

------
lprez
As much as I'd love that display, I can not believe that a $2500 computer is
shipping with 8GB of RAM in almost-2015.

~~~
Tloewald
I can't believe you can't believe it. Have you heard of Apple before? If
anything I'm a bit more perturbed that they max out at 32GB of RAM. My aging
Mac Pro has more than that in it.

I imagine that they preferred shipping with a default 8GB and selling a
$200/600 RAM upgrade than having a higher headline price.

(Incidentally, their 1GB phones still outperform phones that are one year
newer with 2GB of RAM, double the cores and nearly double the GHz, so maybe
they're onto something.)

~~~
MrDosu
For what do you need more then 32G RAM ever on a desktop (excluding time
travelling forwards). If you are asking yourself that question you need to get
a proper server or rendering farm.

~~~
gambiting
No, not really. I work in a games studio and our usage on individual
workstations goes above 32GB when compiling our project. Due to technical and
licencing issues it's also not something that can be relegated to a remote
server farm for compilation.

~~~
TillE
If it's that gigantic, then a distributed build on _local_ servers makes a lot
of sense. Much faster than each developer doing it on their own single
workstation.

~~~
gambiting
We do distributed builds on local workstations across the studio with
Incredibuild. That's the only way we could get away with licencing for
consoles. That reduces the build times(from over 40 minutes to less than 5)
but the RAM usage is still very very high.

------
fuzzythinker
Very nice presentation of background image transforming into image on monitor.

~~~
zaroth
I'm not seeing it. Is it disabled for Chrome / Windows / Win7?

~~~
fuzzythinker
I'm on Chrome on OSX, scroll down to see effect. Chrome on win7 shouldn't be
much different.

~~~
STRML
I'm not seeing it anymore on Chrome/OSX/MBPr, but I see it in Safari. They
must have disabled it for performance reasons on some configurations.

------
post_break
Better spring for the 4GB video card, 5k is going to eat up 2GB of video
memory fast.

~~~
jseliger
_Better spring for the 4GB video card, 5k is going to eat up 2GB of video
memory fast._

Can you elaborate on this, or link to someone who has elaborated on it?

~~~
post_break
That resolution will take a lot of vram to push. Start gaming or editing on it
and it will get crushed. Most 290x's start at 4GB, why Apple chose 2GB I don't
know.

[http://www.digitalstormonline.com/unlocked/video-memory-
usag...](http://www.digitalstormonline.com/unlocked/video-memory-usage-
at-4k-uhd-resolutions-idnum146/)

~~~
vidoc
Considering the lack of games on the mac paltform, this should not be too much
of a problem eh ?

~~~
elif
not to mention running games with PlayOnMac (wine wrapper) or parallels.
Honestly you can't name a game that won't play on mac.

~~~
steveotucker
Definitely disappointed with the GPU options, would have liked to have a
beefier AMD option like the Mac Pro.

------
jbarham
This looks like a perfect 4K video editing rig: the 5K display is big enough
to play 4K at 100% with lots of extra space for editor controls. Pair it with
the Panasonic GH4 and you can shoot and edit cinema quality 4K footage for
under $5k, which is amazing.

------
MatthiasP
That price is cheaper than I expected, since Dell announced that they would
charge $2500 for their 5K display. It is about time that 'retina' comes to the
desktop, hopefully this will put more pressure on Microsoft and third party
devs to actually make high DPI displays work with Windows. As it stands now,
Apple has a monopoly on a usable high DPI environment (Assuming the usual
quick adaption to this display of the OSX dev community). That may be enough
for me to change over to OSX as daily driver, just think about how nice coding
on this thing could be.

------
kbutler
I am far from an Apple fan boy, but I am so glad they are pushing the move for
resolutions higher than 1920x1080, where monitors were stuck for far too long.

------
pdknsk
When Dell announced their 5K monitor (which does almost certainly have the
same panel, albeit probably not the same circuitry) about a month ago, barely
anyone registered. This show the brand power and marketing might of Apple I
guess.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8311741](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8311741)

~~~
ghshephard
ATP talked about the Dell 5K for several episodes - but they couldn't figure
out how they could drive that many pixels from any of their systems (including
Marco's Mac Pro) - Apple just solved that problem today, and is the first
company to do so - which is what's getting so much attention. It's a real
technological/integration leap forward. Credit where it's due.

~~~
pdknsk
I partially withdraw my comment and add: Apple has built a solution that
people can use today.

------
rsync
For. The. Love. Of. God., where is the retina macbook air ?

Are we 3.5 years, or 4 years now since the original retina macbook was
introduced ?

~~~
ChikkaChiChi
I believe the tradeoff is that the battery would be murdered like a camp
counselor in a horror movie.

