Apple iBooks app indicates iPad 2 will quadruple resolution to 2048x1536 - Page 4

2048x1536 in a 9.7 inch screen?

I believe it. Apple will continue to innovate and lead the way. No one will be able to touch it.

Let me clarify: simultaneously 1366 by 768 (native) and 2560 by 1600 on an external display, via desktop extension (ie. drag and drop from one to the other). the OS is already designed for that, using only the NVIDIA GeForce 320M found in the 11" MBA.
I was simply pointing out that if a MBA can support up to 5,145,088 pixels, why can't the alleged iPad G2's A5 support 3,145,728?

There is no doubt that Apple will, eventually, release an iPad with such a high resolution. But there is no indication that it is viable today. Let's keep in mind that the next iPad is probably already well past the design phase and likely weeks away from being formally launched. What indication is there that a 9.7" display with such outrageous resolution is a part that anyone can deliver at this time at an affordable price.

Apple can't conjure up such a device. It needs to land a deal with a supplier for the screen and that supplier has to make a profit, as does Apple, of course.

It is true that such resolution would put a huge strain on the entire system but then again, just because the iPad would be capable of displaying an ultra-high resolution, does not mean a developer would be obligated to provide it. If you're developing a game, you're not going to produce something that can't play well on the device for which it's intended. As such the resolution would be scaled to suit the processing power of the target device.

Still, it seems highly unlikely that Apple is ready to unleash an iPad with an incredible resolution. There are other priorities, including better battery life, weight reduction, faster processing, more memory, all of which would be negatively impacted by a massive leap in screen resolution.

Perhaps Apple is toying with those seeking out advance info. Feed them some nonsense about the resolution being dramatically higher and imply that a new device will have to wait until April. Meanwhile, lots of changes other than a higher-res screen and an intro closer to February is what's really going on. Let's remember that Apple does not want to negatively impact first-gen iPad sales by having it thought the next iPad is mere weeks away. If, on the other hand, the belief is that it's going to be April, sales don't miss a beat.

I predict no on the high-rez screen and no on the April intro of the new model. Apple's just messing with us by floating nonsense to keep some occupied, maintain high interest, and make the rumour sites look bad when it doesn't play out as predicted.

High resolution displays are very much the way the world is going.

For example Hitachi has a 302ppi display of 6.6" and Toppan has one with 458 ppi in a 4.8" display. Once you find yourself doing these size displays the only thing that keeps you from marketing a 10" display is customer demand.

Technology is moving very very fast with respect to display screens, do not underestimate Apple here.

While I wouldn't be shocked if we didn't see this, I am shocked that people are wholly doubting Apple here. When they announced the Retina display and put it not only in the iPhone but the iPod, I had a feeling we'd see a significant resolution increase to match a sort of "retina" line. I don't doubt at all that Apple could find a way to pull this off with their absurdly high volume orders.

This I don't get. Lighter? The thing already weighs less than 2 lbs. Maybe you need to get to the gym more often.

With all the extra power expected, I'm sure we will need some equally increased battery power. Likely that Apple will shave off a gram here and a gram there in the case, but I wouldn't expect the iPad 2 to be any lighter given the the fact that batteries are where most of the weight comes from and I expect more battery in the next version.

I think pretty much all iPhone apps do. Many support the Retina display, but I don't know of any that require it. Even with the apps that support Retina, Apple refuses to let iPads use that resolution, so we're stuck with the original 480x360.

I've read a lot about the iPad being heavy to use one handed. Holding 1.5lb in one hand out in front of you in the same position for an extended period, like when reading, is going to be a strain after a while.

I say that with no intent to cause you excitement rather it is a reflection of your posting style. Your style is very much that of a sheep that has been trained to respond to the sheppards dog. Clearly you are not thinking objectively here.


I don't consider myself to be an Apple fan boy at all. In fact I bought my MBP in early 2008 and my iPhone a few months after that. Given that I can't help to classify you either as a Fanboi or a troll, I really don't know which one in this case.

However it is clear you can't evaluate what Android is. That is basically a platform for google advertising. The OS has many issues and as a platform is terrible to program for.

