Why high resolution screens matter for Apple's iPad 2 - Page 5

Yeah me too!

Gruber didn't eliminate any particular pixel rez -- just said that it wouldn't be a retina display.

You, more than anyone on these forums has researched the definition of retina display.

Likely, it could be argued either way whether 2048 × 1536 pixels on the iPad 9.7 " screen would qualify as a retina display -- so there is some wiggle room.

That said, the 2x size, 2048 × 1536. may be too ambitious for this time around -- because of display cost, RAM and CPU/GPU requirements.

So, then people suggest that maybe one of the intermediate rezes, 1.25x or 1.50x (below) could be used.

1.00 x == 1024 ×768

1.25 x == 1280×960

1.50 x == 1536×1152

2.00 x == 2048 ×1536

These are almost immediately rejected as being too hard, or won't scale mathematically (fractional pixels, etc.)


But is that really true?

Consider that two of the most popular uses of the iPad are video and games:

--Video scales well to most higher rezes and pixel anomalies are not noticeable.

-- The better games already use OpenGL and the GPU to deliver realistic video-like effects - these also scale well.

I assume that scaling video and games could be handled with simple changes and a recompile where the app would handle both the current iPad and an iPad 2 with higher rez..

Lets say, for discussion purposes, that this handles 30% of the current iPad apps.


What about the others?

What if we were to display them at their current pixel rez on a iPod 2 with a higher pixel rez, centered on the display -- they would work, but they would be smaller and wouldn't take up the entire display.

I posted elsewhere that an iPhone app looks dorky when run as-is on the iPads larger display -- they are either iPhone size, and too small, or 2x magnified and don't look good (jaggies) and don't exploit the real estate (too large).

Think about this for a minute -- with out going through the actual math:
-- we have this dinky iPhone display awash in a sea of black - it doesn't look good and we've gained nothing in usability (man, did you see the size of the bezel on that presentation?)
-- we have this grotesque 2x magnification that is easier to use (bigger controls) - butt ugly.

As some have said, it's just a big iPod Touch in either of these modes.


But, let's put aside scaling iPhone apps to the iPad, and talk about scaling an iPad 1 rez app to an iPad 2 rez display.

What if we do the same thing -- center the lower rez iPad 1 display in the higher rez iPad 2 display?

Would it look dorky -- either too big or too small?

Yeah, it might if we have a much larger rez that isn't an integer multiple of screen rez such as 2x.


There is a rez, mentioned above -- the 1.25 x == 1280×960 that might just work, and look good at the same time -- with no scaling.

If you display a 1024x768 rez app centered on a 1280x960 rez screen, you have added 128 black pixels to the left and right and 96 black pixels to the top and bottom of the display.

It is slightly smaller -- but big enough. It still is an iPad-UI app and takes advantage of most of the iPad display.

It looks OK! It works OK.

It will. likely be quite acceptable -- until the developer does a relatively minor rewrite to take advantage of the higher rez.


There are some things that Apple could do to even improve the situation -- say reserve the extra pixels (162 landscape, 256 portrait) at the bottom of the display for notifications and overlay area for the popup KB.

Doing nothing, an iPad 1 app would gain functionality and more content area above the KB when run on an iPad 2.

I played around with this for about an hour on various mac displays -- a 1024x768 rez app on a 1280x960 rez screen looks pretty good.

Thoughts?

I thought doubling the resolution was a stretch and that the most likely option was an iPad with higher resolution (much as you are suggesting). Unfortunately, Gruber seems mighty committed to the fact that the resolution is unchanged. He's got a pretty decent record, especially when he speaks authoritatively.

Yeah! I highlighted portions of Qruber's post (below). He seems to leave himself some wiggle room too.

The big issue for "double or nothing" is scaling for non-integer multiples of rez increases.

I tried to suggest that scaling may not be such a pressing need going from iPad 1 to iPad 2 (with an incremental rez incrrease) as it was from iPhone to iPad1.

Another thing that Apple apple could do is allow a system gesture: double-tap -- zoom to full-screen for any iPad 1 rez app -- taking the rescale burden away from the developer.

I really would like Apple to set themselves apart from the competition, in every way practical.

I think the main reason to directly go the 2x route isn't because it is 'harder' to scale up everything 1.5x instead of 2x, but because it will introduce scaling artefacts (resampling is required) and it is very likely it will break many applications later down the road, if Apple ever decides to increase the resolution again. Right now, the situation on the iPhones is very predictable: you either have 1-pixel points (older resolutions) or 2-pixel points (retina), and if you include @1x and @2x bitmap assets, your application will always render bitmaps without scaling, If you now introduce a @1.5x resolution, all current @1x applications have to be scaled up and resampled which degrades image quality, and all @1.5x applications will have to be scaled up later on, when iPad 3 comes around with @2x resolution.

