14” and 16” with ProMotion?

[thenewperson]

If not 120hz, at least we could get 60hz adaptive displays

Was really hoping for this on the 13s even if they wouldn't get 120Hz. Alas...

 

[senttoschool]

sorry, but for gaming maybe 4k oled is a thing, still wondering if a laptop with mobile gpu can handle games at 4k..but nevermind...for me, projecting and 3d modelling and design to have an oled display is a cry for help, already tried 2 different machines thinking that oled came along the way in the last years..but now, oled has its limitations...oled is a transition between 2 great, long lasting display tech, the lcd and up coming microled. Mini-led is the best lcd iteration, the more minileds the more control you have almost in everything without loosing color accuracy, blue pixels, brightness and contrast.
SO yeah, for real work, oled is not a thing, its just a good display tech for the smaller displays that are used far less for shorter period of time

You can get a 13" or 15" Dell XPS with an 3.5k OLED display for $1600 on sale. They are not gaming laptops.

 

[senttoschool]

I think that we might see an updated Pro Display XDR with ProMotion at the next event to support this new technology in macOS Monterey.

I don't know... 6k @ 120hz? Are there any displays that can put out this kind of resolution at this high refresh rate? That would be a thing to behold though...

The 2019 16" MacBook Pro already supports 48hz, 50hz, and 60hz refresh rate options so it's not too much of a stretch for the new screens to get the ability to change refresh rate in real-time. I agree that getting 120hz sounds too good to be true for such a hyped product and 10-60hz might be more realistic, but we'll see.

Is the 48, 50, 60hz options manual? ProMotion is very different. Everything is automatic and requires significant changes at the hardware, OS, and a bit on the apps level. Users don't manually change the refresh rate and refresh rates can go as low as 10hz to save power.

 

[fakestrawberryflavor]

I don't know... 6k @ 120hz? Are there any displays that can put out this kind of resolution at this high refresh rate? That would be a thing to behold though...

I believe there is display technology to support something like this, The problem is in the connectivity interface. There is no standard that supports The kind of band with 6K@120, adaptive sync plus 10 or 12 bit color would need. It would have to be some proprietary protocol that only Apple can develop to make it a reality. Or something gross like dual thunderbolt 4 connection ew

 

[Krevnik]

I believe there is display technology to support something like this, The problem is in the connectivity interface. There is no standard that supports The kind of band with 6K@120, adaptive sync plus 10 or 12 bit color would need. It would have to be some proprietary protocol that only Apple can develop to make it a reality. Or something gross like dual thunderbolt 4 connection ew

120Hz is definitely an issue with DisplayPort 1.4 if you use a single connection. DSC wouldn’t be enough (I don’t think) to scrape together the bandwidth for 6K @ 120Hz. But perhaps targeting 96Hz on DisplayPort 1.4 would be possible. If two DP 1.4 connections are doable over a single Thunderbolt cable like with DP 1.2, then that would also get them enough bandwidth.

DisplayPort 2.0 though…

 

[jmho]

Is the 48, 50, 60hz options manual? ProMotion is very different. Everything is automatic and requires significant changes at the hardware, OS, and a bit on the apps level. Users don't manually change the refresh rate and refresh rates can go as low as 10hz to save power.

Yes, it's multiple fixed refresh rates and not adaptive, but I believe individual apps can change refresh rate when full screen. You're correct about full adaptive sync requiring changes at the hardware, OS, and app level, but the OS changes are there in Monterey, apps on iOS somewhat work already with adaptive frame rates without changes so it should be possible to add support at the AppKit level (with custom apps being able to take advantage of the new adaptive sync functions if they want to), so that only leaves hardware changes.

No idea if we'll actually get hardware changes, but the fact that Apple have recently laid all of the software foundations to support such changes I'm hopeful.

 

[Krevnik]

No idea if we'll actually get hardware changes, but the fact that Apple have recently laid all of the software foundations to support such changes I'm hopeful.

They're likely to have something up their sleeve, even if it's not coming to the MBPs first. So I don't think it's entirely misplaced optimism here.

 

[jeanlain]

I have no idea if we will see 120hz displays this year, but new adaptive refresh APIs in macOS 12 are kind of suspicious. It's not like Apple to offer a new API without the hardware to match. If not 120hz, at least we could get 60hz adaptive displays

On the subject of adaptive sync, ProMotion seems to behave differently according to the specs. ProMotion on the iPhone 13 pro only support certain refresh rates : 120 Hz, 80 Hz, 60 Hz, 48 Hz, etc.
(https://developer.apple.com/documen..._refresh_rates_for_iphone_13_pro_and_ipad_pro) . The granularity in frame time is at best 4 ms, and is lower at low refresh rates (23 ms), which doesn't make much sense to me. 15Hz and 16Hz are available, but there's nothing between 16Hz and 20Hz. WTH? On the iPad Pro, there's nothing between 120 Hz and 60 Hz. Doesn't that cause some stuttering when scrolling or other animation jumps back and forth between those two refresh rates? Or is it fast enough not to be noticeable?
I believe most adaptive sync screens have more granularity, like 1 ms in frame time though the whole frequency range.
Interestingly, adaptive sync in Montery works in windowed apps, and apps don't have to do anything to take advantage of it, as opposed to iOS/iPadOS apps (from what I've read).

