New technology may signal the end of computer screens as we know them, writes David Shapshak
When Apple boss Steve Jobs introduced the new iMac, which has a built-on flat panel monitor, he used an interesting phrase: “The death of the CRT.”
The CRT, or cathode ray tube, is the technology that has powered our computer monitors and television screens for decades. CRT technology has become more sophisticated, more reliable and more powerful over the years. We have clearer pictures and better resolution, but we still have what appears to be an oversized light bulb that projects a “ray” of electrons from a “cathode” (a negative terminal) through a vacuum in the TV on to the screen, where it is converted into images.
Eric Haruki, an analyst for the consulting firm IDC, agrees with Jobs. “Flat displays are the future,” he told Wired recently, predicting that by 2006 flat panel monitors will usurp majority market share from CRTs.
Jobs has had visionary flashes in the past that have been borne out in the marketplace. His Apple II was one of the first computers to have a screen a 9-inch black-and-white monitor. Other early personal computers, like the MITS Altair 880, had no keyboard, monitor or programming language. Users had to input the program by hand using binary machine code and rows of flashing lights and switches on the front of the machine.
Apple was an innovator, introducing the mouse, stiffie drive and graphical user interface the icon-based interface that most computer users now know as Windows.
Jobs did away with the stiffie drive in the first all-in-one iMacs that debuted in 1998. Now, several years later, Microsoft is musing about doing the same for PCs file-transferring via the Internet and cheap CD burning have made the stiffie drive all but obsolete.
Jobs’s abandoning of the CRT in favour of a flat panel in the new iMac might be the pre-emptive push that the PC market needs. Apple has a lot of clout despite having less than 5% of the global computer market.
The CRT, however, is still a mainstay of desktop computing and predicting its death may be premature, considering 90-million CRT units were sold last year compared with 15,5-million flat panel screens.
Over the years desktop computer users have been able to upgrade from the 14-inch standard CRT monitor to the 15-inch (now the default), 17-, then 19- and 21-inch monitors. These larger monitors are a prerequisite for the design and media industries where they allow for multiple windows and finer resolution.
However, in the past few years two forces have emerged in screen technology, thanks in part to our mobile requirements.
Laptops, for practical purposes, could not have a CRT monitor. Enter the liquid crystal display (LCD).
LCD technology uses thousands of tiny cold cathode fluorescent lamps to backlight a notebook screen. The light is then diffused by a panel. These little tubes do not get very hot, making them ideal for use in a portable computer, which already struggles with dissipating the heat generated by the processor. The lamps require less energy, so they do not drain the laptop’s battery.
The LCD monitors were thin and light and initially black and white. However, they were of such poor quality that they were worse than the original monochrome CRTs. It was almost an embarrassment when they emerged in the late 1980s.
But over the years these monitors became increasingly sophisticated and, in many cases, more powerful than their CRT counterparts. They evolved into active-matrix LCDs, which used thin film transistors (TFT) tiny switching transistors and capacitors. This complex means of using the TFTs produced vibrant colours that could be viewed from more obtuse angles.
The success of the notebook computer market made LCDs more mainstream in the boom years of the 1990s. But these flat screens didn’t come cheap. Their cost in some part has added to the price of a laptop, which also owes its value to the miniaturisation of its components.
It didn’t take long for flat panel monitors to migrate back to the desktop. The appeal is obvious. A flat panel monitor is not only lighter and more compact, but has better visual quality and uses less energy.
Indeed, the size gains alone are sufficient to justify buying one of these monitors, although they do come at a premium.
Because of their flat screen (CRTs are mostly curved) they present a larger viewing area. And they are much easier on the eye.
The second major advancement in screen technology has been plasma screens, which convert neon and xenon gas into plasma that emits ultraviolet (UV) light. This UV “lights” up another layer in the screen that creates the images, using dots or pixels, the basic building block of an image.
Each of these pixels has three “cells” in this layer that are dedicated to one of the primary colours red, green or blue. Therefore each pixel is more intense and clearer.
The screen can also be much larger and is thus more suited for use as a TV screen or for large displays in high-traffic areas such as airports or shopping malls.
Digital media company Three Blind Mice Communications uses these screens to run advertising promotions and staff communication campaigns. It calls them a kind of “private TV station” they are in use at about 700 sites around South Africa, including 575 Absa branches and 17 Virgin Active gyms.
Jobs is betting his business on flat panel screens. Apple this week introduced another computer, the eMac, which is aimed at the United States education market. It looks like the original iMac, but is built around a 17-inch flat screen.