New displays

[Jeff Price]

Apple announced three new displays at the WWDC today. These are all cinema displays and come in 20", 23" and 30" flavors. All have a new almunium enclosure to match the G5 better. All now use DVI rather than ADC to connect to the computer (so you can use them on PCs too?). All have FW 400 and USB 2.0 ports on the monitor (so the monitor acts like a hub). More details at Apple.com.

OS X.4 Tiger was also previewed - due out first half of 2005.
New core audio and video (using the graphics processing unit rather than the CPU), new MPEG 4.

Maya Unlimited coming to OSX.

[Boyd Ostroff]

This stuff all looks cool. So I wonder why Apple's stock dropped 4% today? Maybe completely unrelated... it had been on quite a tear for awhile.

[Jeff Price]

Maybe the reality of the no 3 GHz G5s anytime soon, that Tiger has an indeterminant date in the first half of 2005 (last two releases were in the fall after WWDC) and Intel's 64 chip?

[Harrison Murchison]

The stock always drops after a major show. Nothing new here.


Once the new features of Tiger seep into the cerebrums of users they'll realize what that coolness is in there.

For those of us doing video Apple just threw us a bone with Core Image and Core Video.

Now relatively small apps will provide the grunt necessary to preview and/or apply effects to video in realtime output by your GPU graphics card.

Think Motion for everyone!

[Laurence Maher]

Are the new displays compatible with the current g5?

[Jeff Donald]

Yes, but to use the new 30" display you'll need the new nVidia card that won't be available until sometime in August. The two smaller displays (20" and 23") are plug and play with your G5.

[Jeff Price]

More on Core Image enhancements -

http://www.apple.com/macosx/tiger/core.html

A quick look at this list shows that it should definitely speed up Photoshop and probably video editing filters.

Does anyone know, is this something programmers are going to have to write code specifically to take advantage of? If so I wonder how soon, if ever, we will see a version of FCP or PS that takes advantage of it.

[Jim Shields]

I watched a lot of Jobs' keynote with some of the other editors at work this morning, and they handed out SDK's to all the developers there. So the adobe and fcp programmers should be able to have them implemented in time for the release of tiger in early 2005. That's when all these technologies are going to be fully implemented in the OS, so I wouldn't expect anything before then. I bet FCP 5 (and motion 1.5 or 2.0?) will come out around that time with these features implemented.

I think on the programmers' end, all they have to do is basically drop in the code to implement the features; since it's part of the OS, I figure it's basically cut and paste (I know it's more complicated than that, but in a non-programmer sense...)

[Jeff Donald]

I imagine PS will handle it as a plugin, but may not be as efficient as FCP, which will probably be rewritten to handle it.

[Laurence Maher]

I just bought 2 of the 23 inch displays before the upgrade last this week. The new one's interface doesn't make it higher quality, does it?

[Rob Lohman]

Do all these new panels have DVI? If so I assume they could
just as easily work with a Windows PC (sorry, heh) as well?

[Mark Sloan]

From www.macintouch.com:
Apple's new generation of Cinema displays is generating a lot of discussion:

[Tom Fussy] Michael Clifford had some questions around single-link DVI, its support for WUXGA, a.k.a 1920 x 1200, and whether a PC will drive a 23" Apple Cinema Display.
The answer to the first question about how DVI single-link can support WUXGA has to do with what are called short blanking time timings. An LCD-based monitor does not require the same type of timings important to a CRT-based monitor, particularly with respect to a "dead" period called retrace, during which a CRT's magnetic sweep circuits are reset. By wringing this unused time out of normal VESA timings for monitors, it is possible to support WUXGA within the required bandwidth limit of 165MHz on single link DVI.

That basically answers his second question, too, about where the extra 120 x 1900 pixels come from. They come from what was formerly blanking (retrace) time.

As for his third question concerning support for the 23" Cinema on a PC, that is going to depend a lot on the graphic card or chip in the PC or PC notebook. The best advice I can give here is try before you buy. Support for this resolution will improve with time, but right now my experience has been that support is very spotty in the PC space for WUXGA.

[Laurence Maher]

Well does

"single-link DVI, its support for WUXGA, a.k.a 1920 x 1200,"

mean that this is better quality image wise?

What is WUXGA anyway?

[Mark Sloan]

It means: "WUXGA stands for Widescreen Ultra eXtended Graphics Array and is a display resolution of 1920 x 1200 pixels with a 16:10 screen aspect ratio.

This resolution is currently available in high-end LCD televisions and computer monitors. Dell sells a notebook with a 15" LCD screen that has this resolution. "

[Rob Lohman]

Thanks for the responses. I'm not planning on buying such a
screen now but was interested in whether it would work for
the near future. Thanks!