 

[Krevnik]

The granularity in frame time is at best 4 ms, and is lower at low refresh rates (23 ms), which doesn't make much sense to me. 15Hz and 16Hz are available, but there's nothing between 16Hz and 20Hz. WTH? On the iPad Pro, there's nothing between 120 Hz and 60 Hz. Doesn't that cause some stuttering when scrolling or other animation jumps back and forth between those two refresh rates? Or is it fast enough not to be noticeable?

It depends on your goal with your adaptive sync implementation.

FreeSync and G-Sync have had a focus on being able to follow unpredictable refresh patterns that are present in games, which is great, but other uses such as avoiding film judder doesn’t seem to get as much use here.

Apple’s implementation to date has been more about matching content to the screen with the lowest possible battery impact (especially on the iPhone), and without having to re-sync the display when switching between modes. So dealing with 24 fps cinema, 30 fps TV, 30/60fps web content, slow vs fast animations etc. They haven’t really been focusing on gaming as much on iOS.

The thing here is that a good adaptive sync implementation can do both of these. But AMD/Nvidia have focused on one application, while Apple has focused on another. Both implementations are hitting their goals, but aren’t necessarily aligned with each other. But with macOS 12, it does look like Apple is actually dipping their toes into both realms now? Interesting.

 

[UBS28]

Since it is Apple we are talking about, nope.

 

[leman]

It depends on your goal with your adaptive sync implementation.

FreeSync and G-Sync have had a focus on being able to follow unpredictable refresh patterns that are present in games, which is great, but other uses such as avoiding film judder doesn’t seem to get as much use here.

Apple’s implementation to date has been more about matching content to the screen with the lowest possible battery impact (especially on the iPhone), and without having to re-sync the display when switching between modes. So dealing with 24 fps cinema, 30 fps TV, 30/60fps web content, slow vs fast animations etc. They haven’t really been focusing on gaming as much on iOS.

The thing here is that a good adaptive sync implementation can do both of these. But AMD/Nvidia have focused on one application, while Apple has focused on another. Both implementations are hitting their goals, but aren’t necessarily aligned with each other. But with macOS 12, it does look like Apple is actually dipping their toes into both realms now? Interesting.

Disclaimer: I don't have any practical experience with implementing any of these features, so please correct me when I am wrong. But looking at the APIs, it seems that the big difference is that Apple gives you detailed refresh timing info as well as low-level API control over the refresh rate and presentation timestamps, while I don't see anything like that in other APIs.

 

[Krevnik]

Disclaimer: I don't have any practical experience with implementing any of these features, so please correct me when I am wrong. But looking at the APIs, it seems that the big difference is that Apple gives you detailed refresh timing info as well as low-level API control over the refresh rate and presentation timestamps, while I don't see anything like that in other APIs.

It’s the difference between “sync the refresh to the page flip” vs “I’ve got content I want to show at X fps, please oblige me”.

AMD/Nvidia baked their support for Adaptive Sync into their drivers, assuming D3D/OGL/etc would drive the timings. Apple made it possible for AVFoundation, UIKit, etc to provide hints for the desired timings to the system, which then determines what timings to actually use.

What’s interesting is that macOS 12 doesn’t have a version of the ProMotion APIs as far as I can tell. And WWDC specifically talks towards the sort of adaptive sync support you see on Windows. So macOS 12 is only using similar timings to AMD/Nvidia. Not even the CoreAnimation APIs are available on macOS yet. But it does lay the foundation to bring ProMotion to the Mac at some point.

So that’s very interesting: iOS supports one model, and macOS supports the other. At least for now.

I don’t do much gaming on the Mac anymore, but I do have one of these displays that I share between a Mac and PC. I’d be interested in playing around once the GM lands.

 

[turbineseaplane]

I really doubt it

 

[Pro Apple Silicon]

No.

The display update is a higher resolution to achieve true 2x display, with mini-LED for backlighting.

 

[Metrosey]

I might upgrade again next year if 2022 MacBook Pro comes with ProMotion, but I really don’t want too haha

 

[senttoschool]

I agree the GPU would likely be fine, but iPad has more limited high-end applications and demands on the system compared to MBP. I’d guess that the 16” XDR miniLED display would would be of the same PPI as iPad so it would be driving more pixels too, on a more demanding system. Like I said though, it’s more than likely going to be saved as a selling point for next year more than bottlenecks.

Keep in mind that the iPad Pro from 2017 (A10X) had ProMotion with a GPU that is 3x less powerful than the M1. The upcoming MBP would have a GPU that is 6x - 12x more powerful than the A10X.

Highend applications don't affect what the GPU can output for the displays.