Comment by closewith 6 days ago
Agent is clear in that it acts on behalf of the user.
"LLM feedback loop systems" could be to do with training, customer service, etc.
> Agent is like Retina Display to my ears, at least at this stage!
Retina is a great name. People know what it means - high quality screens.
Retina Display means nothing. Just because Apple pushed hard to make it common to everyone it doesn’t mean it’s a good technical name.
You’re right that it’s branding, but it also has meaning: a display resolution that (approximately) matches the resolution of the human retina, under typical viewing conditions. The fact that the term is easily understood by the lay public is what makes it a good name and smart branding. BTW the term ‘retinal display’ existed long before Apple used it, and refers to a display that projects directly onto the retina.
A screen that directly projects onto the retina sounds like a great reason to call it a retinal display. So then Apple hijacking the term to mean high DPI... how does that fit in?
There's not that many results about this before Apple's announcement in 2010, many of them reporting on science and not general public media: https://www.google.com/search?q=retinal+display&sca_esv=3689... Clearly not something anyone really used for an actual (not research grade) display, especially not in the meaning of high DPI
This isn't an especially easily understood term: that it means "good" would have been obvious no matter what this premium brand came up with. The fact that it's from Apple makes you assume it's good. (And the screens are good)
The trademark ‘retina display’ was defined to mean the display resolution approximately matches the human retina, which is why ‘retina display’ seems obvious and easy to understand. That it’s good is implied, but “good” is not the definition of the term. I know a lot of non-technical people who understand it without any trouble. Come to think of it, I’ve never met anyone who doesn’t understand it or had trouble. Are you saying you had a hard time understanding what it means?
The branding term is slightly different from ‘retinal display’. The term in use may have been ‘virtual retinal display’. Dropping the ell off retinal and changing it from an adjective to a noun maybe helped their trademark application, perhaps, but since the term wasn’t in widespread use and the term is not exactly the same, that starts to contradict the idea they were ‘hijacking’ it.
The fact that any company advertised it implies that it’s supposed to be good. Doesn’t matter that it was Apple, nor that it was a premium brand, when a company advertises, no company is ever suggesting anything other than it’s a good thing.
> [retina] it has a very clear technical meaning
Retina does not mean that, not even slightly or in connotation
Even today, no other meanings are listed: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/retina
It comes from something that means "net-like tunic" (if you want to stretch possible things someone might understand from it): https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/retina
They could have named it rods and cones, cells, eye, eyecandy, iris, ultra max, infinite, or just about anything else that isn't negative and you can still make this comment of "clearly this adjective before »screen« means it's high definition". Anything else is believing Apple marketing "on their blue eyes" as we say in Dutch
> imperceptible to the average healthy human eye from a typical viewing distance
That's most non-CRT (aquarium) displays. What's different about high DPI (why we need display scaling now) is that they're imperceptible even if you put your nose onto them: there's so many pixels that you can't see any of them at any distance, at least not with >100% vision or a water droplet or other magnifier on the screen
The term is ‘retina display’ not ‘retina’
> That’s most non-CRT (aquarium) displays. What’s different about high DPI (why we need display scaling now) is that they’re imperceptible even if you put your nose onto them
Neither of those claims is true.
Retina Display was 2x-3x higher PPI (and 4x-9x higher pixel area density) than the vast majority of displays at the time it was introduced, in 2010. The fact that many displays are today now as high DPI as Apple’s Retina display means that the competition caught up, that high DPI had a market and was temporarily a competitive advantage.
The rationale for Retina Display was, in fact, the DPI needed for pixels to be imperceptible at the typical viewing distance, not when touching your nose. It has been argued that the choice of 300DPI was not high enough at a distance of 12 inches to have pixels be imperceptible. That has been debated, and some people say it’s enough. But it was not argued that pixels should or will be imperceptible at a distance of less than 12 inches. And people with perfect vision can see pixels of a current Retina Display iPhone if held up to their nose.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Retina_display#Rationale_and_d...
> Retina Display means nothing.
It means a high-quality screen and is named after the innermost part of the eye, which evokes focused perception.
> Just because Apple pushed hard to make it common to everyone it doesn’t mean it’s a good technical name.
It's an excellent technical name, just like AI agent. People understand what it means with minimal education and their hunch about that meaning is usually right.
>Agent is clear in that it acts on behalf of the user.
Yes, but you could say that AI orchestrated workflows are also acting on behalf of the user and the "Agentic AI" people seem to be going to great lengths to distinguish AI Agents from AI Workflows. Really, the only things that distinguish the AI Agent is the "running the LLM in a loop" + the LLM creating structured output.