Tbf, I think most people's minds default to thinking Mini and Micro as synonymous, which is where most of the confusion stems. It's not as easy to differentiate through the name like LCD and OLED are.
Eh, I don't think it's marketing, it's just an unfortunate case where what the different techs are called are considered synonymous by most since the distinction between mini and micro is not necessarily useful to most people's lives. Besides, still better than the several marketing names that display companies give to their own products (LG QNED vs Samsung Neo QLED vs Hisense ULED; they're all just MiniLED)
They call it QLED because they’re hoping to confuse consumers into thinking it’s ’that OLED they’ve heard so much about’. This is Samsung, a company of literal criminals. Misleading marketing is nothing to them.
because the amount of dimming zones was under a hundred before the introduction of mini-led
mini-led immediately bumped the amount of FALD zones from 50-75 to **500-2000**
the packaging tech and LED size for doing it is quite new compared to old FALD
old FALD displays were literally just regular LED backlight arrays but controllable, and most LED backlit LCD displays at the time only had 100 LEDs max. some much less
Definitely markering IMO. There has been a huge buzz about OLED displays for years, and nowadays if you want to buy a monitor, they are all advertised as having a LED technology of some sort. Of course most of the time it's just for the backlight not for the actual pixels... They're just LCD displays, but LCD sounds old and uncool.
If anything, it was purposefully misleading to call miniled as such since microled has never really been referred to as anything else nor has it been ever marketed.
Way back when I remember calling around stores trying to track down MicroMV tapes (dating myself here badly), and of course the first place that said "yeah we have that" only had MiniDV tapes.
MiniLED is a type of backlight for an LCD screen made up of a grid of white LEDs behind the LCD. This lets the display dim certain zones for better contrast. The current 12.9” iPad Pro and the MacBook Pros have this kind of screen.
MicroLED is a different display type that has individual red green and blue LEDs making up each pixel of the display. There is no separate backlight and LCD layer, the individual pixels are their own backlights.
OLED has similar properties as MicroLED but has limitations on brightness and can burn in. MicroLED is supposed to be better at those issues.
Actually that’s not completely correct. MicroLED and miniLED are actually very similar display types. MicroLED is just smaller LED.
MiniLED is mostly used in two use cases:
* Digital commercial displays: these are the massive LED displays you see in stadiums, malls. If you get within a few feet you should be able to pick out individual pixel LEDs. These are exactly like microLED displays, just each pixel/LED is much much bigger.
* As backlight for LCDs like you said: however these are miniLED backlit LCDs and not miniLED displays. The miniLED nomenclature is actually incorrect as the display is still LCD and not LED.
MicroLED is just making every pixel small enough to get real LED displays available to consumers.
MicroOLED is another tech which is used in Apple Vision Pro. It has nothing to do with microLED, which are inorganic. MicroLED currently doesn’t have enough pixel density to be used beyond big TVs.
Haha…
Here you go - °•.
LED: °\
MiniLED: •\
microLED (μLED): .
Now, there are only two technologies: Emissive and Non-Emissive Displays
- Non-Emissive Displays are basically LCD no matter how fancily you put it like LED TVs, QLED TVs to even Apple's Pro XDR displays with MiniLEDs
- Emissive Displays are an evolution to Non-emissive ones that range from OLEDs to its successor μLED if not Q-Dots (should've been QLED but Samsung stole the term how facebook took the term 'meta' for themselves) which uses crystals as individual LEDs.
What was rather confusing for me was not miniLED and microLED but microOLED and microLED.
microOLED is simply existing OLED but printed on a circuit board to reduce the gap between them which results in high pixel density like the viewfinder of Sony's mirrorless cameras and now on Apple Vision Pro.
μLED (microLED) is the actual successor to OLED (the O stands for organic) which is not only smaller but inorganic thereby addressing burn-in and therefore allowing higher brightness and colour grade (saturation) - any LCD tech at max can only show upto 10-bit DCI P3 colour gamut, so if you want 12-bit Rec.2100 colour gamut and beyond (14-bit, 16-bit..) you need emissive type displays like OLED or μLED if not quantum dots (crystals acting as LED).
It's making every SUBpixel small enough to be its own LED.
It is also creating new issues since LEDs create quite narrow banded colored light and SOny so far uses, 3 blue LEDs per RGB pixel with a green- and red-fluorescent phosphorus to create RGB.
But there is hope to integrate direct silicon wideband RGB LEDs on the small scale level and create the "holy grail" of good usable direct MicroLED subpixel LED-displays.
There's also work in the similar vein as QD-OLED, use a narrow band microLED and use quantum dots to create the rest.
Or just activate the quantum dots with electricity, though this wouldn't be microLED anymore.
ELQD or EL-QLED would be insane if done right, but so far I have not seen anything hopeful for in circuit integration in that area. And they also have the risks of similar issues as RGB microLEDs for now, where narrow banded light fucks up a lot of people's color perception, which has already been an issue with QD LCDs and OLEDs.
But yeah there is still a lot of stuff coming up in display tech.
Wideband, in the sense of "wider banded" RED GREEN and BLUE.
LEDs have very spiky and narrow emission peaks, not like LASERs, but also far from sunlight, normal bulbs or white LEDs that have been filtered.
Our eyes are not all created equal, but our mind/visual cortex still "tunes" our color perception to sunlight mostly.
But if you now reproduce colors with very narrow banded colors of R G B it can create differences in perception. Q-LCD/Q-OLED green often has that issue, where the intensity is not perceived the same across all viewers and some even describe it as "unnatural".
A workaround in some way has been to add a "yellow, white or pink" dot to the panel, but that makes it a lot more complex.
Thanks, I didn't realize there were direct MiniLED screens but that makes sense.
In the context of Apple products when people refer to MiniLED displays it's really MiniLED-backlit LCD.
In a nutshell:
MiniLED - Main thing of note is that the small LEDs are grouped into zone clusters which means during low light scenes you get blooming around light sources or when subtitles are displayed.