Of course with a decent upscaling algorithm and an @1.5x screen, @1x bitmaps would not look 'ugly' or anything, just a little more fuzzy than an @1x image upscaled to @2x, and a lot more fuzzy than a native @2x one, but it would still be an improvement. But we all know the attention to detail Apple has, so if they are in a position to go to @2x immediately and prevent older iPad apps on every newer generation iPad to look a little worse, I think they would do it.

The only reason not do go 2048x1536 would be the cost of the screen. RAM is not an issue, a double-buffered 32 bpp screen at that resolution still 'only' takes 25 MB of RAM. Of course applications would need more RAM for bitmaps and stuff, but even if you quadruple that amount of RAM it's still less than half of the expected increase in RAM size for the new iPad (256 to 512 MB). Power is also probably not a big issue, it's the backlight of the screen that uses the most power by far, so quadrupling the number of pixels wouldn't make much of the difference, and even if it would mean 1h less than the iPad 1 on a full charge, it would still be more than adequate. As for the GPU performance: according to the specs the new GPU pushes 4x more pixels, which of course is a theoretical spec, but since GUI rendering and compositing is relatively cheap, I think the new GPU should easily handle it.. For 3D rendering and games, the GPU could simply work in pixel-doubling mode, which would still look perfectly fine, for fast-moving graphics ppi isn't really that important.

So I guess it all comes down to 2 things: how expensive would a screen like that be, and does Apple think it's worth blowing away the competitions screens at the expense of at least a year of lower profit margins?

Do you think they can get the manufacturing volume they need?

If so, then should they offer a 2x rez model at a premium price?

About manufacturing volume: I don't know, but I wouldn't be surprised if they did. They've been pretty busy making screen deals left and right the last few years, and I remember they closed some kind of strategic deal with LG last year. Don't know the details though, but I think LG is one of those companies that could set up a completely new, high-volume product line of very advanced screens within a year's time. If Apple somehow negotiated an exclusivity deal that guarantees a percentage of LG's manufacturing capacity, I think it could be possible. The same argument would also hold for a screen with 1.5x the resolution by the way, those screens could have supply issues just as well.

As for the premium price idea: I think it makes sense. At $499 for the current base model the iPads are selling like hotcakes, and there still is no competition at all that would slow down sales, probably the only iPad competitor that is close to launch is the iPad 2 itself. So why not do the same thing Apple did with the iPhone 3GS, make the iPad 1 a low-end model, and crank up prices of the rest of the product range a little. I think many people would prefer spending $100 more for the better screen, so this strategy would really be like a double-edged sword: propelling the iPad 2 into the 'premium' segment even more, while at the same time keeping the same entry-level pricing.

You're up late by the way ;-)

This may have been addressed already, but I don't feel like reading through 5+pages worth of comments to find out. But, if this whole pixel-doubling is true, I see/hope that Apple is moving to a vector-based UI, which is how true resolution independence would be achieved. And if they're doing it for iOS, they could follow it up by migrating it to the next edition Mac OS (Mac OS X 10.8 "Macalope"!! Of course, the Macalope is so awesome, he should probably be reserved for Mac OS XI. ).

You can't make a 100% vector based UI, there will always be raster elements (like bitmaps) in it. Vector based graphics are great for many things (fonts, widgets, icons, cartoon-style graphics), but not for everything (realistic images/photo's, graphics with very high detail or noise, etc). I think iOS is already pretty much scalable in every aspect that makes sense, even though most UI elements are still raster images or semi-scalable (ie: a combination of vector graphics with stretched bitmaps overlayed for metal/gradient looks).

If only...

Indeed and surely once you get to 'retina' (and we can assume for a 9.7" screen 2048 x 1536 is there) you 'never' upgrade the resolution again. The iPhone will 'never' have a higher resolution screen than the iPhone 4.

Of course you should never say never in technology but once it's more detailed than someone with perfect vision can see your efforts go elsewhere... battery life etc.

Speculating further then, it's logical that once you've reached this end-state component you can simply buy all of them in the world for the next 5 years without fear of needing something better in 3 or 4 years time.

That's basically true, though there's one small phone sized screen that's higher rez than Apple's.

Of course, if Apple does go for a larger screen, things could be different. But then we're back to the same problem.

However, as resolutions get pretty high, these fractional interpolations become less of a problem visually. Going from 480x320 to 640x400 would cause noticeable aberrations. But going from 960x640 to a higher rez wouldn't.

I read Daniel for few years now... and I can say that I agree with him 90%


respect to post, respect to mrstep and to you.

all Atari users from 80's can easily remember what they have back then, and what only became available on other platforms few years later. truly awesome platform (as Amiga, as Mac back in 80's)!