If that where the case you would be relating facts that we could use to evaluate Android. You have failed so far to show us in anyway how Android is better. Frankly that is extremely difficult as Android isn't all that great of a platform.

With Android that is very easy to do because there is nothing about Android Honeycomb that makes it significantly better than iOS.

Playbook I see as an entirely different story but they have gone nuts with the hardware. Playbook needs sane hardware for a portable. Beyound that they needs a native SDK if they expect to attrack serious developers. I do see Playbook as having the ability to become major competition for iPad but I'm not sure RIM can pull it off. Further in it's initial release it won't be the competition that Apple needs.

I don't think you are giving any one here any credit for being objective. In any event you speak in terms of could which is the same as comparing vapor ware to shipping product. In any event in order for Apple to be blown away there needs to be shipping product. Android has nothing in the way of viable shipping hardware or software. Even when it does ship Android will still be a mess as far as the software goes.

A view point yes. However that is a position with nothing to back it up. Come up with some hardware specs that are actually impressive and likely to ship. More so show us an Android ecosystem that isn't crap. Since this is impossible right now I suspect you are either trolling or ignorant about what you are talking about.

I don't even own an iPad yet because it is obviously a very gen one Apple product. However as a tablet and system I can already tell Apple is the only way to go if you want to buy a tablet. Personally this generation hardware isn't up to snuff for me.

However it doesn't take much effort to see that Android is a horrible mess right now and that Playbook has a very long way to go to realize it's potential.

Isn't that the whole point of rumor sites? That is to speculate on what coming hardware will be like.

I also think you are wrong about people buying Apple hardware by default. I actually think an under 7" device would be far better for my needs than iPads almost ten inch screen size. However there is nothing on the market right now that even comes close to fulfilling my needs in that format. Zip, nada, nothing.

You really go out on a limb here categorizing everybody as a Fanboi. There are many here of course but that is to be expected. My interest in iPad though comes from the fact that there is nothing comparable on the market. If you look at the entire ecosystem I think you will see this as true.

You are holding it wrong. I have a 500 page paper back that I'm reading. It weighs more than my iPad.

Go ahead and hold your arm out in front of you empty handed, for an extended time you will feel the strain in a mater of a few minutes. That is normal.

When comparing Apple's products to others, there's a lot of factors to bring into the comparison. Do they have something like iTunes to manage the plethora of multimedia we all have? Does it sync effortlessly to my computer or in the cloud? Does it have a well stocked app store? Is the OS easy to use? Will the hardware/os be supported by a reputable company in the future? What kind of ecosystem of 3rd party products are available?

I just don't see anyone else putting all the pieces together like Apple has. That said, my dad purchased an android phone and kept badgering me about a few features like voice navigation. Another friend touts the Swype typing system on his phone. But then I can do the same thing on the iPad with numerous apps.

It's not a case of fanboyism but a matter of comparing more than hardware an app or two.

Kinda reminds me of:

"It's like a finger pointing towards the moon.....<slap!>....don't concentrate on the finger or you'll miss all that heavenly glory." - B.L.

What you and I don’t know abut Apple’s next SoC does change the numbers. I see and hear people make wild assumptions that simply don’t hold up with the simplest of crunching of numbers. If you’d rather read about wish lists than equations then move to the next post, it’s not my calculations are hard to spot. If you take issue with my calculations then make a rebuttal correcting them, but don’t deny that math isn’t universal or that it isn’t factual.

I suppose if you don’t think any facts should be stated because we “know zero about what the Apple A5 is capable of” then why are you posting here at all? Why make any comment on any forum about a future product?

Do you honestly think that the unknown means that anything is possible? How about a 4096x3,072 resolution since "know zero about what the Apple A5 is capable of?” I’ll tell you something, that won’t happen and I dont’ have to know a damn thing about Apple’s next SoC because I’ve used common sense, logic and deduction to figure it out.

Well yeah in the current model that is true. I think people are worried (correctly) that iPad 2 being thinner and higher performance will not have as good battery life. Frankly we won't know for sure until iPad 2 ships.

