MACINTOSH - MONITORS

Washington University in St. Louis, School of Medicine

Macintosh - Monitors

Pixel A very small dot on the screen

Resolution Number of pixels per square inch

Screen Size Measured Diagonally. The actual screen size is often smaller than the one advertised. The actual image area is even smaller.

Bit-mapping The screens Macs use are a bit-mapped - that is, for every little dot on the screen (pixel) there is a little switch in memory that controls it. Since you can control the screen directly you can change it quickly (an feature that we take for granted).

QuickDraw It takes more than hardware to get a screen image as responsive and fast as the Mac's. Software is the key, and the software in this case is QuickDraw, which is built into the Macs ROM.

The Refresh Rate How often (measured in hertz, Hz) the monitor redraws the image on its screen. If the refresh rate is too slow, you get a flicker. Regular house current alternates at 60Hz (in US); if you can see the flicker in the fluorescent lights, a refresh rate of 60Hz is probably too slow for you. In general the larger the screen the more flicker is likely to bother you.

Black & White The built-in monitors in compact Macs are Black & White. What looks like a gray screen is actually made up of alternating back and white dots.

Gray-scale On a gray-scale monitor each dot can be black, white or a shade of gray. Screen image is more close to photographic quality.

Color On color monitors, each pixel on the screen is composed of three tiny dots of color --- red, green and blue. The human eye merges them into a single, colored dot. If you have a color monitor, you also have a gray-scale monitor. You can change to a gray-scale image by using the monitor control panel.

Monochrome or Color? Color does make for a sexier-looking screen, but the quality on text on color monitors isn't good enough for extended word processing. In addition scrolling takes significantly longer on a color monitor than on a black-and-white monitor of the same size, and gray-scale slows things down just as much (assuming you have the same number of color and/or grays selected. So unless you are editing photographs in Adobe Photoshop or doing some other high-end graphics task, few users need color or gray-scale capabilities.

The notes are based on The Macintosh Bible, 4th Edition, Arthur Naiman et. al., Peachpit Press, 1987-92.

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Pixel	A very small dot on the screen
Resolution	Number of pixels per square inch
Screen Size	Measured Diagonally. The actual screen size is often smaller than the one advertised. The actual image area is even smaller.
Bit-mapping	The screens Macs use are a bit-mapped - that is, for every little dot on the screen (pixel) there is a little switch in memory that controls it. Since you can control the screen directly you can change it quickly (an feature that we take for granted).
QuickDraw	It takes more than hardware to get a screen image as responsive and fast as the Mac's. Software is the key, and the software in this case is QuickDraw, which is built into the Macs ROM.
The Refresh Rate	How often (measured in hertz, Hz) the monitor redraws the image on its screen. If the refresh rate is too slow, you get a flicker. Regular house current alternates at 60Hz (in US); if you can see the flicker in the fluorescent lights, a refresh rate of 60Hz is probably too slow for you. In general the larger the screen the more flicker is likely to bother you.
Black & White	The built-in monitors in compact Macs are Black & White. What looks like a gray screen is actually made up of alternating back and white dots.
Gray-scale	On a gray-scale monitor each dot can be black, white or a shade of gray. Screen image is more close to photographic quality.
Color	On color monitors, each pixel on the screen is composed of three tiny dots of color --- red, green and blue. The human eye merges them into a single, colored dot. If you have a color monitor, you also have a gray-scale monitor. You can change to a gray-scale image by using the monitor control panel.
Monochrome or Color?	Color does make for a sexier-looking screen, but the quality on text on color monitors isn't good enough for extended word processing. In addition scrolling takes significantly longer on a color monitor than on a black-and-white monitor of the same size, and gray-scale slows things down just as much (assuming you have the same number of color and/or grays selected. So unless you are editing photographs in Adobe Photoshop or doing some other high-end graphics task, few users need color or gray-scale capabilities.