Atari ST was clearly better design than original Mac - it is a terrible shame that today there is no company that can even compete with Apple this is a most sad thing ever PC crapware kill everything except Apple.

Thanks. Atari was a great company. i subscribed to several magazines, some of which I still have. The St was designed, from scratch, and came to market in a remarkable 6 months! I remember that some of the first production run had some loose chips, which were in sockets. They told us to drop the computer about 6 inches to the tabletop to seat them. I still have my Jaguar portable game machine. It took well over ten years for other companies to match that. Those were the days!

True, but images and graphics are typically by way of content, rather than part of the OS. As such, I think most people are comfortable with the idea that if you try to scale a low res image on a high res screen it will start to break down.

OTOH, a high res image makes the most of a high res screen. The iPhone photo app already makes this apparent-- zooming in on the average camera image just shows off how nice it looks, rather than dissolving it into a hash of pixels.

You've got me swinging back to believing this is a possibility. At a higher price and with a number of component prices described as favorable, this does seem doable. You factor in the prepaid deals which might be related to such a higher-density display and you you probably take quite a bit of the sting out of the margin hit.

You have obviously never dabbled in high-end audio.

I don't know if i can agree with this. It would fragment the iPad market. not a good idea. It's exactly what we've been saying about Android. It's one thing to have an older model with differing features, but not current ones. Yes, I know Apple offers the 3GS for less, but I'm not thrilled about that either. But it's a bigger case with the iPad. There, apps are even more important in the sophistication of what they can do. I can see developers making their apps do more with the extra screen rez on this big screen.

Yeah. That's my thing. But, he's right. Work we do in pro video is easier for us to agree on than with audio.

I agree this is not ideal but it might be what's doable in the near-term. Ideally, they could put a double-res screen in all the new models - even if it means eating some margin on the device. That might not be an unattractive option for Apple but could they get yields in the quantity needed? The displays would consolidate around the higher screen resolution next year.

I just get the feeling that Apple might want to make a big statement about who's top dog in tablet computing.

Technically fragment by the stark definition? Yes, but only because there are two distinct displays.

Fragment to a point that development gets difficult? Not at all if the resolution simply doubles. With a true doubling any original resolution bitmaps/screen layouts are still valid and true to form with a simple display library scaling. Totally transparent to developers and existing apps. Those that want to take advantage of higher res can at their own pace knowing ALL previous work is still perfectly serviceable.

Anything other than doubling and then developers need to put in GUI redesign work and that would result in multiple versions - fragmenting the programming effort a bit.

it's the point of being able to make a display with more resolution more information dense tht leads to fragmentation. What does a developer do, hold back on that because current devices don't support it, or do it and leave current buyers with a less informative app?

Neither. The information to the app user is the same unless there is a need to change it. If there is a need, then there is a means to do so. We can go back and forth all day long because technically something changed. But if it is a true doubling the answer is 'so what' as far as the effect on current apps. There is no effect other than OS supplied text gets smoother.

The means to do a "Universal App" is ridiculously simple in this instance too. Just duplicate the nib and substitute any higher res art with the appropriate naming conventions. Repackage. Done.

For buyers of iPad originals: that's the march of tech and being an early adopter, and always will be. Nothing bad about it, it just is, and the apps that don't require 2x will all still work, as well as any new apps that aren't 2x required.

I hope they improve it somehow, as its not quite good enough for what I would love to purchase it for.

Edit: my iphone4 screen is fantastic, and i do a good lot of reading on it, either ibooks or an alternative pdf reader. But I want a bigger screened device to read research PDFs. Most ereaders are too small to do it justice. I tried the current ipad in the shop (today even) and while they still had it running iOS3 rahter than the latest update, the actual pdf (as read in in safari) just didnt seem quite crisp enough. I could be spoiled, but that device with the same pixel density as the iphone4... . perfection.

Personally I think, with all the extra pixels, they will have certain apps limited to pixel densities due to processor constraints. Just like your iPad of today will look the same on a Retina display, so too can Face Time or any other app., even games. I don't see why people keep thinking that everything has to change just because of the new screen density. They will look the same unless the developer unlocks the ability to use more pixels, (putting in higher resolution artwork). Even then, just because you're using more pixels does not mean everything 'shrinks'. If it's written for that pixel density, then it will still look the same... only sharper. I could see some new protocols for screen 'placement', but I don't think everything would be 'half-screened' or quarter, off the bat.

I'll just shamelessly quote myself from two months ago.

Why are you pointing out a post you made that males no sense and supported by no argument that would shed light as to why you think Apple would drop the 4:3 aspect ratio of the iPad for the 3:2 aspect ratio of the iPhone, not to mention that Apple's douong of the iPhone 3GS to iPhone 4 resolution makes sense, doubling the iPhone 4's resolution to make developer transition on the iPad easier in fact does the exact opposite.

