It looks like 2013 is finally going to be the year that we're going to see truly high resolution displays - according to Intel. Retina displays for laptops and desktops for everyone. Considering promises regarding HDPI have been thrown our way for years now, it's high time they became reality. As the article mentions, there's one interesting possible issue: Windows 8's desktop mode. How will it handle HDPI displays?
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Member since:2005-07-11
Forget Windows 8. Windows 7 doesn't even support manually entering the DPI. You can choose normal, or high. Sometimes you can get it to accept a percentage.
I'd settle for just being able to manually enter the DPI so that I can reduce it on my low-res monitors (like the SD TV). "96 DPI" on a 27" TV with only 480 vertical pixels looks horrible! And "120 DPI" is worse.
Wouldn't it be nice if the OS included methods to query the monitor's physical dimensions, query the video card for the current resolution, and figure out what the *ACTUAL* DPI of the display is? And then use that figure for displaying things so that a resolution change wouldn't change the size of icons, text, images, etc? Or changing monitor sizes wouldn't change text/image/icon sizes?
Oh, wait, those capabilities already exist (EDID, for ex). But none of the OSes out there do this. 
Member since:2007-04-23
Member since:2006-11-13
Bert64 is correct. X11 has done this for years! X11 has set my dpi to 154 (I think that was the number) on my 8 year old laptop....umm 8 years ago. Windows XP (which was included with the Dell) always hard-coded it it 96 or 120 dpi. Most Windows apps couldn't work in 120 dpi (buttons appear outside a non-resizable window etc), so I was forced to use 96 dpi on a 1920x1200 screen - making for damn small text. Luckily I haven't run Windows on that Dell laptop in years.
Anyway, the hard-coded 96 dpi (from windows) or 72 dpi (from Mac) is what is keeping software and hardware from moving to high dpi displays! Maybe they can actually learn something from X11 and Linux apps (which are much much more high dpi friendly).
Member since:2009-08-18
Member since:2009-08-18
Member since:2006-11-13
Member since:2010-03-08
Is Windows' high DPI support just about adjusting text size, a setting which I do remembered finding somewhere in Windows 7's control panel, or have Windows GUIs become able to resize such things as icons, fixed-size windows and toolbar buttons in a way that makes high-DPI actually usable without me being aware of it ?
Edited 2012-04-13 16:55 UTC
Member since:2005-07-11
Well, 120 DPI mode was available in XP. That's not exactly "high-DPI". And there's no way to easily, via the GUI tools, change that to anything higher. And there are so many hard-coded pixel sizing elements in XP that setting it to even 120 DPI made things wonky (text labels overrunning the edges of buttons, menus overrunning the edges of windows, etc).
To say Windows XP supports "high-dpi settings" is disingenuous at best, and certainly misleading.
Member since:2007-12-16
The third and final WWDC product I want to talk about is - of course - OS X 10.9 Mavericks. While iOS 7 was clearly the focus of this year's WWDC, its venerable desktop counterpart certainly wasn't left behind. Apple announced OS X 10.9 Mavericks, the first OS X release not to carry the name of a big cat.
We already talked about iOS 7 yesterday (after a night of sleep, it's only looking worse and worse - look at this, for Fiona's sake!), so now it's time to talk about the downright stunning and belly flutters-inducing new Mac Pro. As former owner and huge, huge, huge fan of the PowerMac G4 Cube - I haven't been this excited about an Apple product since, well, I would say the iMac G4. This is the Apple I used to love.
Apple held its big keynote event thing at WWDC earlier this evening, but since I was away with friends I've had to read up on it later in the evening. The company announced iOS 7, OS X 10.9 Mavericks, and they gave a preview of the new Mac Pro. Especially the Mac Pro impressed me, and while iOS 7's new Holo/Metro-inspired theme looks messy and garish to me, I do commend Apple for finally breaking the mold. This news item will focus on iOS 7 - I'll dive into the Mac Pro and OS X 10.9 tomorrow (it's late here now).
And yes, the PRISM scandal is far, far from over. More and more information keeps leaking out, and the more gets out, the worse it gets. The companies involved have sent out official statements - often by mouth of their CEOs - and what's interesting is that not only are these official statements eerily similar to each other, using the same terms clearly designed by lawyers, they also directly contradict new reports from The New York Times. So, who is lying?This story is getting bigger and bigger. Even though most Americans probably already knew, it is now official: the United States government, through its National Security Agency, is collecting the communications and data of all American citizens, and of non-Americans using American services, through a wide collaboration with the large companies in technology, like Apple, Google, Microsoft, Facebook, and so on. Interestingly enough, the NSA itself, as well as the US government, have repeatedly and firmly denied this massive spying on Americans and non-Americans took place at all.Ah, patents - the never-ending scourge of the technology industry. Whether wielded by companies who don't actually make any products, or large corporations who abuse them because they can't compete in the market place or because they're simply jerks, they do the industry a huge disservice and are simply plain dangerous. According to The Wall Street Journal (circumvention link), president Obama is about to take several executive actions to address patent trolls - which may seem like a good idea, but I am very worried that all this will do is strengthen the positions of notorious patent system abusers such as Apple and Microsoft.
With version 13.05, the developers of the Genode OS Framework take measures to ensure that Genode continues to scale well with a growing number of users and the steadily broadening platform coverage. Further highlights are the improved SoC support for Exynos 5, OMAP4, Raspberry Pi, i.MX, and new components for realizing headless systems.At the D11 conference, Apple CEO Tim Cook once again took the stage to be interviewed by Walt Mossberg and Kara Swisher. While most of the interview can be replicated by picking and reading 10 random Apple fanblog stories - there were still a number of very interesting things that warrant some closer scrutiny.
So, the Xbox One disaster continues. Microsoft's policy for dealing with the used games market has reportedly leaked - and it's a clear and direct attack to destroy the used games market. Prices for used games will be set at the retail value of a new game, and retailers have to hook into Microsoft's computer systems and comply with Microsoft's terms and conditions.At an event earlier today, Microsoft unveiled the next Xbox - the third model, but confusingly named Xbox One. The big focus was TV, integrated Kinect, and all the other stuff we all expected to be forced down our throats. I think it took them 25 minutes to actually come to what should be the core of the story: gaming. Nothing groundbreaking in the gaming department, except for how Microsoft intends to handle the used games market and borrowing games from friends: pay up, buddy!
Member since:
2010-03-08
My paranoid prediction : Windows 8 desktop mode will not support high DPI, Microsoft will take much care not to patch this, and then they will present this as an asset of their Metro interface in order to get people to use it.