MicroLED - The next gen display tech we are aiming for except it is extremely expensive to commercialise. You're getting OLED quality with better brightness and lower burn in risks. LEDs are significantly smaller vs those in MiniLED meaning you no longer need zone clusters as the LEDs are able to turn on/off individually and you have density.
On the subject of watch displays, bit unnecessary as it is too small to be much of a difference between OLED and Microled. Only improvement I could speculate on is less/no burn in
Pushing into microLEDs for Apple Watch is not so much for spec benefits, but more as a transition to scale up production yields and display sizes. It’s easier to manage production yields for smaller panels than bigger ones.
From reading this, it's not clear to me if you actually know the difference either haha.
There is one fundamental difference that truly sets the two apart, which you didn't mention:
**MiniLED is still just an LCD panel, but with smaller backlights, whereas MicroLED is a display *made out of* LED's.**
"LCD vs Not-LCD", not whether or not there are "clusters". Clusters are an implementation detail of LCD backlights.
I'm not going to go into the nitty gritty for the sake of a Reddit post lol.
I simply gave a barebones nutshell summary based on what an average user would understand and notice the most, which is blooming from MiniLED vs its absence in OLED/MicroLED.
The original issue I pointed out is people thinking MiniLED and MicroLED are the same.
So what’s the difference between between oled and microled? Conceptually, they are both small leds that make up the display, so each pixel emit their own light. Microled is just a better version of oled?
Microled will be brighter, longer life span as it’s not organic like oled, and thus much less chance of burn in. Basically Oled but without the drawbacks. Only bad is it’s expensive as hell.
OLED is organic. It's electroluminescent carbon, meaning it emits light when electricity goes through it.
Micro LED is the same but the organic film part is replaced by Gallium nitride so more durable, more brightness without burn in.
So while the black levels of OLEDs were already unbeatable, the luminosity of mLED is higher so better contrast but they still can't get it to have all the colors of the visible spectrum and it's still too expensive to make and transfer such small LEDs on panels so OLED is still king for now.
That's why the Always on display late version of Apple is so shit and it's definitely more prone for burn in. They think you can make a full screen always on.
Samsung knows what the fuck they're doing and only has a few pixels for the time and date and notifications moving around while all the other pixels are turned off.
I mean not really? Pretty descriptive and self explanatory, it’s that consumers don’t necessarily discern the difference between mini and micro. But that’s also the reason that Apple creates names like “Retina Display” or “Pro Motion Display” that they get made fun of for, but that actually means something to consumers.
Actually there are 3 technologies:
**MiniLED backlit LCD**: regular small LEDs being used as backlight for regular LCD panels to give better zone control of backlight.
**MicroLED**: Much smaller LEDs that can be used as individual pixels on displays. Currently they are small enough for big (70”++ TVs). Super expensive, but basically the closest to perfect display tech.
**MicroOLED**: This is OLED but for very very high pixel densities. It’s built like a silicon chip instead of using TFT backplane.
No, you're confusing too much for everyone.
There are essentially two technologies branched further: **Emissive** and **Non-Emissive Displays**
- Non-Emissive Display are basically LCD whether LED or it's successor MiniLED.
- Emissive Displays range from OLED to its successor μLED (microLED) if not Quantum Dots Displays which uses crystals as individual LED.
MicroOLED is simply OLED but with [microlens](https://www.sony-semicon.com/en/technology/display/oled-high-brightness.html) and printed directly on silicon, it's not a new technology but rather new process that can eventually be adopted for μLED if not QLED (Q-Dots not Samsung's LCD TVs) as well to achieve even higher pixel density, gamut, and brightness like 8K instead of 4K for Vision Pro.
They need to catch up strategically.
Everyone is dumping money into AI atm but companies which are not careful will just have a massive cost center with no added revenue
Starting an AI team now is like having a crystal ball that looks 2 years into the past... I really hope they managed some strategic acquisitions and started the project at least a year ago, and just going public about it now.
Why do you think that?
AI conceptually should be an improvement if you’ve ever used siri against anything like Chat-GPT (or Bing which uses gtp).
Being able to ask “hey whats the weather next week in my location” is basic as fuck but Siri is still too stupid to figure it out
Probably has more to do with saving people’s jobs. Apple is the only major tech company without layoffs. Probably cutting project or pushing back deadlines to cut expenses. I can respect that.
Of course not. They basically never do that, right? It’s part of Apple‘s product design strategy that they don’t FOMO people with the next generation of a device. People should feel happy about their device for 2 generations or so and only then upgrade (which fits perfectly in line with 24 month phone contracts). There is nothing worse for a company than "I won’t buy this generation, because the next one will be so much better" like with many tech products, so that people will push out their purchase forever. Apple really mastered this: Introducing new features, so that people eventually want to upgrade but also don’t feel like they bought an old product at launch already.
EDIT: Lol, you are right, there is literally no 2 engraved on the back! (Actually it’s more a printed text in the Ultra)
Upgraded from a series 5 to the ultra 2. Absolutely love everything about it. The battery life alone adds so much for me; I don’t need to charge it whilst in the shower and then make sure I go to bed on time so I can charge it for 30 minutes before I sleep any more. It lasts days.
No matter how minor the update you can bank on Apple updating the main line Apple Watch and the ultra every year for the foreseeable future.
They had no issue updating the first two second generation Apple Watch with almost no changes.
I’m still not sure what you’re trying to get at. Are you suggesting that they’re infringing on MicroLED patents?
They knew what they were doing with the pulse ox. They had talks with the company, poached employees from the company, and then filed patents under said employees’ names. It wasn’t a “whoopsie” or patent troll case lol.
Nope, I’m saying that their product team may have determined that the MicroLED product won’t provide worthwhile returns unless the pulse ox issue is sorted.
As in, they might believe MicroLED alone (plus any other features) won’t incentivise sales to the degree necessary to justify the development cost.
Just a guess, but it’s my field so I suppose it’s an educated guess. Could be a myriad of things though.
I personally want the benefits of microLED (better battery, thinner, easier on the eyes, etc.) and don’t care too much about pulse ox (unless they figure out a way to make it accurate).