Scaling is not a reason to discount a 1.25x or 1.5x display - the reason being is nothing needs to be scaled.

When the iPhone 4 came out, within weeks developers provided native artwork at 2x resolution. They didn't just scale up existing imaged. The rest is vector graphics so it doesn't matter. The developers should be making two sizes natively, not just one and scaling it to the other. And if we are talking about photos here, well, those are usually scaled down from a much higher resolution and scale well anyway. Anything else should be vector-drawn so it'll scale at any size.

So if Apple released a 1.25x display in the iPad 2, developers just have to make new images from their larger sources, or recreate them at the 1.25x size in their illustration software. Everything will look great, except for lazy developers that don't update their apps.

That said, I don't think Apple will do this. The change is not great enough a selling point to justify the cost. I predict 2x screens on the iPad 3, and 1x screen on the iPad 2.

Since Apple is dabbling now in multiple screen sizes, platforms and resolutions, they are now telling dev's do adjust their apps for these multiple platforms. Where, in the past, the dev's worked with a single platform but with multiple screen sizes. The the question is this: what is more efficient, developing apps for multiple platforms at differing screen sizes, or a single platform at multiple screen sizes? Or, does it even make a difference?

First of all, we have to question whether there is one iOS platform, or two. I think it's one. How many resolutions should a developed have to support. All those talking about how easy it is are missing the point. Why make them do this at all?

Yes, we need to move forwards. But it should be done so as to make it easier on all. Apple will have four different resolutions developers will need to support in another year. For the phone, and Touch, the low (as we think of it now) Rez support will be fading by the end of 2011. but not for the iPad. Have a new Rez for the new generation, and do it in such a way for it to be easiest. X2. Let the old models fade out gracefully, and have ALL new ones support the new Rez. I'd be willing to bet that if Apple could have done it that way, both the iPhone/Touch and iPad Rez's would have been an even multiple, but the screens were't there for it.

You just can't get is can you?

There are two iOS iPhone resolutions, but to devs they look like one unless they want to deal with the higher res. There is no forcibly added burden on the devs with the Retina Display. Period.

The ONLY situation where a dev would even care is if they had something they wanted to do that the previous resolution didn't adequately support, but the Retina Display does. Then they have the ability to write to the crisper resolution. An option that wasn't there before, which equates to a income stream that wan't there before either. Not a lot of apps need that resolution except in the text fields, and there they get it for free from the OS, at absolutely zero dev effort.

If the iPad goes to a double resolution it will be the same. It will be a non-issue to devs unless they want it to be. No need for more coding. No need for new version of apps. No fragmentation. Period.

Can we stop with the Chicken Little routine now???

A higher resolution along with a faster processor and more memory would sell me an iPad 2. Any of those missing and I'll keep my iPad until a suitable tablet can replace it. Apple has another reason to sell a higher resolution screen; all apps can be brought out again as extra HD which would mean more revenue for Apple.

I get it very well. I think you don't understand it as well as you think you do.

I haven't had to change a line on either of my enterprise apps. They only look better.

Maybe you need to actually code and deploy before you doubt.

I did plenty of coding. The grunts can code as much as they want to these days.

I think Hiro's right - you don't seem to have gone through this procedure.

Here's how you support Retina display. You have two options:

1. Do nothing - app works great. Images are scaled up. Not ideal

2. For every image file in your app, supply one with double the resolution. Name it the same as the smaller one, but with @2x before the extension. i.e. if you have have MyImage.png in your project in XCode that is 480x320, add MyImage@2x.png to your project - it should be 960x640.

That's all you need to do. Apple's made it very easy here. The only time it would be more work is if you used your own code for loading an image. Not sure why you would want to do that, but even if you did, you can easily figure out if you are on a retina device or not and load the appropriate image.

Now, consider if the iPad 2 has a different resolution that is 1.25x the original iPad's screen. It doesn't matter. As a developer, you only have to supply image@1.25x files. This is not difficult to do at all.

Now, personally I don't think the iPad 2 will have an 1.25x display because I don't see the big end user advantage. They can still see the pixels, will notice jaggies, etc. - they'll just be a little bit finer. Yes, it'll be a little bit better, but it won't be a lot better. Either go Retina where the jaggies disappear completely, or keep it the same.

Cool, then you should already know to actually code & simulate a deploy before you get all half cocked on whether something is a problem or not.

Not sure what you are saying with regards to the grunts. If it's that you've gone on to something "higher" and let others do the "coding grunt-work" then maybe you just need to revisit your roots just enough to avoid saying something in front of them that won't make you look too good.

An oh, what Gustav said^^^. My apps run and look just fine with option 1. Option 1 works just like I have been saying for the last week and a half. Option 2 is even a little easier than I previously understood, but haven't been required to use.