Not me, if anything I'd want longer battery life. If Apple can do this and make the iPad thinner than great. In anyevent run time is a huge selling point for iPad.

I'm surprised that more people don't see this as it is obvious to me right in the Apple store. This is a combo of issues though. One is that the unit simply doesn't have enough RAM, which is an issue that got worst with the addition of multitasking. Further CPU bound apps slow to a crawl.

Because of GCD and Apples heavy focus on threading I suspect a multi core processor in our near future. This should bring along a considerable speed up to the device. Especially for apps that follow Apples guidelines. The big question is how many cores. 2 seems to be group think but yet there are already quad core A9 based SoC coming.

This is a massive issue and will only get worst with a much higher resolution screen. 1GB of RAM will likely be needed to really move forward.

Not my arm and I haven't got an iPad, I said I'd read about it being heavy one handed .

Not lighter as in "it's a pain to carry around" (like a laptop), but lighter in the sense that it's in my hands (or hand) all day long and yes, it causes a great deal of pain and awkwardness when you use it a lot.

The current iPad is really too heavy to hold in one hand for a long period of time, but when you say that, the response is usually "well lay it down on a table then," but this goes completely against what the thing was actually designed for which is mobile use. If I'm going to have to lay it on a table to use it, why wouldn't I just get a MacBook Air?

Thumb typing in portrait mode (again one of the key things the iPad is actually designed to do), is also very awkward at the moment. You need large hands (which I have), but the entire weight of the thing presses into your palms and with the sharp edge of the current model can be quite painful after a few hours use. The current iPad and also threatens to tip out of your hands in this mode because you are forced to hold it lower than it's centre of gravity.

Even laying on the couch and reading on it is difficult after a while and you simply have to put it down on your lap. If you consider the iPad as an electronic book, the current model is about as heavy as one of those gigantic "Biology 101" textbooks you have to lug around in University. It should be more in the weight range of the average pocketbook instead.

At about half of it's current weight, all these things, (which again, are the things the iPad is specifically designed to do), become much more "do-able."

It doesn't matter that the machine can output at those resolutions. The thing is that the OS is not resolution independent. When you cram 2560x1600 pixels in 11 inch space you get extremely small pixels, which would mean everything on the screen would be so small it would be difficult to read. Thus the need for resolution independent scaling, a feature Windows 7 supports already and OSX 10.7 will finally do as well.

As it is, scaling the UI in OSX is totally broken but can be accessed from Terminal. Even in Apple's own applications, icons will end up as blurry pixelated mess due to no higher resolution icons being available while text in menus for example will jump out of their frames etc.

On the iPhone the 960x480 resolution is high for its display size, but otherwise it doesn't require huge performance from the GPU, CPU or RAM. 2048x1536 would be a whole another matter, considering with todays desktop graphics cards many PC games don't run well in 2560x1600. For anything else it shouldn't be that much of an issue provided that iPad2 has sufficient RAM.

The post you quoted said verbatim: "2560x1600 on a external display", and the external displays that support 2560x1600 are not 11" displays. You are not really paying attention.

External display.

Um, except for the seldom done task of scrolling, right? It's one of the main reasons I do t have an ipad. When I s roll a webpage it becomes a massive blur until it comes to rest. This is true even for moderately fast scrolls.

I'dove to see a much faster refresh rate on the ipad. A little lighter, too and with a camera and I'm probably in.

(By the way, Melgross, I enjoy your posts on this board. Often very helpful and informative.)

I don't know anything about what the resolution of the next iPad's screen will be, but I do know this, with utter certainty:

Now that this rumor is out and about, if the iPad has the same or modestly bumped resolution, there will lots of people acting as if Apple had promised us much more and then, inexplicably because obviously they could have if they wanted too except Steve Jobs is too greedy FAIL, let us down, AGAIN.

In fact, how about this:

WHERES THE RETINA DISPLAY APPLE YOU HAVE REALLY LOST IT NO INNOVATION NO MORE I GIVE UP I'M GOING ANDROID

can just be a sticky to save time the minute the new iPad is announced.

