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Comment by jchw | Hacker News Reader

It's taken a while party because of cost and perhaps a bit more because of the horrible ways Windows and Linux deal with HiDPI. You wouldn't want heterogenous DPIs or non-integer scales on those platforms. On Linux it seems heterogenous DPI is still very experimental and ugly. On Windows some apps are buggy and others are ugly when dealing with heterogenous DPI. On Windows non integer scale does actually work, but it makes some apps size things horrifically. Needless to say Microsoft's multiple approaches to DPI scaling have made a mess, and Linux never really had a unified way of dealing with it.

If you're on a MacOS platform, with the current price of HiDPI IPS displays, the time is right to grab just about anything. If you're on Windows or Linux, it's still a great time so as long as you're keeping all monitors the same DPI and probably integer scale.

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I'd kill for a 4K 100 Hz MacBook display in the current 15 inch form factor.

Heterogeneous DPI works fine on GNOME3/Wayland these days. I had a 4K laptop running at 150% (it was a tiny screen) and it was perfect.

The only HiDPI monitor I'm willing to use is $2000. I consider 60hz to be unacceptable for work.

And even if you got that monitor, would a MacBook Pro be able to drive it at its refresh rate?

These days even mobile phones can drive external monitors at 4k 60 Hz. I think it's reasonable to expect next gen MacBook Pros to be able to drive two 4k monitors at 120 Hz+.

Looks like the 2018 model still only supports 4K at up to 60Hz [1].

[1] https://www.apple.com/lae/macbook-pro/specs/

>I consider 60hz to be unacceptable for work.

Well, the vast majority of the people consider 60hz totally acceptable for work - and work fine with it.

For the huge majority of the people refresh ration > 60hz isn't even a concern.

Better resolution on the other hand is a marked improvement (either as more screen real estate or as finer detail retina style).

You're absolutely right, but I'd wager it's mostly because they haven't been exposed to 120Hz yet. The moment Apple introduces a 120Hz screen on their iPhones, people are going to want it everywhere. Much like HiDPI displays.

They have it on the iPad IIRC.

But isn't that more for quick moving stuff, like games or (in the iPhone) quicker visual response to pen input and such?

For regular computing (reading webpages, editing stuff, programming, watching movies) I don't see much of a difference.

Heck, movies are 24p and we're fine with it.

I absolutely love scrolling on 120Hz displays. It feels so much more natural when the letters aren't blurry as they move under your fingers. Indeed, the iPad Pros have the feature, but they aren't nearly as popular as iPhones. I tried on the Razer Phone, can't wait to have it on mine.

100-200 Hz displays are the next logical step for laptops and mobile phones.

Check out iPad Pro devices with 120 Hz display. It makes a big difference in readability of scrolling text (try to read a web page while it's scrolling), responsiveness and smoothness of motion.

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