How does shit like this get posted to the Wall Street Journal?

Written by

Clint Boulton for the CIO Journal blog on the Wall Street Journal:

But it may also wreak havoc on CIOs’ networks and connectivity budgets — better quality displays require more network bandwidth, which allows users to increase data consumption. Consider that experts told CIO Journal earlier this year that the new iPad, which includes a Retina display of 2048-by-1536 resolution with 3.1 million pixels, would slow enterprise networks to a crawl and increase data costs from carriers. Now imagine how a Macbook with 5.1 million pixels — two million more than the new iPad — will increase data traffic in office networks.

Normally I’m inclined to ferret this stuff away for my Angry Mac Bastards podcast, but this one was so astonishing I had to post it here.

The so-called “experts” – and Boulton – are wrong. Dead wrong. The resolution of the new MacBook Pro’s display doesn’t change the resolution of source content transmitted over the network one bit.

Putting it another way: Does having three monitors on your desk make you consume massively more bandwidth than having just one? Of course not. It just lets you see more stuff on your screen.

Dumb. Just dumb.

Update: Later on Wednesday Boulton posted a correction to his article to suggest that Retina Display-equipped device owners would consume more HD video, which would result in higher bandwidth consumption. It’s still a stretch, and it’s still a dumb article.



  • http://twitter.com/pdjudd Paul Judd

    Please Peter, by all means rant about it on AMB! I would love to see you make this guy look like a fool. No joking though, add it on there – its a special kind of stupid.

    • Peter Cohen

      No question we’ll talk about it next week.

  • http://www.facebook.com/jordangolson Jordan Golson

    I, um, yeah. I. Hmm. Oh boy.

  • http://www.facebook.com/people/Danny-Mendez/504624408 Danny Mendez

    This gives me hope for a successful career as a journalist/editor. If he can do it, so can I!

  • DJ_OJ_1980

    True, but over time couldn’t it increase demand for higher resolution video, and increase the appeal of streaming movies?

    • Peter Cohen

      Any enterprise CIO worth their salt is going to put in place – if they haven’t already – limitations on streaming video to begin with.

      But we’re talking about three classes of machines with “Retina Displays” – iPhones/iPod touches, iPads and now, one specific model of MacBook Pro. I don’t expect we’ll see Retina Display-optimized graphics for a long, long time, if ever.

      Furthermore, graphics don’t scale at the same level as resolution – a JPEG image that’s 4x the dimensions isn’t 4x as large.

      And I seriously doubt we’re going to see any Web video that’s higher than 1080 for a very, very long time.

      • DJ_OJ_1980

        I guess for now, staff watching Euro 2012 poses a greater threat to our company’s bandwidth!

      • Jim H

        True, but we will. And you know what? That’s fine. Look at the history of computing. Look at how we handle files now compared to the way we used to handle files. It used to be you would have to make sure a file did not exceed a certain size or it would not work with X. Now people don’t care as much because things are evolving. No different here and no reason to be concerned either. Moore’s law.

  • ckoerner

    While this article was poorly researched in regards to consumption, it does make one wonder about the long-term impact of Retina-optimized content.

    As web developers (and App developers) start producing more assets at a higher resolution, that will increase the bandwidth needed. Not a 1,000% increase or anything dramatic, but a subtle shift as more folks bring these devices into the workplace.

  • http://Twitter.com/AbbiV AbbiV

    Perhaps they were thinking that images on websites would have to be upgraded to a higher resolution :-/ I know that Retina Apps have increased in size since the iPad 3 came out.. They should’ve checked w/ someone technical tho :-D

    • http://www.technovia.co.uk Ian Betteridge

      I think that’s exactly what they were thinking, and there’s a core of truth in it — although it was expressed very badly.

      As high-rez screens like the iPad 3′s and the retina MBP become more common, web designers are going to crank up the size of images to get better quality. Look at a graphic next to text in Safari on the new MBP, and you REALLY see the difference. Graphics, if not optimised, can look really fuzzy next to the bright, clean text.

      However, there’s some factors pulling in the opposite direction. For example, pretty much all new browsers can handle CSS3 web fonts, which means that designers can get rid a lot of the messy, horrible “type rendered as graphics”. Taking more care over the creation of the elements which do have to be graphics helps too.

      So overall, while there’s something to what they’re saying, Boulton expressed it so clumsily and without any proper analysis that it’s no surprised he’s ended up looking stupid.

  • D Pauw

    Someone needs to post a rebuttle purporting that since the pixels are physically smaller they use less bandwidth and they should instead ban desktops since they use larger pixels.

    • Hans Koevoet

      Completely true. And they should add that, since drunk people are involved in 25 percent of all traffic accidents, the government should make our traffic safer by banning all non-drunk drivers, since they cause 75 percent of all traffic accidents.

  • http://www.thegraphicmac.com/ JimD

    His statements are absolutely true! I can prove it.

    Look out a small window in the front of your house… the driveway is short. Look out a larger window and the driveway magically gets longer and a bill for the extra concrete arrives a few days later.

  • rwitt

    The WSJ updated the post. It isn’t factually wrong anymore but now just sort of a tenuous conclusion. The article still doesn’t really make sense and makes the WSJ look bad.

  • ungeheier

    Do we really need the swear words on this site? It’s going to end up getting this site filtered by a lot of company web filters. Im surprised i can see it at work with the word ‘shit’ in the url…

    • http://twitter.com/Moeskido Moeskido

      Save the site for home viewing and stop scolding people you’re not related to, please.

      • ungeheier

        To each their own. If Jim doesn’t want corporations to be able to see this site, that’s his choice. I was just pointing it out, because I know that stuff like that starts as the first strike against a site when it comes to website filtering programs.

        Just because I can view it now, doesn’t mean it won’t get picked up in the future for other posts. If I don’t see it at work, I highly doubt I would ‘save the site for home viewing’. I’d just forget about it altogether…

        It was a warning, not scolding.

  • ProductiveMonk

    When you’re having non-engineers (this is so basic even non-engineers should be able to understand it) writing tech articles, this is what you get. Completely stupid. This is like saying my shiny new sink will require more water. Why does the shine require more water? IT DOESN’T! These people are morons, idiots…and just plain stupid.

  • imthedude

    They’re paid to write this drivel. It’s link bait and nothing more.

  • Gonji

    In Western Australia many years ago there way a debate about whether to introduce daylight saving. The amount of people that argued that having an extra hour of sunshine would fade their curtains was astounding…maybe Clint was living in Western Australia at the time.