LG Accidentally Leaks Apple iMac 8K Is Coming Later This Year

An anonymous reader writes LG accidentally revealed in blog post that Apple is planning to release a 8K iMac later this year. This news comes as a surprise as the leak came from a different company rather than Apple. LG is one of Apple's biggest display partners and has already demonstrated 8K monitors at CES in Las Vegas. They note that the panel boasts 16 times the number of pixels as a standard Full HD screen.

Comments

Too many pixels = slooooooow

[gweihir]

Seriously, 4k is already overkill in most situations. 8k is just fetishism. And it may well be worse, as all those pixels have to be controlled somehow.

Re:Too many pixels = slooooooow

[Anonymous Coward]

Fuck everything, we're doing five blades.

Re:Too many pixels = slooooooow

[gameboyhippo]

And 20 years from now when we are using 8M monitors, someone will dig up this post and giggle. "Remember in 2015 when gweihir said that 8k was overkill! ROTFlyingCar!!!"

Re:Too many pixels = slooooooow

[st3v]

8K is useful for the movie industry filming in 4K. The 8K cameras can downsample the 8K to 4K and get better picture quality than just filming using a 4K image sensor.

Re:Too many pixels = slooooooow

[ColdWetDog]

It's useful for still photography - DSLRs are pushing 50 MB file sizes - a large 8K screen would be wonderful for Photoshop. Not so sure about the iMac format - that's basically just laptop parts slapped behind the panel. Maybe Apple can make an iMac + that's build from real computer parts.

Re:Too many pixels = slooooooow

[vux984]

Seriously, 4k is already overkill in most situations.

Agreed. I ended up getting 2k monitors this time around; (2560x1440) because good 4k screens tended to be slower (refresh rate), much more expensive, and put more demand on the video card).

Admittedly technology doesn't stand still, and I might have bought a 4k screen if I were shopping TODAY. Prices have come down, refresh rates over 30Hz aren't hard to find on affordable units, etc.

Or maybe not...they still push the video card a lot harder, and I'm happy with my 2k screens. They are great for programming, and working with PDFs, etc. 4k honestly doesn't look better to me; there is virtually no 4k content at all, games don't benefit from it... the consoles barely drive 1080p; and I need a pretty solid card to run my 2k screens in games. And shrinking the text down and getting 4x as much on the screen wouldn't be readable to me anyway so that's not a plus. So even 4k, as the parent said, is overkill for most things.

8k ... what's the point? Do I want one? Sure I do. And a pair of GTX titans to drive it too. But need one? Or have any use case that even sort of validates having one? Nope. I don't. And I'm curious what one would even look like.

I guess at the end of the day, I'm glad it exists because it'll continue to push the hardware advance, and prices will come down.. and maybe one day I'll be able to buy a 100" 4k TV for cheap because the 150" 8k 3D TVs will be "the premium" model.

Re:Too many pixels = slooooooow

[cruff]

8k is just fetishism.

And yet an 8k monitor would be very useful for viewing the complete image of many DSLR cameras without scaling or subsetting, with room for controls and menu bars or panels to be also visible. I'd probably get one for this reason.

Re: Too many pixels = slooooooow

[Anonymous Coward]

The theoretical total screen display resolution of the MDA was 720×350 pixels. This number is arrived at through calculating character width (nine pixels) by columns of text (80) and character height (14 pixels) by rows of text (25). However, the MDA again could not address individual pixels; it could only work in text mode, limiting its choice of display patterns to 256 characters. Its character set is known as code page 437. The character patterns were stored in ROM on the card, and so could not be changed by software. The only way to simulate "graphical" screen content was through ASCII art.

Re:Too many pixels = slooooooow

[vux984]

I agree, and I misused the term.

That said, 2k *is* a real thing. Its a cinema / projector standard (usually around 2048x1536)

And cinema 4k is 4096 x 2160; whereas monitor resolution 4k is 3840x2160 -- which comes up a bit short. Cinema 4k refers to horizontal reslution being 4k (4096) vs it being 4x as many pixels as 1080p (1920x1080).

So yeah... I definitely abused the nomenclature; and I'll avoid calling 2560x1440 "2k" going forward as you are right... But its not like I started it. Nomenclature for resoultion standards is a godawful MESS.

Re:Too many pixels = slooooooow

[pushing-robot]

In a few years we'll have videophiles who buy 2048 DPI screens and $1000 woven silver DisplayPort cables and describe how their new baby produces such a visual canvas with airy colors and edgy lines that add presence to windows and make Chrome seem more forward.

Re: Too many pixels = slooooooow

[Malc]

Surely it depends on screen size and viewing distance?

Re:Too many pixels = slooooooow

[swillden]

4K is the limit of human visual perception.

The limit of visual perception is measured in pixels per angular distance. It doesn't depend on the number of pixels, but on their size and distance... at least until you get to the level where your entire field of view is covered by pixels that are small enough to be invisible at their given distance.

At the distance from my eyes to my desktop monitor (about 20 inches), I expect I can resolve pixels down do about 200 pixels per inch. My 30" monitor is about 26" wide by about 16" tall, which means that to reach the limit of my visual perception (assuming my estimate of 200 ppi is accurate; it may be a little low), I need 5200 horizontal pixels, about 5K. I'm hoping that within the next couple of years I can upgrade to a 40" monitor, though, and 8K would be about right for a display that size.

More pixels would be good if I sometimes want to lean closer to see fine details (and I do).

And, really, we absolutely do want sufficient resolution that pixels are indistinguishable, so we can have what appear to be perfectly smooth curves and arbitrarily fine lines. Smooth text, in particular, is much easier on the eyes. I have a MacBook Pro with a high-resolution display on my desk right next to my big monitor and it is sooo much more pleasant to look at.

Re:Too many pixels = slooooooow

[AmiMoJo]

4k on a 32" monitor isn't even "retina" by Apple's original standard, let along near the limit of human vision. The original iPhone retina display was 325 PPI, which if scaled to 32" would result in an 8k display.

What are those pixels for?

[Anonymous Coward]

I thought the "retina" display already has a higher resolution than the human eye can discern. Are these new Macs for cats?

Well, that's game over for LG.

[YuppieScum]

Apple have a history of shutting out suppliers who have loose lips.

Maybe they'll start buying their panels from Samsung...