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Are Widescreen Laptops Dumb? (theverge.com)
"After years of phones, laptops, tablets, and TV screens converging on 16:9 as the 'right' display shape -- allowing video playback without distracting black bars -- smartphones have disturbed the universality recently by moving to even more elongated formats like 18:9, 19:9, or even 19.5:9 in the iPhone X's case," writes Amelia Holowaty Krales via The Verge. "That's prompted me to consider where else the default widescreen proportions might be a poor fit, and I've realized that laptops are the worst offenders." Krales makes the case for why a 16:9 screen of 13 to 15 inches in size is a poor fit: Practically every interface in Apple's macOS, Microsoft's Windows, and on the web is designed by stacking user controls in a vertical hierarchy. At the top of every MacBook, there's a menu bar. At the bottom, by default, is the Dock for launching your most-used apps. On Windows, you have the taskbar serving a similar purpose -- and though it may be moved around the screen like Apple's Dock, it's most commonly kept as a sliver traversing the bottom of the display. Every window in these operating systems has chrome -- the extra buttons and indicator bars that allow you to close, reshape, or move a window around -- and the components of that chrome are usually attached at the top and bottom. Look at your favorite website (hopefully this one) on the internet, and you'll again see a vertical structure.
As if all that wasn't enough, there's also the matter of tabs. Tabs are a couple of decades old now, and, like much of the rest of the desktop and web environment, they were initially thought up in an age where the predominant computer displays were close to square with a 4:3 aspect ratio. That's to say, most computer screens were the shape of an iPad when many of today's most common interface and design elements were being developed. As much of a chrome minimalist as I try to be, I still can't extricate myself from needing a menu bar in my OS and tab and address bars inside my browser. I'm still learning to live without a bookmarks bar. With all of these horizontal bars invading our vertical space, a 16:9 screen quickly starts to feel cramped, especially at the typical laptop size. You wind up spending more time scrolling through content than engaging with it. What is your preferred aspect ratio for a laptop? Do you prefer Microsoft and Google's machines that have a squarer 3:2 aspect ratio, or Apple's MacBook Pro that has a 16:10 display?
As if all that wasn't enough, there's also the matter of tabs. Tabs are a couple of decades old now, and, like much of the rest of the desktop and web environment, they were initially thought up in an age where the predominant computer displays were close to square with a 4:3 aspect ratio. That's to say, most computer screens were the shape of an iPad when many of today's most common interface and design elements were being developed. As much of a chrome minimalist as I try to be, I still can't extricate myself from needing a menu bar in my OS and tab and address bars inside my browser. I'm still learning to live without a bookmarks bar. With all of these horizontal bars invading our vertical space, a 16:9 screen quickly starts to feel cramped, especially at the typical laptop size. You wind up spending more time scrolling through content than engaging with it. What is your preferred aspect ratio for a laptop? Do you prefer Microsoft and Google's machines that have a squarer 3:2 aspect ratio, or Apple's MacBook Pro that has a 16:10 display?
I've thought the same. Most content is designed in a portrait orientation, including good 'ole paper. The benefit of widescreen formats though is in multitasking. I can easily keep a document open with a web page on the other side or any other application. On phones and tablets, typically you aren't multitasking so the portrait orientation generally works better.
If you don't want that, don't get it. If someone wants it, good for them let them buy it. They are not wrong and probably not dumb. They just like something you don't.
If someone's preferred aspect ratio is 4:3, your solution is hardly feasible due to the lack of supply. That was kind of the entire point being made here, every damn thing has seemingly been infected with a 16:9 display. You're not exactly left with a lot of choices these days. Will someone out there make it? Likely.
You'll just be paying a premium for a "custom" design.
A laptop is the size it is to make it physically workable for human hands and eyes. Just because the electronics gets smaller doesn't make you hand smaller. The keyboard needs to have usable spacing. A larger size "box" of the laptop provides structural strength. That's why you pay so much for thin ones, it takes a lot more engineering to make a thinner box strong enough. A computer also needs some empty space to allow for airflow. There are reasons why things are the way they are.
I don't want it. I don't really have the option not to get it.
Same with the screens which are so glossy they cannot be used outdoors. It's very hard (if not impossible) to find a laptop with a usable mat screen.
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The current "wider than it is tall" format for laptops is based on the physical size/shape requirements of that human interface below it, the keyboard.
The default orientation for a tablet is "taller than it is wide", because it has no keyboard - add a keyboard and you'll typically find yourself turning the tablet on it's side.
It's not unusual for a developer to turn a large, high-res second display 90 degrees to have a two foot+ tall screen sitting on their desk like a tower, to allow for seeing huge swaths of traces, logs, or source code without having to scroll.
Please, explain to me the benefit for the average computer user of a display that is "taller than it is wide" - don't forget, many 'average users' do a lot of work in spreadsheets, an application that lends itself to a "wider than it is tall" display.
Ken
16:10 was a much better aspect ratio than 16:9 for just about any workload - including movies. It's all about marketing - the less square the aspect ratio, the fewer pixels you get for the same width (e.g. 1920x1200 vs. 1920x1080, or 3840x2400 vs. 3840x2160) and diagonal size, the two main metrics by which screens are marketed. The manufacturer gets to sell you fewer pixels, resulting in better yields, and less surface area, resulting in lower cost to them, all while getting to charge you a higher price because the numbers look the same or better. This is in part why now, after a few years of manufacturers having shaped the market by making 16:9 the norm, we are now seeing an increase in ultra-wide screens which take this to the next level.
You realize a screen isn't a static place to print text, right? You can have multiple windows open at once? A4 is almost never the right viewing size on a screen, because the right viewing size depends on the content, other things you are viewing, your workflow, etc. My terminal windows are never going to be A4; they would be unusable. Webpage references are never going to be usable at A4, because I'm using them with other windows open, with parts of the window I don't need right now (e.g. file manager sidebar) occluded by the useful material from other windows.
If you think everything should be A4, my guess is you are on Windows or you have no idea how to use your window manager to use multiple apps at once.
No, no, the world is a cellphone, you get one window at a time, and it's always maximized. Thinking about supporting anything else is really, really hard.