What's more shocking to me is the dearth of PC laptops using high resolution;
and Microsoft's inability to support HiDPI with any sort of efficiency.

~~~
dragontamer

         What's more shocking to me is the dearth of PC laptops using high resolution
    

Wat?

* Toshiba Kirabook * Lenovo Y50 4K * HP EliteBook (2560) * Dell XPS 11 (2560) * Samsung Series 9 (2560)

You can buy laptops well above 1080p today... if you so desire. Hell, you
could have bought them 2 years ago.

~~~
Igglyboo
You _can_ , but most laptops being sold are still 1366 x 768.

~~~
dragontamer
Like... the Macbook Air. _Most people_ don't seem to care about monitor
resolution. Fact is a fact.

Those who do care have _plenty_ of options. Windows based (Kirabook or Lenovo
4k), Mac based (Macbook Pro).

------
elnate
I always enjoy the irony of the pictures in these ads. Those displays look
awesome while using a quarter of my 1080 display.

------
Skywing
I've owned and used both a 4k monitor and a 144 Hz refresh rate monitor. I
personally value the higher refresh rate over the higher resolution. My 4k
monitor is actually difficult for me to use, because it feels like the
software has not caught up to the resolution yet. Very little is optimized for
4k desktops, yet.

------
fynd
5K is great an all, if your GPU and connection interface can handle it.

It takes roughly 17.2Gbps of bandwidth to drive a 4K @ 60 fps signal in a
single stream (Single Stream Transport); DisplayPort 1.2 has just enough
bandwidth to support a single 4K @ 60 fps SST stream, but 5K is far too large
for the standard. This iMac comes stock with an R9-M290X(2012 GPU) which
supports up to DisplayPort 1.2. To get the bandwidth needed for 5k@60hz on
DP1.2, Apple would have to overclock the DisplayPort signal by 50-100% on
single stream transport.

It seems like the M295X upgrade is a necessity for this thing to render well.

~~~
avens19
That is insane bandwidth

------
swframe
I wonder if apple will prevent rendering at full resolution like the retina
macbook pros because the max font/icon size for many apps is too small. This
would mean you are paying for a screen that can't render at the new fancy
resolution because the resulting info would be too small to resolve by most
people.

Many computer users suffer from eye strain because they have to stare to
resolve the information; their eyes dry and then each blink causes tiny
scratches which over time causes serious damage.

~~~
kalleboo
Do you know what else reduces eye strain? Sharp text rendering.

~~~
mentos
Ctrl+F'd in this thread for "eye strain" to see if anyone else reports oddly
having more eye strain from using a retina screen.

I used a 15" macbook pro retina for 2 years pretty much 8 hours a day and
noticed my eye sight deteriorating rapidly. I thought it was just the hours I
was logging in front of a computer screen and thought 'well atleast I'm using
a retina screen'. But now that I've stopped using the macbook and have moved
to an old 20" lcd screen and working on Windows 7, I find that my eyesight has
recovered significantly. I can read road signs and my ability to change focus
has improved.

I'm not sure what the explanation could be but I wouldn't be surprised to hear
that your eyes are actually more stressed when they try to resolve the denser
retina pixels.

Any one have any insight?

~~~
simonh
The point of a retina display is that the eye perceives it as continuous
shapes and gradations of colour and tone.

It's more likely to be down to the size of fonts and visual elements. Would
you say the font sizes you viewed on the MBP were smaller or larger than those
on the 20" display? (As perceived by you, not necessarily as displayed on the
screen as viewing distance is also a factor). It may be the smaller screen
size caused you to zoom out of content to fit more on the screen. That would
have a far grater impact on eye strain.

The fact that smaller text would be crisp and readable on a retina display may
have encouraged you to zoom out more than you might do on a lower resolution
display though, so the retina display isn't totally off the hook as a
contributing factor.

~~~
mentos
> The fact that smaller text would be crisp and readable on a retina display
> may have encouraged you to zoom out more than you might do on a lower
> resolution display though, so the retina display isn't totally off the hook
> as a contributing factor.

Thanks for the reply, yea I think this is the most likely culprit. Though,
looking at the font size of Xcode right now it doesn't seem to be any smaller
than this text I'm typing on my 20" monitor. At one point a year into working
on the macbook I thought it could have been the brightness so I did change my
Xcode background to black and used a program called 'flux' to reduce my
screens brightness but it really didn't offer much relief.

------
vidyesh
It is great for media professionals to have such a great display but consumer
level isn't this bad? Isn't anyone concerned how horrible all our exiting
media will look at this resolution? By horrible I mean, windowed of course
would look excellent but beyond a certain size not so much maybe?

Most media consumption is done on 1080p or below, not everyone is fortunate to
stream 2K or 4K content yet and we are pushing to 5K.