Just because I can acknowledge that android is a much better phone OS than iOS, doesn't make me a fan boy. I can also acknowledge that for games, music, and the app store iOS is much better. Now i've read through some rebuttals to my post and i'll admit, i'm not a programmer and have no idea what i'm talking about beyond my basic interfacing with the phones. Android is indeed slow and buggy, and really more like a beta version of a potentially good OS. Having said that, I find it much better as a phone than the iPhone, based on the things i've listed below.

Widgets and superior notifications make android a killer for information and communications, and the app store and ipod feel of the iphone makes it a killer for media content (when I say media I mean music, videos, applications, games, etc...).

Personally i'd rather have my phone be a great phone, and then get a tablet that is great for media. In that sense i'd be more likely to get an apple iPad to go with my android phone.

My big beef is that now that i've actually gotten a good bang for my buck out of android, I really want apple to step up with some good competing specs for me to grab an iPad 2. I think if they step up a lot of other people like me will do the same, and increase apples sales. I took one look at the iPad, could see it was horribly crippled by 256 megs of ram, and knew that it would be one of their little scams they use to force people to upgrade in the future. Now look at where we are on the iPad. It has multitasking and lots of issues with safari refreshing, large pdf files not reading properly, etc... If the iPad 1 had 512 megs of ram it would overall be a much more pleasant experience. I don't buy into products that are so obviously intentionally crippled for apples own greed, and so I said no to the iPad 1. I'm just hoping that apple comes out with a reasonably spec'd iPad 2 so I can buy one.

Would it though? I mean if it were displayed on the same size display, only at a higher resolution, would it not simply look the same? Maybe you'd be able to pick out more aliasing. Or maybe it would look like crap. Anyone know? Preferably someone without an axe to grind?

Correct. It would not look horrible or like crap in any way. It would just look the same as it currently does today. Not bad considering games like, oh I dunno, Rage HD or Infinity Blade look great at 10x7 on the iPad screen.

Someday, some future grown-up manchild (probably Zoll) will remark "you mean you can see the pixels? that's like a baby's toy!" but not me or anyone I know.

Case closed.


I don't know where you get your delusions, laser brain.


One man's reason is another man's insanity.

I agree with some other folks about the weight. It has to be lighter. My order of priority for hardware improvements would be:

1. Less than 1 lb weight. This would be the biggest usability improvement if Apple can get it to 1 lb.

2. 512 MB to 1 GB of RAM

3. 16 to 128 GB storage options

4. 2x the CPU and GPU performance

5. Maintain battery life

6. Improve the display. I'm thinking about less glare here.

7. Facetime camera

It's amazing I put battery life almost so far down! If they go down to 8 hours for WiFi browsing, it maybe ok. The current 1024x768 IPS screen is hugely awesome. 2048x1536 is turning it up to 11!

For a moment, forget the idea of a high-resolution iPad display in the same form factor.

What if there's a new high-end addition to the iPad family that's simply... bigger? Twice the size?

The updated flash-based macbook air pioneers 1440x900 - previously a 15" resolution - in 13". There's a need for a new 15" resolution in the upcoming new macbook pro - 17" 1920 x 1200 is a prime candidate for appearing at the smaller 15". No idea what a new 17" resolution might be... If you're ordering those parts en masse, why not get touch-sensitive ones as well? (1280x800 is passe, but will take a while to be removed from the base macbook). You can get this kind of resolution in 15".

A double-size iPad would be the size of a laptop screen, could show two book pages at once... it would be really immersive to use, and have interesting drawing/CAD/gaming applications. It would follow the scaling-up we've seen in the Macbook Pro and Air families, too.

Bet bigger.

I think it's more likely they're increasing the resolution of UI elements so you can zoom without pixelating things. For both accessibility and resolution independence.

I personally think that anyone expecting a doubling of pixels in both dimensions will be disappointed. What I expect to see is a discernible improvement in screen resolution with a a much greater focus on performance; as a result of this, I am not expecting significant improvement in battery life. As far as weight goes, I am not certain - I kind of think that will be addressed in iPad 3.

If anything, I am betting smaller - 6 to 8 inches.

I should know better than to feed the trolls.

