Back when I ran one of those machines, I was struck by just how on point the display was!
That resolution was dead on point for the CRT Apple used. It was capable of a bit more, say 700 lines, maybe even 800 horizontally. Vertically, maybe 400 to 480 would be pushing it.
Say they used 640x480. The user would have been happy with a pixel in the horizontal direction, and maybe less happy with it in the vertical one. And it would have been a bit less crisp all 9bwr the screen, IMHO.
Monochrome CRTs can be over driven to a crazy amount and they just work. And often, unless the overdrive is just crazy, the user will probably see the differences as the GUI changes too. I have run 1024x768 on a 7" amber screen.
Worked, but not well.
It is much happier with about 500 vertical lines and more like 700 horizontal ones.
PAL ish monochrome 720x586 looks fantastic and is 50hz. Slow phosphors = 50hz being no big deal. NTSC ish 720x480 at 60hz looks good too, maybe a bit more crisp.
All I am saying is for that CRT, the resolution Apple chose will look great! And that is due to that particular CRT and drive circuit.
I think Apple could have pushed it to 640, lime the GS machine could do, and go 400 lines vertical and that CRT would perform almost as well. We may not even be able to tell.
Maybe they did not do that as an overall balance between what the 68K could pixel wrangle, RAM and CRT performance.
That resolution was dead on point for the CRT Apple used. It was capable of a bit more, say 700 lines, maybe even 800 horizontally. Vertically, maybe 400 to 480 would be pushing it.
Say they used 640x480. The user would have been happy with a pixel in the horizontal direction, and maybe less happy with it in the vertical one. And it would have been a bit less crisp all 9bwr the screen, IMHO.
Monochrome CRTs can be over driven to a crazy amount and they just work. And often, unless the overdrive is just crazy, the user will probably see the differences as the GUI changes too. I have run 1024x768 on a 7" amber screen.
Worked, but not well.
It is much happier with about 500 vertical lines and more like 700 horizontal ones.
PAL ish monochrome 720x586 looks fantastic and is 50hz. Slow phosphors = 50hz being no big deal. NTSC ish 720x480 at 60hz looks good too, maybe a bit more crisp.
All I am saying is for that CRT, the resolution Apple chose will look great! And that is due to that particular CRT and drive circuit.
I think Apple could have pushed it to 640, lime the GS machine could do, and go 400 lines vertical and that CRT would perform almost as well. We may not even be able to tell.
Maybe they did not do that as an overall balance between what the 68K could pixel wrangle, RAM and CRT performance.