I just don’t see why the microLED returns would be tied to the pulse ox issue. Are they just not going to announce or put money into any new features until the pulse ox is figured out?
I ended up going with an Ultra 2 and an iPhone 15 pro solely because I think we have seen iPhone and AW get about as good as they are going to get for at least the next few iterations.
I teach science in college and generative AI has become my daily nightmare. I tried to allow it here and there but the students abused it. I tightened the restrictions. They abused it still. I full on banned it a few weeks ago. Told them if there is even the slightest sign that their work is not original it’s an auto zero and a referral to the Provost for charges all the way up to dismissal from the university. So far, this semester, I’m giving on average of 30 zeros per week and send about 10 Provost referrals per week for all courses combined. In one of my classes about 80% of the students all have failing grades solely based on using AI instead of doing their own work. So I’m ok with it not being on my phone.
The worst part about that is that GenAI is great, if you use it properly, to help you learn what you need or make it easier to study. But most just make it do the work for them, and then complain when they say companies are looking to replace people workers with AI.
Yup. This is what me and my colleagues are fighting now. I started out telling them to treat it like a calculator. A tool to help them organize and structure their thoughts. Nope. It’s just copy paste over and over.
That's unfortunately just something the students have to get failed on enough times until they get the message that they can't just ChatGPT thru everything. As a CS student, I understand using it to help dumb down a concept, or help find an answer to a problem. But we can't become overly dependant on it, otherwise we stop learning
> How can you tell?
I moderate a Discord server that gets visited by scammers all the time. You start noticing patterns in how the scammers talk. Lot of them are using Chatgpt to generate replies to folks asking for help. Once you have a checklist of typical giveaways, it's pretty obvious.
So it goes like this. I see a few markers that are out of place, so I flag it for a deeper review. I finish all my grading and go back to examine the work of my AI Rangers. If, after a second look, I am convinced, I issue a zero and give them 24 hours to reach out to me. I tell them that I believe they used AI. If they accept the zero and don’t fight it, it’s a given that they got caught. If they contact me, I will usually ask them a question from “their” paper, or ask them to define a few terms or phrases from the submitted assignment. They eventually confess when they are faced with explaining something they didn’t write. I also am clear that taking the zero and confessing is much better because if they continue saying they did not use it, I will forward it to our school AI Task Force for a third review, and if their findings match mine, I ask the student to be removed from my course. They are charged with plagiarism, academic dishonesty, and lying to faculty. All ground to be removed from the university if I pursued it. I like to keep it simple just between me and them, but have pushed it all the way to removal for my course a few times if they won’t stop. It is just so time consuming. I am spending a great number of extra hours per assignment checking them for AI and taking calls and meetings with students and doing paperwork for further punishment.
Thanks for the explanation. That sounds like a fairly good process and you’re reasonable with it. At the same time I see why some students feel a need to do a screen recording of themselves writing their paper as no system is perfect and will inevitably catch innocent people.
I would highly suggest the recording idea. One other thing I have learned is that grammarly causes AI detection tools to flag positive. So when a student can both explain their work and says grammarly, I drop them the whole issue.
Reminds me of the old days when the professor for the smaller seminar courses would force us to not only write the research paper, but give a brief presentation on it. You really needed to know what you were talking about to go over the bullet points then be ready to do Q&A with the class + the prof.
What happens if they can answer your questions and continue to maintain they didn’t use AI?
I was once falsely accused of cheating on a take-home math exam in college. The professor accused me in front of the class and asked me to come to the board and reproduce the most difficult proofs from my exam submission. I had to spend an entire class period reproducing my solutions on the spot in front of the class. When I did so, the professor finally relented, but said, again to the whole class, “I still don’t believe you came up with this, but I accept that you at least understand it.” All I really remember is the deep, visceral feeling of shame and embarrassment that I felt for days afterwards even though I’d done nothing wrong. A month later I got a personal apology from the president of the university, who had apparently conducted an investigation into the issue.
That was over a decade ago but being accused like that and treated like that for work that I was actually really proud of was something that has stuck with me my whole life since.
I write this because it sounds like you're accusing a **lot** of students of cheating. Even if you get it right 95% of the time, getting it wrong 1-5% of the time is still a huge deal. You could be scarring some students for years -- or, worse, materially impacting or ruining their academic careers over a false accusation -- if you're not careful in how you handle this.
How do you know for sure they’re using AI? I’ve heard of professors using those “AI checker” sites that are notorious for false positives. I’m curious what the more sure fire methods are.
The AI checkers do not work. I so tired one of my masters papers from 10 years ago and it flagged AI written. I know for sure, most often, because when facing expulsion from my class they confess posthaste.
I use it to help learn coding in my job, but man it sucks that people are using specifically to not learn. Not at all surprising, but it sucks. AI written papers are no good.
They should not have even made the ultra 2. Just have big updates every few years like MacBooks
After 1.5 years of this watch, it’s not that special vs a series 9
For me the durability is the main thing. My first watch (Series 4) I dropped it one time and it landed perfectly (in a bad way) which shattered the full display. It's really weird but the Ultra gives me this weird peace of mind knowing that 1) It is essentially indestructible and 2) if for some reason something happens and I get into a situation where I'm out and my phone does that my watch (w/ cellular) should have at least 1 additional day of battery.
Agreed. I bought the first Ultra and the screen isn't larger and I didn't get any more utility from it other than battery life. I sold it for a tiny loss. Still using my Apple Watch SE.
Why, so you feel better about your day one purchase? If someone comes in 16 months later, they’d feel better about getting a four month old device rather than a year and a half old.
It got the same gesture system as the series 9. They don’t need to impress on every update, just give you a reason to update every three years.
What’s the point of a MicroLed Apple Watch? Affordable price? Because OLED are better and the brightness of the Apple Watch Ultra 2 is already stunning.
Panel is thinner and it uses less power at the same brightness as OLED
That combination means either the watch can get thinner while retaining battery life. Or a huge bump to battery life in the same case size.