------
Xcelerate
Wow. I've been waiting for a screen like that for a decade now. My first Mac
purchase (retina display Macbook) was made only on the basis of the screen,
and I don't regret it at all. I hope they come out with a standalone display
soon, but I'll have to upgrade my laptop I guess to power it. I don't think
the current MBPR's can even drive a 5K screen?

------
72deluxe
Very impressive. I notice that the new Mac Mini has dropped in price to £300
here in the UK, although of a significantly lower (rubbish) spec than the
lowest model we've seen before. If this runs fine, it looks like an attempt to
make inroads into the "PC" market, as £300 + a screen is really in the economy
PC market area, no?

~~~
danbee
Where are you seeing £300? It's £400 (well, £399).

~~~
72deluxe
Hmmmm new glasses needed. I really am wrong! Thanks!

------
sremani
I have Lenovo Y50 4K and use Seiki 50-inch TV 4k TV which I sometimes use it
as a monitor for my machine. 4K resolution is amazing but there is definitely
diminishing returns. I am sure 5K would be definitely amazing but do not
expect a lot if you are power user or a programmer. Designer and other
artistic folks may have more to mine here.

~~~
ctdonath
The 5K is a result of the Mac having an aspect ratio other than 4K & HD's
16:9, and resolving that difference with using a simple "retina" multiplier.
Kicking 4K's butt when it's barely out the gate probably helped.

~~~
hollerith
>The 5K is a result of the Mac having an aspect ratio other than . . . 16:9

Huh? The aspect ratio of the 27-inch iMac _is_ 16:9.

~~~
ctdonath
Sorry, mighta confused it with another Apple screen. Thought it was 16:10.

Anyway, point is the 5K was the result of finding the sweet spot among several
pixel-count factors.

------
KobaQ
Hmmm, impressive. But I (honest question) wonder how this will handle blu rays
or other full HD content at full screen? All those pixels need to be
interpolated an 60 (50) Hz ...

Highly peronal: I hate all the marketing retina HD bla bla shit from Apple,
but I love these beautiful iMacs. I want one :-).

------
ambler0
Has anyone figured out what the refresh rate of this display is going to be?

------
lazyjones
I like the specs, but am wondering whether it is as quiet as a 2008 iMac 24"
(I have one now). The parts are probably rated a bit higher TDP-wise. Any
experiences yet, is there a noisy fan?

------
Robadob
It's interesting that they have dropped NVidia graphics, hopefully they won't
for the rmbp line in spring seeing as I'm hoping to buy one then for CUDA
development.

~~~
Rafert
Why no OpenCL?

~~~
chrisbennet
It's been a while since I played with GPU stuff but it seems like OpenCL just
hasn't gotten as much love/development as CUDA.

Lest people think OpenCL is somehow at odds with NVIDIA: "The OpenCL standard
was developed on NVIDIA GPUs and NVIDIA was the first company to demonstrate
OpenCL code running on a GPU," [1]

The Vice President of NVIDIA is (was?) the chair of the OpenCL working group
(and president of the Kronos group).

[1]
[http://www.nvidia.com/object/io_1240224603372.html](http://www.nvidia.com/object/io_1240224603372.html)

~~~
Ziron
NVIDIA are easily the ones holding it back at this point. Both AMD and Intel
have OpenCL 2.0 support on windows, and Nvidia hasn't even shipped support for
OpenCL 1.2. Nvidia obviously want OpenCL to die off and CUDA to do well.

~~~
m_mueller
Well, there's also Intel who decided to ship their accelerator product (MIC /
Xeon Phi) without OpenCL support initially. Their big marketing angle was that
HPC programmers could just use their existing OpenMP x86 code. This shows how
Intel had no idea in what they're getting into, because accelerator
programming needs to deal with different problems than on the CPU, regardless
of whether you have a simple CUDA core or a MIC x86 [1]. Results have so far
been rather poor because of that. Kepler GPUs with CUDA support are for that
reason still the best tooled accelerators for HPC programming.

[1] First of all, when you need on the order of thousands to tens of thousands
of threads to saturate your cores, memory becomes a big issue again. Your
threads have maybe 400k usable memory. Memory bandwidth is usually even a more
important limitation - these systems have 2-3 times less bandwidth per
physical thread than CPUs. This can be mitigated using a programming model
that uses bandwidth very efficiently (e.g. stream programming like in CUDA,
OpenCL) - an area where GPUs are traditionally more advanced, since they deal
with this limitation since a long time. Don't get me wrong though, Intel will
probably catch up at some point.

------
activeplum
The specs for the new retina iMac claim it supports an external display
@3840x2160. But: 1. Will it be 60Hz? 2. Only one such display, right? Thanks.

------
ttty
A similar screen would make win display correctly? From past experience
windows is a mess at scaling when the DPI is high.

------
BillyParadise
Get jiggy with that parallax scrollin'

------
Kiro
Does this mean you have to do stuff differently when adapting your website for
retina?

------
fuzzythinker
Spec doesn't show what resolutions are supported...

------
vans
Master Xtrem top most over ultimate power. Penta HD 3D dolby monster hugely
powerfull master. Chef sergeant ultra hydra peta wonderfull ultimately
bestest. ... To the max ! ...

 _throw up_

------
visarga
MacBook Air 11'' \- scrolls smoothly in Chrome

MacBookPro 13'' Retina - choppy scroll in Chrome

So, the more advanced, 4x higher pixel count laptop was the worst in speed.

