Notebook now usher in high score screen**

In the more than ten years since the personal PC ushered in flourishing development, we have been chasing the performance improvement madly. This year we have 1.0 GHz and 2.0 GHz next year. Then we ran with 4.0 GHz all the way. Then there was a multi-core competition. Every component that makes up the PC is undergoing tremendous changes. Nowadays, consumers' pursuit of performance has gradually become calm, and this pursuit has been transformed into an experience.

The concept of a new era experience as a king begins with Apple. Simple, fast, and comfortable, Apple has proved that the mobile phone can use less of trouble with its own products. The notebook can be made thinner and the tablet visual experience can be even better. The screen is the first impression people have of a product. No matter how strong your performance is, it is difficult to attract consumers without a good display effect. So in the past two or three years, the overall mobile phone and tablet competition index is higher than who's screen resolution, who's screen material is better. It looks simple and crude, but it is a real consumer appeal.

Let's talk about the growth rate of mobile phones first. In the era of the iPhone 3GS, 480x320 pixels was even mainstream, and then there was a 360x640 N97 in the mainstream. However, the time came 2010, iPhone 4 turned out, the resolution suddenly climbed to 960x640. At this point Joe's Father said that this is called Retina Retina Screen, so we all know what the PPI is. One of the most important reasons for the popularity of iPhone 4 and later iPhone 4S is that its display is unique. Samsung's most flagship mobile phone i9000/9100 also used 800 × 480 resolution in 2010-2011, iPhone 4 in the screen display effect is unsurpassed.

In 2012, the entire mobile phone industry was just like a big dream, suddenly accelerated the speed of the screen upgrade, Samsung's flagship i9300 in 2012 has soared to 1280x720, now just half past 2013, including Samsung, HTC, Huawei ZTE and other well-known manufacturers have introduced mobile phones with 1920x1080 resolution. The size of mobile phone screens is constantly increasing, but the increase in PPI is even more alarming.

There have been numerous high-level mobile phone brands who have said that the high PPI value is meaningless. However, this does not stop consumers from pursuing high resolution screens. Now it is more than 5-inch cell phone you want to be a 1080P screen are embarrassed to go out. It is precisely because of this fanatical consumer demand to promote, the entire consumer digital products industry has emerged unprecedented screen "great leap forward", like the hormonal burst of youth, this passion has already infected the entire industry. In particular, the other two of the "three-pieces", tablet and notebook, in fact, most of the people in daily contact with the most is the mobile phone, tablet, notebook, so the notebook is considered "implicated".

The iPad's screen was originally 1024x768, but it was upgraded to 2048x1536 by the third generation. Although it has not yet reached 300PPI, it is quite amazing. The emergence of high-resolution screens for mobile phones and tablet products has made consumers gradually enjoy the delicate visual experience of this picture. People are like this, from the extravagance to the luxury and the extravagance. Once you get used to it and get used to it, it's too hard to go back again. Once the cell phones and tablets around you are moving toward the retina screen, you can look back at the standard screen 1366×768 that has been used for several years. Will there be a feeling of discomfort in the throat?

Rising in the Tablet PC, and madly eroding the market for traditional PC shipments. Since 2012, the traditional PC market has been declining from a boom, and shipments have declined for the first time in 10 years. The flat-panel products went all the way to the scale of 200 million units/year. The strong increase in mobile phones and tablets is in stark contrast to the decline in notebooks/machines. As a result, the PC industry is also in a hurry. It seems that the previous type of toothpaste-type upgrade has been very difficult to stimulate consumers, and it has to be a little stronger. Self-salvation. At this point notebook manufacturers have turned their attention to the high-resolution screen.

However, it is not enough for OEMs to stand up and say that they want to sit on a high score screen laptop. There have been two reasons that have plagued the expansion of the high score screen market: hardware + software. The notebook was born at the beginning for the sake of portability. Although the current notebook has a wider scope of application, it can be used as a game book and the Internet can be used, but its essence is still in the business category. So the significance of the resolution is too high, this type of user is more concerned with the life, heat, and portability. We all know that the performance of mobile platforms has always been inferior to desktop platforms because mobile platforms must consider the issue of heat and life. Before the battery storage capacity has developed by leaps and bounds and the power consumption of the core components has not yet been perfectly controlled, how to solve the problem of battery life is the top priority, and the resolution has to be ranked behind.