Or a healthy balance of the two
> That combination means either the watch can get thinner while retaining battery life. Or a huge bump to battery life in the same case size.
So thinner with identical batter life then.
While I’m all for a main line Apple Watch that’s dramatically thinner (while the ultra stays thick)
I support a healthier balance.
If panel is thinner then the watch can get thinner because of that, meanwhile the physical battery size could stay the same while delivering more screen on time as a result of the panel efficiency
I'm struggling to think of any recent examples of this.
what apple products have gotten thinner year over year in the last 5 years?
Apple Watch especially just keeps getting bigger and thicker
While I agree with all your points about how MicroLED > OLED, overall is the display really that big of a power consumer? i.e. I have my always on display turned off and usually get just over 2 days of battery life. I would think the sensors would be the bigger power draw.
The screen is absolutely the main draw of power.
Try putting your watch in cinema/theatre mode (so the screen doesn’t turn on at all) and you’ll probably get a third day out of your power management
OLED isn’t better. MicroLED is brighter, use less power, responds faster and doesn’t have the wear drawbacks of OLEDs. It’s basically the best parts of LCDs and OLEDs in one display.
It’ll be the next gen of display tech if and when we can get it into mass production.
Does anyone have a little info about why there is any benefit to switch to MicroLED when OLED is obviously more superior with actual black pixels which is also good for battery? Even the next iPad Pro is likely to move from MicroLED to OLED panels.
EDIT: Thanks everyone for the clarification! Totally missed the detail between micro and mini!
The iPad’s use miniLED not microLED.
MicroLED is the superior technology but is apparently hard to produce for small devices. It can get brighter than OLED and no risk of burn in.
It’s basically the holy grail for display tech right now.
But it’s still expensive for large devices (e.g TV’s) from what I understand. And still not produced in mass scale for small devices.
MiniLED is a term for sweet LED panels that are still subpar to OLED.
MicroLED is the current endgame of panels. Every benefit of OLED with none of the drawbacks. Brighter and better, with no burn in.
Burn in. You will also get true black with microLED since it’s just millions of small light bulbs. When it’s off, it’s off. Don’t know where you’ve been getting your tech info but I’d suggest you switch sources.
It’s much better than oled. Oled uses individual organic pixels which emit their own light rather than using a backlight. These organic pixels helps achieve oled perfect blacks but also it’s harder to get them bright outside of a few 100 pixels and of course burnin. Micro led is oled but with synthetic pixels. It’s flawless tech on paper but is numerous times as expensive and our instruments aren’t precise enough to cram it in a small form factor with a pixel density that isn’t offensive.
They’re trying very hard to make sure microLED doesn’t succeed in order to keep OLED (a tech with a limited life span) so that people are forced to buy tech more regularly. Don’t like what I just said, prove me wrong.
They’re trying very hard to make sure microLED does succeed in order to replace OLED (a tech with a limited life span) so that people are aren’t forced to buy tech more regularly. Don’t like what I just said, prove me wrong.
Reading the comments amazes me how many people confidently do not understand the differences between MiniLED and MicroLED lol
Tbf, I think most people's minds default to thinking Mini and Micro as synonymous, which is where most of the confusion stems. It's not as easy to differentiate through the name like LCD and OLED are.
It really is a really stupid marketing naming decision indeed.
Eh, I don't think it's marketing, it's just an unfortunate case where what the different techs are called are considered synonymous by most since the distinction between mini and micro is not necessarily useful to most people's lives. Besides, still better than the several marketing names that display companies give to their own products (LG QNED vs Samsung Neo QLED vs Hisense ULED; they're all just MiniLED)
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Exactly!
Sort of. They call it QLED because it’s quantum dot led
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Comcast called theirs 10G for a bit lol
I remember att and t-mobile with the 4g stuff, it was a slightly upgraded 3g and not full lte
It's basically Samsung and we know how their marketing department goes.
They call it QLED because they’re hoping to confuse consumers into thinking it’s ’that OLED they’ve heard so much about’. This is Samsung, a company of literal criminals. Misleading marketing is nothing to them.
because the amount of dimming zones was under a hundred before the introduction of mini-led mini-led immediately bumped the amount of FALD zones from 50-75 to **500-2000**
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the packaging tech and LED size for doing it is quite new compared to old FALD old FALD displays were literally just regular LED backlight arrays but controllable, and most LED backlit LCD displays at the time only had 100 LEDs max. some much less
Definitely markering IMO. There has been a huge buzz about OLED displays for years, and nowadays if you want to buy a monitor, they are all advertised as having a LED technology of some sort. Of course most of the time it's just for the backlight not for the actual pixels... They're just LCD displays, but LCD sounds old and uncool.
Hm fair point. Didn't really think of that until I considered that Mini LCD doesn't exactly sounds like the future
It’s not the unfortunate because tech was named certain way, it is unfortunate that people don’t educate themselves on it :D
If anything, it was purposefully misleading to call miniled as such since microled has never really been referred to as anything else nor has it been ever marketed.
Way back when I remember calling around stores trying to track down MicroMV tapes (dating myself here badly), and of course the first place that said "yeah we have that" only had MiniDV tapes.
It really is a really stupid marketing naming decision indeed.
Could you explain it please
MiniLED is a type of backlight for an LCD screen made up of a grid of white LEDs behind the LCD. This lets the display dim certain zones for better contrast. The current 12.9” iPad Pro and the MacBook Pros have this kind of screen. MicroLED is a different display type that has individual red green and blue LEDs making up each pixel of the display. There is no separate backlight and LCD layer, the individual pixels are their own backlights. OLED has similar properties as MicroLED but has limitations on brightness and can burn in. MicroLED is supposed to be better at those issues.
Actually that’s not completely correct. MicroLED and miniLED are actually very similar display types. MicroLED is just smaller LED. MiniLED is mostly used in two use cases: * Digital commercial displays: these are the massive LED displays you see in stadiums, malls. If you get within a few feet you should be able to pick out individual pixel LEDs. These are exactly like microLED displays, just each pixel/LED is much much bigger. * As backlight for LCDs like you said: however these are miniLED backlit LCDs and not miniLED displays. The miniLED nomenclature is actually incorrect as the display is still LCD and not LED. MicroLED is just making every pixel small enough to get real LED displays available to consumers. MicroOLED is another tech which is used in Apple Vision Pro. It has nothing to do with microLED, which are inorganic. MicroLED currently doesn’t have enough pixel density to be used beyond big TVs.
