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If the OP sits 12 inches away and has great eyesight, the smaller letters etc will look more pixelated. Larger fonts of the same letters will look less pixelated.

Yes, this is definitely true. I've just done some tests and the smaller the text is the more pixellated it looks. If i increase text size, it still has a slightly ragged edge, but it doesn't look pixellated with squares, its more like the effect you see in photoshop/illustrator with vector shapes.
 
I'm using safari on this website with default settings ( no text resizing etc ) and text starts to become ragged from roughly 12 inches away.

I can't see pixels on photos, just text.

Take it back to Apple, see if they see the same thing...
 
4K might not be technically 'retina', but who cares - I can't see the pixels and the screen is considerably sharper than my last 27" monitor. Science is one thing, but in the real world 4K at 27" is very good. I'm looking at it right now.

You're arguing something different. I'm just talking about real estate. You fit more on a screen at 1440p than 1080p. 1080p retina at 27" wouldn't do it for me. Yes, it looks sharp, but it contains far less content.
 
Take it back to Apple, see if they see the same thing...

They won't. Some people can just see very, very well.

I complained about how jaggy text was on the iPhone 4/5/5s/6 etc, so I was very happy to get the 6 Plus because it was the only phone by Apple where text looks half decent when small. And I like small text!
 
I'm using safari on this website with default settings ( no text resizing etc ) and text starts to become ragged from roughly 12 inches away.

I can't see pixels on photos, just text and icons.

Text resizing in safari should be unrelated to whether font looks jagged or not. As I said in an earlier post, with 20/20 vision you would need like 6.5k at a viewing distance of 12" to no longer be able to distinguish pixels. Whether you use a (virtual) resolution of 720p or 2880p shouldn't matter, neither whether you use a font size of 5 or 50 since fonts in Safari are always rendered at the native resolution (excluding things like gif based fonts obviously).
 
The point is not that one can see the difference between a 4K screen and a 5K display. The key is to maintain a 2560x1440p usable space, which is only accomplished by a 5120x2880 display. 4K (well, 3840x2160) in Apple's retina mode is only 1920x1080 of usable real estate. I wouldn't go near that on a 27" monitor.

That's one of the reasons the MacBook Pro line is so flawed. The 15" model for example has the real estate of 1440x900. Ridiculous.

There's no need to double the resolution. This is only relevant for content with custom renderers like games, since the output will benefit when pixels are simply doubled instead of being somehow interpolated.
But for native content like fonts or shell GUI elements, the exposed resolution information is merely relevant for geometric proportions. Since most frameworks these days use the shell API for GUI rendering, most applications should look fine.
 
Text resizing in safari should be unrelated to whether font looks jagged or not. As I said in an earlier post, with 20/20 vision you would need like 6.5k at a viewing distance of 12" to no longer be able to distinguish pixels. Whether you use a (virtual) resolution of 720p or 2880p shouldn't matter, neither whether you use a font size of 5 or 50 since fonts in Safari are always rendered at the native resolution (excluding things like gif based fonts obviously).

Thanks for the info, thats what i was trying to understand. What 'k' would be needed to not see pixels at any distance.

So 8k, the logical next step in screen res, would mean going even closer to see pixels, and by 16k, i suppose they will be too small to see even from an inch away.
 
Thanks for the info, thats what i was trying to understand. What 'k' would be needed to not see pixels at any distance.

So 8k, the logical next step in screen res, would mean going even closer to see pixels, and by 16k, i suppose they will be too small to see even from an inch away.

Not quite. Normal people aren't able to focus below ~4" anyway, but regardless: at 1" it would be like 80k for a 27" screen.
 
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Not quite. Normal people aren't able to focus below ~4" anyway, but regardless: at 1" it would be like 80k for a 27" screen.


Why so high? That doesn't seem intuitive to someone like me who doesn't really understand the ins and outs of how screen resolution works.

Is there a simple maths formula you are working from that you can share?
 
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Why so high? That doesn't seem intuitive to someone like me who doesn't really understand the ins and outs of how screen resolution works.

Is there a simple maths formula you are working from that you can share?

At 1" you are 12 times closer than at 12", therefore you would have to multiply the pixel density by 12. 6.5k * 12 = 78k, but since the 6.5k were rounded down I just went for 80k in order not to suggest any false precission.

You don't need to be a math genius to calculate these things (though I can't say for sure that I didn't make any miscalculations).

20/20 vision is equivalent to having a visual resolution of 1 arcmin = 1/60°, equaling to a size ata given distance of (r*Pi)/(180*60). r being the visual distance in this case.
For 12" that would be 12"*Pi /10800 = 0.0034906585" (lets call it p12), for 1" it would be 0.0002908882" (p1).

