Display Orientation Empowerment

Interesting piece from Ben Brooks, discussing how with laptops, our displays are dogmatically (a) widescreen and (b) landscape. The iPad brought back the 4:3 aspect ratio, but more interestingly, it put orientation in the user’s hands. You choose. Put another way, in most senses, the iPad is far less configurable or customizable than a Mac; but regarding display orientation, it’s the other way around.

(Back in the early 1990s, I coveted but could not afford a Radius Pivot display for the Mac — you could rotate between portrait and landscape on-the-fly.)

★ Friday, 9 September 2011