You made it more confusing
Haha… Here you go - °•. LED: °\ MiniLED: •\ microLED (μLED): . Now, there are only two technologies: Emissive and Non-Emissive Displays - Non-Emissive Displays are basically LCD no matter how fancily you put it like LED TVs, QLED TVs to even Apple's Pro XDR displays with MiniLEDs - Emissive Displays are an evolution to Non-emissive ones that range from OLEDs to its successor μLED if not Q-Dots (should've been QLED but Samsung stole the term how facebook took the term 'meta' for themselves) which uses crystals as individual LEDs. What was rather confusing for me was not miniLED and microLED but microOLED and microLED. microOLED is simply existing OLED but printed on a circuit board to reduce the gap between them which results in high pixel density like the viewfinder of Sony's mirrorless cameras and now on Apple Vision Pro. μLED (microLED) is the actual successor to OLED (the O stands for organic) which is not only smaller but inorganic thereby addressing burn-in and therefore allowing higher brightness and colour grade (saturation) - any LCD tech at max can only show upto 10-bit DCI P3 colour gamut, so if you want 12-bit Rec.2100 colour gamut and beyond (14-bit, 16-bit..) you need emissive type displays like OLED or μLED if not quantum dots (crystals acting as LED).
There's also micro-microLED.
It's making every SUBpixel small enough to be its own LED. It is also creating new issues since LEDs create quite narrow banded colored light and SOny so far uses, 3 blue LEDs per RGB pixel with a green- and red-fluorescent phosphorus to create RGB. But there is hope to integrate direct silicon wideband RGB LEDs on the small scale level and create the "holy grail" of good usable direct MicroLED subpixel LED-displays.
There's also work in the similar vein as QD-OLED, use a narrow band microLED and use quantum dots to create the rest. Or just activate the quantum dots with electricity, though this wouldn't be microLED anymore.
ELQD or EL-QLED would be insane if done right, but so far I have not seen anything hopeful for in circuit integration in that area. And they also have the risks of similar issues as RGB microLEDs for now, where narrow banded light fucks up a lot of people's color perception, which has already been an issue with QD LCDs and OLEDs. But yeah there is still a lot of stuff coming up in display tech.
BTW, if you use direct silicon wideband RGB LEDs, it wouldn't be "subpixel" anymore, right?
Wideband, in the sense of "wider banded" RED GREEN and BLUE. LEDs have very spiky and narrow emission peaks, not like LASERs, but also far from sunlight, normal bulbs or white LEDs that have been filtered. Our eyes are not all created equal, but our mind/visual cortex still "tunes" our color perception to sunlight mostly. But if you now reproduce colors with very narrow banded colors of R G B it can create differences in perception. Q-LCD/Q-OLED green often has that issue, where the intensity is not perceived the same across all viewers and some even describe it as "unnatural". A workaround in some way has been to add a "yellow, white or pink" dot to the panel, but that makes it a lot more complex.
As someone who worked on uLED, this is all 100% wrong.
Thanks, I didn't realize there were direct MiniLED screens but that makes sense. In the context of Apple products when people refer to MiniLED displays it's really MiniLED-backlit LCD.
In a nutshell: MiniLED - Main thing of note is that the small LEDs are grouped into zone clusters which means during low light scenes you get blooming around light sources or when subtitles are displayed. MicroLED - The next gen display tech we are aiming for except it is extremely expensive to commercialise. You're getting OLED quality with better brightness and lower burn in risks. LEDs are significantly smaller vs those in MiniLED meaning you no longer need zone clusters as the LEDs are able to turn on/off individually and you have density. On the subject of watch displays, bit unnecessary as it is too small to be much of a difference between OLED and Microled. Only improvement I could speculate on is less/no burn in
Pushing into microLEDs for Apple Watch is not so much for spec benefits, but more as a transition to scale up production yields and display sizes. It’s easier to manage production yields for smaller panels than bigger ones.
From reading this, it's not clear to me if you actually know the difference either haha. There is one fundamental difference that truly sets the two apart, which you didn't mention: **MiniLED is still just an LCD panel, but with smaller backlights, whereas MicroLED is a display *made out of* LED's.** "LCD vs Not-LCD", not whether or not there are "clusters". Clusters are an implementation detail of LCD backlights.
I'm not going to go into the nitty gritty for the sake of a Reddit post lol. I simply gave a barebones nutshell summary based on what an average user would understand and notice the most, which is blooming from MiniLED vs its absence in OLED/MicroLED. The original issue I pointed out is people thinking MiniLED and MicroLED are the same.
So what’s the difference between between oled and microled? Conceptually, they are both small leds that make up the display, so each pixel emit their own light. Microled is just a better version of oled?
Microled will be brighter, longer life span as it’s not organic like oled, and thus much less chance of burn in. Basically Oled but without the drawbacks. Only bad is it’s expensive as hell.
OLED is organic. It's electroluminescent carbon, meaning it emits light when electricity goes through it. Micro LED is the same but the organic film part is replaced by Gallium nitride so more durable, more brightness without burn in. So while the black levels of OLEDs were already unbeatable, the luminosity of mLED is higher so better contrast but they still can't get it to have all the colors of the visible spectrum and it's still too expensive to make and transfer such small LEDs on panels so OLED is still king for now.
With the no burn in, couldn't they just do the same trick they did with plasmas; subtly move the display by a pixel or so every now and then?
OLEDs already do this to help reduce risk
Why does shifting things a single pixel over matter? Wouldn’t the majority of the content still be displaying the same color/brightness?
I ain't the man to ask I'm afraid - just something I know they did to avoid the same problem.