A 16:9 screen with a 27" diagonal has a width (w27) of 16*(27"²/(16²+9²))^0.5 = 23.53" (this is basically solving a²+b²=c² for a with b=(9/16)*a and c=27").

Therefore, amount of horizontal pixels needed:
for r=12": w27/p12 = 6740
for r=1": w27/p1 = 80890
 
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There's no need to double the resolution. This is only relevant for content with custom renderers like games, since the output will benefit when pixels are simply doubled instead of being somehow interpolated.
But for native content like fonts or shell GUI elements, the exposed resolution information is merely relevant for geometric proportions. Since most frameworks these days use the shell API for GUI rendering, most applications should look fine.

The way Apple works with its retina display is it's always 4x the resolution of the non-retina display. 2880p is 4x the resolution of 1440p. That's why it HAS to be 4x the resolution to maintain the real estate and size of everything - like we had in the 2013, 2012, 2011, 2010, 2009 1440p iMacs etc. Except now, of course, it's 4x as sharp as those old Macs, while maintaining the exact same work space. This is the way Apple has designed it, so we work with that - whether you think it's a limitation or otherwise. :) Going from a 27" 2012 1440p iMac to a 2014 5K iMac is simple because all my windows stay in exactly the same place as they do on the 2012 iMac, except everything on the screen is 4x as sharp!

1080p quad-pumped to 2160p on a 27" display is NOT enough real estate for many of us in OS X, and for me there's no possible way I'd ever want a Retina 4K 27" display. It would be a MASSIVE downgrade from a 5K 27" display in terms of usable real estate, and in some ways a downgrade from a 1440p 27" monitor (due to that real-estate problem).
 
The way Apple works with its retina display is it's always 4x the resolution of the non-retina display. 2880p is 4x the resolution of 1440p. That's why it HAS to be 4x the resolution to maintain the real estate and size of everything - like we had in the 2013, 2012, 2011, 2010, 2009 1440p iMacs etc. Except now, of course, it's 4x as sharp as those old Macs, while maintaining the exact same work space. This is the way Apple has designed it, so we work with that - whether you think it's a limitation or otherwise. :) Going from a 27" 2012 1440p iMac to a 2014 5K iMac is simple because all my windows stay in exactly the same place as they do on the 2012 iMac, except everything on the screen is 4x as sharp!

1080p quad-pumped to 2160p on a 27" display is NOT enough real estate for many of us in OS X, and for me there's no possible way I'd ever want a Retina 4K 27" display. It would be a MASSIVE downgrade from a 5K 27" display in terms of usable real estate, and in some ways a downgrade from a 1440p 27" monitor (due to that real-estate problem).

I run a 4K Dell monitor on my cMacPro and select the optional text resolution of 2560 x 1440 (rather than the default 1920 x 1080) and it looks just as good to me as my 5K iMac. Of course, for full resolution on photos there isn't as much total resolution (4K vs. 5K) ... but the text real-estate is the same.
 
When i read a book i don't like it to be miles away from my face, same when reading something on a monitor. Like i say i seem to naturally go on my elbows and get quite close to the screen, the 5K screen is a lot better for my eyes but i think if the pixels were eliminated alltogether, it would be even better.


Obviously, technology isn't going to stop at 5K, so 8k will follow then 16k. Computer monitors are always in front of TV's, so its only matter of time until the 5k iMac is obsolete.


I just want to know will 8k solve the pixel problem or will it be 16k?

Uh, if you're concerned about what's "better for your eyes" I don't suggest burning your retinas out by being that close to a screen of any type. Your eyes simply aren't designed to focus that close.
 
The way Apple works with its retina display is it's always 4x the resolution of the non-retina display. 2880p is 4x the resolution of 1440p. That's why it HAS to be 4x the resolution to maintain the real estate and size of everything - like we had in the 2013, 2012, 2011, 2010, 2009 1440p iMacs etc. Except now, of course, it's 4x as sharp as those old Macs, while maintaining the exact same work space. This is the way Apple has designed it, so we work with that - whether you think it's a limitation or otherwise. :) Going from a 27" 2012 1440p iMac to a 2014 5K iMac is simple because all my windows stay in exactly the same place as they do on the 2012 iMac, except everything on the screen is 4x as sharp!

1080p quad-pumped to 2160p on a 27" display is NOT enough real estate for many of us in OS X, and for me there's no possible way I'd ever want a Retina 4K 27" display. It would be a MASSIVE downgrade from a 5K 27" display in terms of usable real estate, and in some ways a downgrade from a 1440p 27" monitor (due to that real-estate problem).