But back to what matters, I'm starting to believe (unfortunately) that the updated, double resolution graphics are just going to be for an OSX version of ibooks. A 2048x1536 9.7" screen would be amazing... completely unprecedented, and have no equal. All the more reason to believe this is not the likely outcome.

I'm sure it will happen someday, probably not too far off. \

Jobs already said, very publicly, that 7" tablets are DOA. For him they make no sense. Do you really think Apple will make a 7" tablet, is he just trying to throw us off his master plans?

I meant to say 6 to 8 inches (now corrected).

I do believe that Jobs would consider a smaller tablet. I think they opened with what they thought would be their best-received device but will ultimately build out the line like they did with iPods.

Do you know weight is proportional to the volume? Currently iPad volume is already 9.85 times the iPhone4. Yet its weight is 5.0 times of iPhone 4. To reduce its weight to less than 1lb, it is extremely difficult. Further, except for the battery the internal components of iPad is similar to the iPhone 4. So the extra weight of the iPad is essentially due to its body and screen. This means Apple can effectively change the weight of iPad only by using different material for the body.

I still don't believe it. You might want it, and some others might too, but I just get the feeling that this is a particular subcategory of the product that Apple will continue to ignore. Just like how Apple won't make a stripped down minitower mac, I think they consider a 6-8" tablet either too niche or too wrong for them to make, for whatever reason.

The form factors are currently very distinct and clear because of their sizes. I think Apple prefers that, knowing that there are few very clear models and knowing that you as a consumer have to make hard choices in what to get. Now I could imagine them bringing the iphone/ipod up to 4", but that's about it.

I'll hedge my bets a little: if they did do it, it would be a 'reinvention' of devices at that size. Meaning it would be different, and not what you're imagining. Much like what they did in introducing the ipod mini, or mac mini or even the shuffle. Sure they might one day go into the subcategory you want, but not in the way you want. It will be the way Apple wants.

I disagree. Only if the mass start to choose the 7" Android based tablets in large quantities will Apple make one for iPad.

I think its pretty impressive considering the size of the battery and size of the glass-covered display. Then add in the additional support for that larger display to rigid. I wonder how much it cost them to mill the back pane casing on the iPad.

The iPad has pretty much the same components as the iPhone 4, but they arent as overly engineeried to fit into such a small space. If they follow the iPhone 4 circuit board construction on the next iPad we might see a much smaller board allow for an even bigger battery, by footprint. Add in the rumours of the thiner casing and the thinner display/backlight/touch panel from patents and we could have a pretty impressive next generation iPad.

I think its possible that in a year or two the iPad could be Apples biggest money maker I think it will become #2 sometime this year, passing the Mac.

Agreed. Haven't seen anything that rivals the iPad for battery life, so my guess is they'll let that alone for now (although of course there's always the possibility of further efficiencies in software and chip fabrication).

I do imagine they'll want to do something to boost the quality of the screen, now that they've made such a big deal out of the iPhone's display. However, big boosts in processing power and memory will allow the platform to move towards full fledged computer status, with fully functional on board video editing and image processing, parity with desktop apps such as Keynote, high res video out with mirroring, etc. I would take all of that way before any crazy high rez screen.

I think this is right. It will depend on sales... if the market is buying 7" tablets in droves, just like how they used to buy crappy little flash mp3 players that cost $129, then Apple will go into it. Even if they do, be prepared for it to be a 'reinvention' of the category... so not what people expect.

But there's no indication this will happen. The 7" tablets vs the 10" ipad aren't analogous to the $129 flash mp3 players vs $300 ipods of 2004 because the 7" tablets cost too much, too close to the price of the bigger and better looking ipad. We know Apple has an unfair advantage here, they can demand lower priced components because of their market strength, making it so a 7" tablet costs about the same as the Apple branded one. It's not fair, it really isn't. It's not an advantage Apple held 6-7 years ago, but you can bet they'll wield it now. They already do and they'll keep wielding it in order to ensure that 7" screens stand no chance of succeeding in the marketplace.

The iPhone has been besting the competition since day one (despite the complaints) and now its quite far ahead yet they still focus on it. I doubt theyll let this slide and I would expect at least a marginal increase across the board.