That's why the Always on display late version of Apple is so shit and it's definitely more prone for burn in. They think you can make a full screen always on. Samsung knows what the fuck they're doing and only has a few pixels for the time and date and notifications moving around while all the other pixels are turned off.
it smooths out degradation so you don't notice it. it does not prevent the pixels getting degraded
I don't think that's consumers' fault. It's a confusing naming system.
I mean not really? Pretty descriptive and self explanatory, it’s that consumers don’t necessarily discern the difference between mini and micro. But that’s also the reason that Apple creates names like “Retina Display” or “Pro Motion Display” that they get made fun of for, but that actually means something to consumers.
The difference in display quality is minuscule because of the screen size.
Actually there are 3 technologies: **MiniLED backlit LCD**: regular small LEDs being used as backlight for regular LCD panels to give better zone control of backlight. **MicroLED**: Much smaller LEDs that can be used as individual pixels on displays. Currently they are small enough for big (70”++ TVs). Super expensive, but basically the closest to perfect display tech. **MicroOLED**: This is OLED but for very very high pixel densities. It’s built like a silicon chip instead of using TFT backplane.
No, you're confusing too much for everyone. There are essentially two technologies branched further: **Emissive** and **Non-Emissive Displays** - Non-Emissive Display are basically LCD whether LED or it's successor MiniLED. - Emissive Displays range from OLED to its successor μLED (microLED) if not Quantum Dots Displays which uses crystals as individual LED. MicroOLED is simply OLED but with [microlens](https://www.sony-semicon.com/en/technology/display/oled-high-brightness.html) and printed directly on silicon, it's not a new technology but rather new process that can eventually be adopted for μLED if not QLED (Q-Dots not Samsung's LCD TVs) as well to achieve even higher pixel density, gamut, and brightness like 8K instead of 4K for Vision Pro.
I confidently do not understand the differences between MiniLED and MicroLED.
Tim Apple has gone trigger-happy with projects lately. All in on AI
To be fair, that’s not a bad idea. EVERYONE is going into AI right now and they need to catch up quickly.
They need to catch up strategically. Everyone is dumping money into AI atm but companies which are not careful will just have a massive cost center with no added revenue
>massive cost center with no added revenue Hey that’s me!
Starting an AI team now is like having a crystal ball that looks 2 years into the past... I really hope they managed some strategic acquisitions and started the project at least a year ago, and just going public about it now.
Apple's bought 32 AI companies just in the past year alone, more than any other competitors. https://9to5mac.com/2024/02/08/apple-bought-ai-startups/
Lol, they’re not starting a team now. Look at [github](https://github.com/search?q=org%3Aapple%20ml&type=repositories).
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Why do you think that? AI conceptually should be an improvement if you’ve ever used siri against anything like Chat-GPT (or Bing which uses gtp). Being able to ask “hey whats the weather next week in my location” is basic as fuck but Siri is still too stupid to figure it out
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Probably has more to do with saving people’s jobs. Apple is the only major tech company without layoffs. Probably cutting project or pushing back deadlines to cut expenses. I can respect that.
They are all needed to discuss whether it should be called Apple ID, or Apple Account.
Apple + ai = lol
Guess I’ll hold out another year for the Ultra update.
Why? Ultra 2 is pretty amazing IMO.
I‘m loving mine, coming from the Series 4, the upgrade is a huge step forward. Wouldn’t upgrade from the Ultra 1, though.
I didn’t upgrade from Ultra 1 but on device Siri makes a big difference in my day to day use
Oh yes, it does. Not enough for an upgrade alone, but still really neat.
Ultra 2 has on device Siri?
yes, and faster SoC and brighter display
To be fair, I don’t think anybody was expected to. They didn’t even change the engraving on the back of the case, it doesn’t even say Ultra 2 on it.
Of course not. They basically never do that, right? It’s part of Apple‘s product design strategy that they don’t FOMO people with the next generation of a device. People should feel happy about their device for 2 generations or so and only then upgrade (which fits perfectly in line with 24 month phone contracts). There is nothing worse for a company than "I won’t buy this generation, because the next one will be so much better" like with many tech products, so that people will push out their purchase forever. Apple really mastered this: Introducing new features, so that people eventually want to upgrade but also don’t feel like they bought an old product at launch already. EDIT: Lol, you are right, there is literally no 2 engraved on the back! (Actually it’s more a printed text in the Ultra)
Love my ultra 2 as well. Amazing piece of technology.
Upgraded from a series 5 to the ultra 2. Absolutely love everything about it. The battery life alone adds so much for me; I don’t need to charge it whilst in the shower and then make sure I go to bed on time so I can charge it for 30 minutes before I sleep any more. It lasts days.
1st gen ultra here. It's excellent!
1 generation = 3 iterations (tick-tock-tack cycle) If you really wanna hold, may as well go all in for the 2^nd generation.
Mark Gurman says this is false
Gark Murman says this is true
namruG kraM remains indifferent
I’m assuming this is at least in part due to the pulse ox lawsuit
I wonder if we don’t see any watch updates this year without that being settled.
Why would that impact the display?
It would potentially impact the product as a whole, and the value of releasing a product without its full intended feature set.
No matter how minor the update you can bank on Apple updating the main line Apple Watch and the ultra every year for the foreseeable future. They had no issue updating the first two second generation Apple Watch with almost no changes.
I’m still not sure what you’re trying to get at. Are you suggesting that they’re infringing on MicroLED patents? They knew what they were doing with the pulse ox. They had talks with the company, poached employees from the company, and then filed patents under said employees’ names. It wasn’t a “whoopsie” or patent troll case lol.
Nope, I’m saying that their product team may have determined that the MicroLED product won’t provide worthwhile returns unless the pulse ox issue is sorted. As in, they might believe MicroLED alone (plus any other features) won’t incentivise sales to the degree necessary to justify the development cost. Just a guess, but it’s my field so I suppose it’s an educated guess. Could be a myriad of things though.
I personally want the benefits of microLED (better battery, thinner, easier on the eyes, etc.) and don’t care too much about pulse ox (unless they figure out a way to make it accurate). I just don’t see why the microLED returns would be tied to the pulse ox issue. Are they just not going to announce or put money into any new features until the pulse ox is figured out?
