Clint Boulton for the CIO Journal blog on the Wall Street Journal:

But it may also wreak havoc on CIOs’ networks and connectivity budgets — better quality displays require more network bandwidth, which allows users to increase data consumption. Consider that experts told CIO Journal earlier this year that the new iPad, which includes a Retina display of 2048-by-1536 resolution with 3.1 million pixels, would slow enterprise networks to a crawl and increase data costs from carriers. Now imagine how a Macbook with 5.1 million pixels — two million more than the new iPad — will increase data traffic in office networks.

Normally I’m inclined to ferret this stuff away for my Angry Mac Bastards podcast, but this one was so astonishing I had to post it here.

The so-called “experts” – and Boulton – are wrong. Dead wrong. The resolution of the new MacBook Pro’s display doesn’t change the resolution of source content transmitted over the network one bit.

Putting it another way: Does having three monitors on your desk make you consume massively more bandwidth than having just one? Of course not. It just lets you see more stuff on your screen.

Dumb. Just dumb.

Update: Later on Wednesday Boulton posted a correction to his article to suggest that Retina Display-equipped device owners would consume more HD video, which would result in higher bandwidth consumption. It’s still a stretch, and it’s still a dumb article.