Comment by johnklos
13 days ago
The title is incorrect, because b&w Macs have 512×342 resolution, not 512x324.
It wouldn't've been too crazy had Apple went with 64K x 4 chips, so they'd've just needed four of them to get 128 KB at a full 16 bits wide.
512x342 was 16.7% of 128 KB of memory, as opposed to 18.75% with 512x384. Not much of a difference. But having square pixels is nice.
It looks like it's just the HN submitted title which is wrong (currently "Why the Original Macintosh Had a Screen Resolution of 512×324"). The article's title is "Why the Original Macintosh Had a Screen Resolution of 512×342", and "324" doesn't appear anywhere on the page.
Looks like someone is reading Hacker News comments and editing the page - archive.org captured the page probably mid-edit, and it says "324" in one place: https://web.archive.org/web/20250527202300/https://512pixels...
Oh that's priceless. Real time HN feedback loops.
1 reply →
> wouldn't've
Really, John? You really had to make me parse that word?
It's a great word, I use it all the time.
You shouldn't've tho. Who'd've complained if you hadn't've?
It usually isn't transcribed with Klingon orthography.
I bet you also work for the IRS don't you
You version of shouldn’t’ve’s punctuation isn’t like that?
Who’d’ve thought?
Worth adding? The (almost [1]) omni-present menu bar ate 20 pixels of vertical space as well — so you could say the application had 322 of useable rows.
[1] To be sure, many games hide the menu bar.