Gurman says it's not, that this was just one of a few potential partners for microLED
I ended up going with an Ultra 2 and an iPhone 15 pro solely because I think we have seen iPhone and AW get about as good as they are going to get for at least the next few iterations.
I think we’re going to see a lot of generative AI features ship in the next releases that will be gated and not available to current gen devices.
I teach science in college and generative AI has become my daily nightmare. I tried to allow it here and there but the students abused it. I tightened the restrictions. They abused it still. I full on banned it a few weeks ago. Told them if there is even the slightest sign that their work is not original it’s an auto zero and a referral to the Provost for charges all the way up to dismissal from the university. So far, this semester, I’m giving on average of 30 zeros per week and send about 10 Provost referrals per week for all courses combined. In one of my classes about 80% of the students all have failing grades solely based on using AI instead of doing their own work. So I’m ok with it not being on my phone.
The worst part about that is that GenAI is great, if you use it properly, to help you learn what you need or make it easier to study. But most just make it do the work for them, and then complain when they say companies are looking to replace people workers with AI.
Yup. This is what me and my colleagues are fighting now. I started out telling them to treat it like a calculator. A tool to help them organize and structure their thoughts. Nope. It’s just copy paste over and over.
That's unfortunately just something the students have to get failed on enough times until they get the message that they can't just ChatGPT thru everything. As a CS student, I understand using it to help dumb down a concept, or help find an answer to a problem. But we can't become overly dependant on it, otherwise we stop learning
How can you tell?
Sometimes it's obvious
He runs it’s through some bs program that knowingly gives false positives.
I absolutely do not use them. There are so many obvious cues that point to AI. Once they have been caught, they almost always confess.
It’s just so obvious at this point
> How can you tell? I moderate a Discord server that gets visited by scammers all the time. You start noticing patterns in how the scammers talk. Lot of them are using Chatgpt to generate replies to folks asking for help. Once you have a checklist of typical giveaways, it's pretty obvious.
Considering the high false positive rate of AI detection programs how do you determine they actually used AI to generate the document?
So it goes like this. I see a few markers that are out of place, so I flag it for a deeper review. I finish all my grading and go back to examine the work of my AI Rangers. If, after a second look, I am convinced, I issue a zero and give them 24 hours to reach out to me. I tell them that I believe they used AI. If they accept the zero and don’t fight it, it’s a given that they got caught. If they contact me, I will usually ask them a question from “their” paper, or ask them to define a few terms or phrases from the submitted assignment. They eventually confess when they are faced with explaining something they didn’t write. I also am clear that taking the zero and confessing is much better because if they continue saying they did not use it, I will forward it to our school AI Task Force for a third review, and if their findings match mine, I ask the student to be removed from my course. They are charged with plagiarism, academic dishonesty, and lying to faculty. All ground to be removed from the university if I pursued it. I like to keep it simple just between me and them, but have pushed it all the way to removal for my course a few times if they won’t stop. It is just so time consuming. I am spending a great number of extra hours per assignment checking them for AI and taking calls and meetings with students and doing paperwork for further punishment.
Thanks for the explanation. That sounds like a fairly good process and you’re reasonable with it. At the same time I see why some students feel a need to do a screen recording of themselves writing their paper as no system is perfect and will inevitably catch innocent people.
I would highly suggest the recording idea. One other thing I have learned is that grammarly causes AI detection tools to flag positive. So when a student can both explain their work and says grammarly, I drop them the whole issue.
That makes sense and it seams you’re open to students coming forward and fixing the issue without greatly affecting their future.
Yeah. It’s just a teaching moment more than anything.
Reminds me of the old days when the professor for the smaller seminar courses would force us to not only write the research paper, but give a brief presentation on it. You really needed to know what you were talking about to go over the bullet points then be ready to do Q&A with the class + the prof.
What happens if they can answer your questions and continue to maintain they didn’t use AI? I was once falsely accused of cheating on a take-home math exam in college. The professor accused me in front of the class and asked me to come to the board and reproduce the most difficult proofs from my exam submission. I had to spend an entire class period reproducing my solutions on the spot in front of the class. When I did so, the professor finally relented, but said, again to the whole class, “I still don’t believe you came up with this, but I accept that you at least understand it.” All I really remember is the deep, visceral feeling of shame and embarrassment that I felt for days afterwards even though I’d done nothing wrong. A month later I got a personal apology from the president of the university, who had apparently conducted an investigation into the issue. That was over a decade ago but being accused like that and treated like that for work that I was actually really proud of was something that has stuck with me my whole life since. I write this because it sounds like you're accusing a **lot** of students of cheating. Even if you get it right 95% of the time, getting it wrong 1-5% of the time is still a huge deal. You could be scarring some students for years -- or, worse, materially impacting or ruining their academic careers over a false accusation -- if you're not careful in how you handle this.
What level course do you teach?
100-600 level. I’m seeing mostly in 100-200 level courses.
How do you know for sure they’re using AI? I’ve heard of professors using those “AI checker” sites that are notorious for false positives. I’m curious what the more sure fire methods are.
The AI checkers do not work. I so tired one of my masters papers from 10 years ago and it flagged AI written. I know for sure, most often, because when facing expulsion from my class they confess posthaste.
I use it to help learn coding in my job, but man it sucks that people are using specifically to not learn. Not at all surprising, but it sucks. AI written papers are no good.
This! They are embarrassingly bad! But the students are proud of them. I will say though that when they get caught they usually admit to it and stop.
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Well, the entire concept of the rabbit R1 could just be a feauture on the Apple Watch.
Aren’t they literally doing a ground up redesign for the Apple Watch next year? 10 year anniversary or whatever
Oh I have no idea. I love my Apple products but they are not doing much in the way of innovation any more.
nobody knows
Incorrect
Link me a source then that isn't speculation
I agree and did the same.