The higher the resolution, the higher the requirement for the production of the screen and the greater the power consumption of the entire machine. At the same time, there are more high-resolution screen pixels and higher performance requirements. Netizens who often play games surely know that the same game is much smoother than the 1920x1080 resolution at 1280x720 resolution. High resolution screens place higher demands on the CPU and GPU. We used to say that the resolution is too high and the battery is irritating, but the fact that the Macbook Pro 13 Retina was released last year tells us that you are all wrong. Because he used 3D Core Core + HD4000 integrated graphics to play 2560x1600 IPS screen, and the 7-hour battery life is not the result of laboratory testing environment.

Technology is constantly improving. Events that once seemed impossible are being realized. High-definition screens for notebooks have also been implemented. When Apple's Macbook Pro Retina was released, it really shocked the entire notebook industry. Now it seems that it is not difficult to support the resolution of 2560x1440. At least the third-generation CoreCore integrated HD4000 can be brought up. So don't say anything like "card to fly".

Another factor that has plagued the popularity of high score screens is the cost. MBPR is good, but the price is as high as RMB 10,000. For most consumers, it can only be seen. Nowadays, there are not many cutting lines that can upgrade ultra-high resolution LCD screens, and a process of improving yields and reducing production costs is also needed. Otherwise, if we can't afford it, everyone can't afford to spend it in the water, and there is no practical significance.

In fact, the hardware is not difficult to solve, and now the biggest problem is still software. It's not that these OEMs are reluctant to do a concept machine with one or two high score screens, but there is no practical value in the existing software environment. One of the most important reasons for this is that the Windows system does not support the high score screen. Take the mobile phone as an example. When the Android platform mobile phone is upgraded to 1080P, Nokia's top flagship is a dual-core +720P standard. The reason is not that Nokia can't afford a higher screen, but rather WP8's biggest support for such a resolution. However, for the average consumer, the resolution is a benchmark. The same brand, the same configuration, with the price can buy 1080P absolutely do not buy 720P.

For high resolution, Microsoft also has a hard time. It took 20 years for the Windows system to gain global popularity. Microsoft has always been a leader in this field, and any standard setting is based on this. It is because of the long development time that there are many things accumulated. Many software development standards lasted for many years. Every system upgrade needs to first consider how to be compatible with past software. Otherwise, Vista will be as painful as that year. Because the openness of the Windows system makes it difficult to estimate the amount of software on such a platform, it is far more than the sum of the number of store apps that we are discussing every day about IOS and Android. This is a huge asset for Microsoft, but it is also difficult for people to turn around.

Microsoft has limited software resolution support when it comes to basic infrastructure. Not all software supports vector stretching, and Windows systems render images differently than Mac OS. The software in the Windows camp was originally designed to support 1080P, but once it was reduced to 14-inch size, the software would also be scaled down, and the font would be smaller, but Windows did a ClearType, expecting to adjust the DPI to a certain extent Relieve this problem. However, there will still be a large number of software ambiguities and small fonts. So how does Mac OS do it?

Thanks to the closeness of Mac OS, Apple has strong control over third-party software. Unified UI rendering and development standards make these software seldom appear unsightly and have too small fonts on Mac products. The software in the Mac OS also has insufficient support. After all, Retina appeared in the past two years. Apple's approach is to let Retina screen simulate the spatial sense of other resolutions. For example, if the screen is the best setting for Retina, the UI will show a sense of space similar to 1440 x 900 resolution. Of course, instead of setting the resolution to 1440 x 900, it will still be rendered and output at 2880 x 1800. It will only use four times the pixels to mimic the 1440 x 900 sense of space, so it will have four times better resolution than 900p.

From the physical pixel level, the display of the original pixel is changed to 4 pixels, and the display area does not increase but the density increases by 4 times. This is why many people say that Retina display is very amazing, and it doesn't make the font smaller. The Windows system, as the system with the highest penetration rate in the world, requires a long time to achieve such control. Microsoft needs to reformulate new standards to regulate new software development. At the same time, it must also come up with a way to allow the system to optimize old software, so as to avoid display problems when the high score screen is popular. However, we have already seen the efforts of Microsoft. Windows 8 is the beginning of Microsoft's revolution.