~~~
rsynnott
When were you looking at this? Chrome used to behave really badly on retina
macs; it still behaves somewhat badly, but it's a lot better. Safari and
Firefox don't have this problem, however.

------
rmbe
I wonder what the average power draw is.

------
bogomipz
Does each new Apple product really need a separate post on HN? Is there not
enough media coverage on this stuff elsewhere?

------
smenko
Samsung had this in bla bla....

------
autism_hurts
God DAMN Apple's product pages are unparalleled.

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thegenius
Just got mine!
[http://i.imgur.com/KcvlmZ3.png](http://i.imgur.com/KcvlmZ3.png)

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activeplum
Can anyone tell me please will my 2013 Mac Pro handle two such new iMacs just
as external displays at 60 Hz? Thanks.

~~~
aet
Why would you do that?

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activeplum
Well, because I need high-ppi displays:) That's the main reason I changed my
2011 iMac to the 2013 Mac Pro. Now it's weird: either a single 5k-screen with
the new iMac, or two worse 4k-screens on Mac Pro.

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adnam
ಠ_ಠ 6 apple.com links on the homepage

~~~
canadaj
...Yesterday it was Google.

Both companies just announced a bunch of stuff and you're surprised to see it
here?

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ultrabenosaurus
5K? Seriously? This shouldn't make me anywhere near as furious as it has done.
Fucking Apple, yet again, does whatever they can to make sure their users
aren't compatible with the rest of the world.

~~~
wrboyce
What the hell are you on about? 5k is a very real resolution, it is double
1440p. It means you can have a 1440p looking display, but with retina scaling.

I've got a 4k display, with scaling I have a 1080p looking display and as a
result wouldn't want to go any bigger than 24".

This is exactly the display I have been waiting for (only it has a computer
inside it).

~~~
ultrabenosaurus
Of course it's a "very real resolution" are you an idiot? Any display made
using current technologies uses a "very real resolution" because that's how
displays work.

What I was talking about, however, is that every other company under the Sun
that has a relation to displays/media/TVs/whatever is pushing 4K and 8K as the
next standards after Full HD. Yet, Apple in their infinite wisdom, go and pull
a number out of their asses that isn't evenly divisible into those emerging
standards - even if it is easily scalable into them.

Why? What could they possibly gain besides consumer dependence on yet-another
piece of proprietary Apple nonsense?

Sure, the points being made about it pushing other companies to develop
comparable tech for cheaper stands as Dell selling a display for the same
price as an entire Mac computer is ridiculous. But so what? Apple diehards
will get a 5K while the rest of the world goes with 4K and 8K, creating
unnecessary disparity.

~~~
simonh
In what way are 5K displays incompatible with anything else? What actual
problems does this cause anyone?

As to your question why, one advantage is that these monitors can display true
pixel-for-pixel 4k video in an editing suite, while still leaving screen real-
estate free to display the application user interface, film libraries, etc.
Another is that even higher fidelity means less pixelation and smoother color
gradations that on a similarly sized 4k display. There are plenty of
advantages.

Finally, I don't remember anybody complaining when Dell released their 5k
display a few months ago.

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activeplum
Can anyone tell me please will my 2013 Mac Pro handle two such new iMacs at
external displays at 60 Hz? Thanks.

~~~
devindotcom
No chance. The I/O is too slow - you'd need a mess of cables. As others
pointed out, putting the computer inside the monitor bypasses this and lets
the display driver interact directly with the display rather than sending the
signal through a port and cable.

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skrowl
Funny how in their keynote they went on and on about how having a high
resolution display is great... a month after they released the sub 1080p
iPhone 6.

~~~
MatthiasP
I would say a PPI of 326 still qualifies as high resolution display.

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call
I can really FEEL the retina with this page.

[http://cl.ly/image/3L1b250W0o1r](http://cl.ly/image/3L1b250W0o1r)
[http://cl.ly/image/1C421h22391Z](http://cl.ly/image/1C421h22391Z)