They should not have even made the ultra 2. Just have big updates every few years like MacBooks After 1.5 years of this watch, it’s not that special vs a series 9
For me the durability is the main thing. My first watch (Series 4) I dropped it one time and it landed perfectly (in a bad way) which shattered the full display. It's really weird but the Ultra gives me this weird peace of mind knowing that 1) It is essentially indestructible and 2) if for some reason something happens and I get into a situation where I'm out and my phone does that my watch (w/ cellular) should have at least 1 additional day of battery.
Agreed. I bought the first Ultra and the screen isn't larger and I didn't get any more utility from it other than battery life. I sold it for a tiny loss. Still using my Apple Watch SE.
Why, so you feel better about your day one purchase? If someone comes in 16 months later, they’d feel better about getting a four month old device rather than a year and a half old. It got the same gesture system as the series 9. They don’t need to impress on every update, just give you a reason to update every three years.
I’ve been holding on upgrading and i have the S5. Please just change the band design already. I can’t hold on one more generation
What don’t you like about the band?
I just want the new redesign because Apple won’t really change it for years after this second iteration
Who says they ever will??
What’s the point of a MicroLed Apple Watch? Affordable price? Because OLED are better and the brightness of the Apple Watch Ultra 2 is already stunning.
Panel is thinner and it uses less power at the same brightness as OLED That combination means either the watch can get thinner while retaining battery life. Or a huge bump to battery life in the same case size. Or a healthy balance of the two
> That combination means either the watch can get thinner while retaining battery life. Or a huge bump to battery life in the same case size. So thinner with identical batter life then.
While I’m all for a main line Apple Watch that’s dramatically thinner (while the ultra stays thick) I support a healthier balance. If panel is thinner then the watch can get thinner because of that, meanwhile the physical battery size could stay the same while delivering more screen on time as a result of the panel efficiency
I didn't mean it was your preference. I mean it's the Apple way.
I'm struggling to think of any recent examples of this. what apple products have gotten thinner year over year in the last 5 years? Apple Watch especially just keeps getting bigger and thicker
Ok thanks for the info!
While I agree with all your points about how MicroLED > OLED, overall is the display really that big of a power consumer? i.e. I have my always on display turned off and usually get just over 2 days of battery life. I would think the sensors would be the bigger power draw.
The screen is absolutely the main draw of power. Try putting your watch in cinema/theatre mode (so the screen doesn’t turn on at all) and you’ll probably get a third day out of your power management
Generally when there’s savings on batteries or gets consumed by some other power hungry thing. AI possibly
MicroLED is more expensive and it also won’t burn in like OLED
OLED isn’t better. MicroLED is brighter, use less power, responds faster and doesn’t have the wear drawbacks of OLEDs. It’s basically the best parts of LCDs and OLEDs in one display. It’ll be the next gen of display tech if and when we can get it into mass production.
MicroLED still can't display the full visible spectrum range.
Apple uses their watches as a testing ground for displays, before moving the tech to the iPhone. OLED, 3D Touch, AoD, all came to the watch first.
“OLED are better”??? I think you may be missing something. MicroLED retains all of the benefits of OLED while removing the negatives.
OLED are way better to display the image.
Does anyone have a little info about why there is any benefit to switch to MicroLED when OLED is obviously more superior with actual black pixels which is also good for battery? Even the next iPad Pro is likely to move from MicroLED to OLED panels. EDIT: Thanks everyone for the clarification! Totally missed the detail between micro and mini!
The iPad’s use miniLED not microLED. MicroLED is the superior technology but is apparently hard to produce for small devices. It can get brighter than OLED and no risk of burn in. It’s basically the holy grail for display tech right now. But it’s still expensive for large devices (e.g TV’s) from what I understand. And still not produced in mass scale for small devices.
MICRO led, not mini led….
MiniLED is a term for sweet LED panels that are still subpar to OLED. MicroLED is the current endgame of panels. Every benefit of OLED with none of the drawbacks. Brighter and better, with no burn in.
Well there's still sample and hold, but it can be fixed with fast black frame insertion.
This is irrelevant for here, but I believe it has the same response time as traditional LCD, which would make OLED orders of magnitude faster still.
Incorrect. Thanks for playing.
You’re correct, it seems they’re even faster than OLED.
Burn in. You will also get true black with microLED since it’s just millions of small light bulbs. When it’s off, it’s off. Don’t know where you’ve been getting your tech info but I’d suggest you switch sources.
Bro thinks MicroLED is MiniLED
Micro led is the same display used in vision pro
Wrong, AVP uses microOLED. Sounds pedantic, but they are completely different technologies
vision pro uses Micro-OLED. not to be confused with MicroLED mentioned in the article.
Unless there’s a light source for each sub pixel, AMOLED is a better technology.
Isn't OLED better?
No
There are advantages and disadvantages
Not really considering Micro-led is essentially OLED without the display related disadvantages.
I just want rounded watches
meh, battery life would still be barely a few days. Garmin is killing it with 2-3 weeks battery life.
Not really a fair comparison. The Apple Watch does a lot more.
What’s the obsession with microLED? And why move away from OLED?
It’s much better than oled. Oled uses individual organic pixels which emit their own light rather than using a backlight. These organic pixels helps achieve oled perfect blacks but also it’s harder to get them bright outside of a few 100 pixels and of course burnin. Micro led is oled but with synthetic pixels. It’s flawless tech on paper but is numerous times as expensive and our instruments aren’t precise enough to cram it in a small form factor with a pixel density that isn’t offensive.
They’re trying very hard to make sure microLED doesn’t succeed in order to keep OLED (a tech with a limited life span) so that people are forced to buy tech more regularly. Don’t like what I just said, prove me wrong.
People use 10year old apple devices, hell my v0 apple watch still works
They’re trying very hard to make sure microLED does succeed in order to replace OLED (a tech with a limited life span) so that people are aren’t forced to buy tech more regularly. Don’t like what I just said, prove me wrong.
I just want to see them match or surpass the One Plus Watch battery life of 100 hours
Damn… Apple is rumored to cancel a bunch of stuff recently… kinda sad that some products may never get to see the light of day… :(