There's that slider under "System Preferences" -> "Display". While the steps have labels like "Larger Text" or "More Space" they actually stand for particular virtual resolutions. If you want what you call "real estate", just move the slider to a higher (virtual!) resolution. On the iMac you can actually show actual resolutions instead.

There are good reasons why Apple went with this 1:2 of virtual to real resolution. One of the reasons was that GUI elements that aren't rendered through a system API could just be scaled by doubling pixels. But for things like fonts, videos, images or shell GUI elements, it's simply a matter of proportions and the ratio is rather irrelevant.
If you don't like the proportions of the 15" MBP at 1440*900, why don't you simply change the virtual resolution? I run my 13" at 1680*1050, the 15" should go up to 1920*1200 with the default slider options (and up to 2880*1800 with "hacks").
 
They won't. Some people can just see very, very well.

I complained about how jaggy text was on the iPhone 4/5/5s/6 etc, so I was very happy to get the 6 Plus because it was the only phone by Apple where text looks half decent when small. And I like small text!

I was joking when I said send it back to Apple. I honestly think this is a wind-up. To be able to see the pixels on a 27" 4K display I have to hold my iPhone as close as it will focus - around 2" - then either take a photo and zoom in or zoom in with the camera to magnify this so it at least twice the size of the original, possibly more. Only then can I see the pixels and I have good eyesight. This is a 4K screen. How the OP can see the pixels on a 5K screen, with even smaller pixels, at a distance of over 12" is to be honest pure BS. Or he's an alien!

You're arguing something different. I'm just talking about real estate. You fit more on a screen at 1440p than 1080p. 1080p retina at 27" wouldn't do it for me. Yes, it looks sharp, but it contains far less content.

Duh! of course 4K contains less content than 5K, but it's irrelevant as our eyes at on this screen size at normal viewing distances we cannot tell the difference.
 
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Duh! of course 4K contains less content than 5K, but it's irrelevant as our eyes at on this screen size at normal viewing distances we cannot tell the difference.

At 27"? I beg to differ.
5k is just about the resolution where I stop seeing pixels, 4k isn't. Not saying that the difference is night and day, but still big enough for me that I would gladly pay a premium for it.
 
There's that slider under "System Preferences" -> "Display". While the steps have labels like "Larger Text" or "More Space" they actually stand for particular virtual resolutions. If you want what you call "real estate", just move the slider to a higher (virtual!) resolution. On the iMac you can actually show actual resolutions instead.

There are good reasons why Apple went with this 1:2 of virtual to real resolution. One of the reasons was that GUI elements that aren't rendered through a system API could just be scaled by doubling pixels. But for things like fonts, videos, images or shell GUI elements, it's simply a matter of proportions and the ratio is rather irrelevant.
If you don't like the proportions of the 15" MBP at 1440*900, why don't you simply change the virtual resolution? I run my 13" at 1680*1050, the 15" should go up to 1920*1200 with the default slider options (and up to 2880*1800 with "hacks").

Absolutely you can do that. And I have. And I hated it. It looks terrible to ME. It's excellent scaling and mapping, but it's still scaling, and the drop in clarity is blindingly obvious. My wife doesn't mind running her 13" rMBP this way, but I do.
 
Duh! of course 4K contains less content than 5K, but it's irrelevant as our eyes at on this screen size at normal viewing distances we cannot tell the difference.

I disagree. I can see the difference at normal viewing distances. 5K is what...70 odd percent more pixels than 4K!

Like I said, everyone has a different visual tolerance.
 
I was joking when I said send it back to Apple. I honestly think this is a wind-up. To be able to see the pixels on a 27" 4K display I have to hold my iPhone as close as it will focus - around 2" - then either take a photo and zoom in or zoom in with the camera to magnify this so it at least twice the size of the original, possibly more. Only then can I see the pixels and I have good eyesight. This is a 4K screen. How the OP can see the pixels on a 5K screen, with even smaller pixels, at a distance of over 12" is to be honest pure BS. Or he's an alien!

On a 4k screen there is absolutely no way you can't see any pixellation of text from 12 inches away. On a 5K there is pixellation, let alone a 4k.
 
Absolutely you can do that. And I have. And I hated it. It looks terrible to ME. It's excellent scaling and mapping, but it's still scaling, and the drop in clarity is blindingly obvious. My wife doesn't mind running her 13" rMBP this way, but I do.

This is true for things like most games or content that doesn't look like retina resolution, like low res pixel based graphics. Other than that, no scaling in that sense takes place since things are rendered at the screen's native resolution.
If you play a lot of games, this is definitely something to consider, but other than that, I hardly encounter such content anymore.
 
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