The Hypotenuse?
I use a G5 (Mac). I'm amazed by its stability but my background was web programming so I maintain (for sport) other boxes on my little home network; I have linux and windows machines as well. John gave Isa an IBook for school this year (his old one). It's a decent thing, but it clearly needs a new battery. I went on apple.com to buy a battery and two sizes of IBook came up in the battery department: 12" and 14" screens.
I did what I thought was logical, I measured the screen:
Which you can see, is 11 inches and change. Is this the 12" screen then? So I measure the entire back of the unit:
Which is clearly a little more than 12". So what is this screen? 12" right? Well, it turns out that's wrong! This is the 14 inch model. I know this because I ordered the 12 inch battery and it was too small and opened up the battery to see what was going on. As a non mac user, I didn't know you could actually see this on the battery itself (14 inch battery) because no PC will tell you anything about itself- particularly it's screen size from the battery. Not logical.
I complained to John, and he suggested perhaps Macs are doing the hypotenuse,
and he was right. I guess I don't think like a mac user. This just seemed intuitive to John how you'd measure a screen.
I did what I thought was logical, I measured the screen:
Which you can see, is 11 inches and change. Is this the 12" screen then? So I measure the entire back of the unit:
Which is clearly a little more than 12". So what is this screen? 12" right? Well, it turns out that's wrong! This is the 14 inch model. I know this because I ordered the 12 inch battery and it was too small and opened up the battery to see what was going on. As a non mac user, I didn't know you could actually see this on the battery itself (14 inch battery) because no PC will tell you anything about itself- particularly it's screen size from the battery. Not logical.
I complained to John, and he suggested perhaps Macs are doing the hypotenuse,
and he was right. I guess I don't think like a mac user. This just seemed intuitive to John how you'd measure a screen.
Labels: computer skills not on my résumé, math
posted by Bernie at
9:37 PM
11 Comments:
No, I'm with you Bernie. This is an outrage! I just took out a tape measure and have now discovered that my glorious 15" Powerbook is actually a paltry 12 3/8"!!
I think this is all part of Steve Jobs' clever tactic to increase -in every possible minute way- the market valuation of Apple Inc. Skimming a couple of inches off the width of the screen is a no brainer.
And it worked. According to the news today, Apple Inc. has a bigger market valuation than Google. It wasn't the iPhone, was it Steve? It was saved screen space!
Stupid fucking Apple asshole dickheads. I'm so sick of them doing these things that are supposedly cool but are just confusing. Like the operating system names: "Panther", "Tiger", "Leopard"... WHO THE FUCK CAN REMEMBER THE CAT NAME OF THE OS?!?!? I'm on 10.4.x, when I upgrade I"ll be on 10.5.x. There's a SEQUENCE there, an ORDER. What's the natural order of cats???
And they don't even tell you which OS *in* the OS. Go to the system info and it just gives you the numbers.
"Think Different".
I asked several support people about this when I was returning the 12 inch battery, they seemed dumbfounded that I'd actually measured the screen. WIth a tape measure.
"M'am, if you tell us the name you bought it under, we look it up and tell you the battery you need."
Me: "I understand that. But why is this not even close to a 14 " screen?"
"I am not sure, really. But the battery miss, let us set you up with that..."
no one ever wanted to discuss the actual screen size/battery need ratio.
But don't all televisions measure the hypotenuse as well?
Yes Frank, they do. This is what we learned when we bought our new television last year and the sales dude told(condescendly I may add)us that televisions have ALWAYS been measured that way. Like DUH. Why is that? Why don't lots of things do that? why isn't a 5x7 photo just called a 8 1/2" photo? An 8 x 10 piece of paper isn't just a 14" piece of paper? I am writing to Marily Vos Savant. Look for this in the Parade section...
I should add that doors are measured diagonally too I think. But not windows. why??
Doors are not measured diagonally. You give the width and height of the door. A standard interior door to your bedroom, bathroom, etc. is 80" high and 30" wide.
Frank, the natural order of cats is as follows:
1. Kitty cats.
2. Pussy cats.
3. Bobcats.
4. Big scary jumping out from the grassy mountain ledge above you while you are hiking cats
5. Super giant should be out in the wild but are performing for gay German Vegas showmen who get their throats chomped into and faces nearly eaten off by them cats
6. Two legged singing off-off-off Broadway performing regional dinner theater cigarette smoking in the make up room and wondering where it all went so wrong CATS
Ok, so Frank is right. But to have the battery be where the screen size is printed is just odd.
I agree this is a good question for Marilyn Vos Savant. I predict her answer will be along these lines:
This is a good example of how our customs and traditions sometimes things to be measured in different ways. Another is that you can have a peck of peppers, but never a peck of cigarettes. Readers?
Yes, screens are measured on the diagonal.
It is possible to have several different 14" screen sizes.
A 14" widescreen will look completely different then a standard 14" screen but both are in fact 14" screens.
Jason, thanks.
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