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Issue link: https://digital.macdirectory.com/i/90549
FEATURE
THE MACDIRECTORY IWARDS WORDS BY BILL TROOP
This year we've seen an interesting trend. The most impressive products have come from companies that have been in the game for decades, yet have shown unexpected expertise and imagination recently. They include Apple, Intel, Olympus, Microsoft, Adobe and Norton.
The MacBook Retina Intel's 520 Series SSDs
The MacBook Retina is the most advanced personal computer ever made. Its primary innovation is the scaling technology Apple built into the hardware, the operating system, and into apps. On the surface, what Apple did was simple: It merely incorporated a higher-resolution display than had ever been used before in a laptop. Had they stopped there, it would have been impressive enough. But it would have been disappointing too, because such high resolution in a 15-inch form factor would mean that many of the interface elements would be too small to be comfortably visible.
Apple's solution was to perform differential scalingon different
screen elements. It is extremely complex, requires huge processing power, and can occasionally exact penalties — slow scrolling in web pages, app sluggishness where you don't expect it. But no company in the world even thought of doing these things before Apple. Or had the imagination, capacity, and drive to get a working product out the door.
This is truly the most award-worthy technological achievement of the year, and it will always rank as a high point in computer history. For more detailed information, see Anand Lai Shimpi's article over at