

Retina 5K iMac: Powerful Proof of the PC Renaissance - vwoolf
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/25/technology/personaltech/retina-5k-imac-powerful-proof-of-the-pc-renaissance.html

======
bko
> All those pixels make for a luxuriously sharp picture. Text sparkles and
> images pop, and when you to switch back to a computer with a normal screen,
> your eyes beg you to reconsider. At least, mine did. Years of staring at bad
> screens has turned my eyes into ruined orbs, but now, finally, I’d
> encountered a computer display that was good to them.

I've been told by an optometrist that higher resolution may cause eye-strain
and it makes some sense although I read that many prefer higher resolution
displays. I can't find any reliable resources either confirming or rejecting
my suspicions. Is this question settled yet?

~~~
g_lined
Given a retina display aims to copy the sharpness we see in our every day
lives from real objects, I would suggest it doesn't intrinsically carry a risk
of tiring your eyes, in the same way as we don't get tired seeing all day long
even though the edges of everything we look at are generally sharp. Rather in
the sense of drawing on a drawing board, or reading books, ones eyes do get
tired. Given that OSes are in their infancy when it comes to giving us the
tools to properly manage size and resolution, it could be that some tasks are
more tiring than they used to be.

------
hkarthik
This speaks to something I predicted a few years ago: professional workstation
machines will go up in price substantially as the economies of scale start to
disappear for the major manufacturers producing them. The only way for them to
build them sustainably will be to increase margins by raising prices. By 2016,
we may be paying close to $4K for such machines.

~~~
ElectronCharge
A couple of points:

First, the 5K iMac isn't a "professional workstation" by most measures. In
particular, it doesn't include ECC RAM or a "pro level" GPU. I wish ECC would
become ubiquitous across all PCs, but it looks like the industry is stubbornly
leaving that as one of the few real "pro" differences.

That's not to say you can't do serious work with a regular PC, just that it's
not considered sufficient for high-end engineering and science tasks, where a
flipped bit could mean disaster. The specs of the Mac Pro fit the bill for
that, along with workstations from other manufacturers like Dell and HP. Since
all but the "pro" GPU are also server components, prices shouldn't go up
appreciably, and in fact will probably continue to slide as manufacturing
techniques improve.

High-end PCs will remain affordable, the components used for them have many
uses and will be mass-produced in large quantity for the foreseeable future.
One interesting area is displays, where it's hard to see smallish (48" or
less) 4K TVs not encroaching on the computer display market heavily.

------
_almosnow
The chromebook? A hit? ... Nothing better than unbiased journaling with
morning coffee.

~~~
DominikR
According to Amazons top 20 best selling laptops, Chromebooks do quite well. A
Chromebook is in the second position and Chromebooks take up 6 spots in this
list.

[http://www.amazon.com/Best-Sellers-Electronics-Laptop-
Comput...](http://www.amazon.com/Best-Sellers-Electronics-Laptop-
Computers/zgbs/electronics/565108)

