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Apple freezes Snow Leopard APIs as software nears final stretch - Page 2

post #41 of 79
5/11/09 at 12:44pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by solipsism View Post

Windows doesn't utilize real RI, they use Windows Presentation Foundation API which, to put it simply, is a graphical subsystem for rich user interface development. While not true RI I wish Apple would offer a better option for scaling their GUI if they aren't going to ready RI anytime soon. Windows has always handled this better then OS X.

Quote:
Originally Posted by melgross View Post

No, it does not.

Excuse me if this isn't technically RI, but it does allow me to increase the resolution of all elements of the GUI in Windows so that everything is much more legible on a high-density monitor. From what I had understood previously, this had seemed to be resolution independence. Maybe technically it isn't RI, and I still cannot determine why it isn't by reading the wikipedia link above, but I would sure love this function in OS X.
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post #42 of 79
5/11/09 at 12:47pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by foljs View Post


As a matter of fact, you don't need any new APIs for RI. You can already (as in 10.5) tweak some developer preferences to enable it. But the view with zoomed windows won't be pretty (icons and stuff not aligned, low-res bitmaps pixelized, etc)...

Just to clear things up a bit, when earlier I said "new API's", what I meant was getting those API's Apple developed earlier and put into the Developer's toolkit, into the OS proper. As far as I know, that hasn't happened.

I imagine that Apple doesn't want this developed haphazardly.

Of course, as unlikely as it may be, they might just pop them in at the last moment, though I doubt it.
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post #43 of 79
5/11/09 at 12:50pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by MotherBrain View Post

Excuse me if this isn't technically RI, but it does allow me to increase the resolution of all elements of the GUI in Windows so that everything is much more legible on a high-density monitor. From what I had understood previously, this had seemed to be resolution independence. Maybe technically it isn't RI, and I still cannot determine why it isn't by reading the wikipedia link above, but I would sure love this function in OS X.

It's a bit better than the way Apple does it now, but it's not nearly as much of a jump as true RI would be.

It would be another temporary step for Apple to need to abandon later on, and developers wouldn't be happy about that.

As it is, every few years, Apple has them jumping through hoops. The fewer hoops the better.
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post #44 of 79
5/11/09 at 12:51pm
This Summer? Oh man, nothing new till December. Unless - no wait, you wouldn't. Would you? You're not being hemispherist are you?
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post #45 of 79
5/11/09 at 12:54pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by durandal6 View Post

This Summer? Oh man, nothing new till December. Unless - no wait, you wouldn't. Would you? You're not being hemispherist are you?

I guess we can't talk about seasons at all.
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post #46 of 79
5/11/09 at 1:04pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by foljs View Post

Resolution independence is a long term goal... We won't be seeing it any time soon.

As a matter of fact, you don't need any new APIs for RI. You can already (as in 10.5) tweak some developer preferences to enable it. But the view with zoomed windows won't be pretty (icons and stuff not aligned, low-res bitmaps pixelized, etc)...

Carbon might be a part of this, but the main reason is that it needs changes from all software developers too. Current programs are not written to be RI. Not even all of Apple's programs are.

If there are Carbon problems it explains everything. Finder is a Carbon app, remember? If Apple fixes all UI elements and Finder, most apps will not need any changes to run properly with RI. There are rumors that Finder will be re-written and that SL will use a new Marble interface. Prefect combination to introduce RI, isn't it? All apps which use standard UI will run perfectly, and the apps with custom interface may require tweaking anyway.
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post #47 of 79
5/11/09 at 1:08pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by shadow View Post

If there are Carbon problems it explains everything. Finder is a Carbon app, remember? If Apple fixes all UI elements and Finder, most apps will not need any changes to run properly with RI. There are rumors that Finder will be re-written and that SL will use a new Marble interface. Prefect combination to introduce RI, isn't it? All apps which use standard UI will run perfectly, and the apps with custom interface may require tweaking anyway.

Yes. Finder is supposed to be Cocoa this time around.
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post #48 of 79
5/11/09 at 1:24pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by MotherBrain View Post

Excuse me if this isn't technically RI, but it does allow me to increase the resolution of all elements of the GUI in Windows so that everything is much more legible on a high-density monitor. From what I had understood previously, this had seemed to be resolution independence. Maybe technically it isn't RI, and I still cannot determine why it isn't by reading the wikipedia link above, but I would sure love this function in OS X.

Not be pedantic, but you are using the term incorrectly here. Your resolution is in the HW of your display. It is the number of distinct pixels in each dimension that can be displayed.

What you are talking about is increasing the size of the items to adjust to the display size. That is the only making UI elements larger and smaller and has been around for decades. Resolution Independence will allow you to use very high resolution (ie: very dense pixel) displays and still have everything be the exact same size as on a lesser display. You can also change everything on the display to any ratio you choose and have scaling adjust with the images and text never pixelating.

I hope Apple surprises with it because it's holding back monitor tech from consumers.
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post #49 of 79
5/11/09 at 2:29pm
RI is a noble goal to pursue, however Apple has most of the internet and almost all commercial applications (including many of its own) standing against it. Even in this day and age, the number of websites that still do things like using 1px transparent gifs for spacing is... saddening.

Then there are the slew of bespoke corporate intranet pages that are so far from real html [most don't even have DTD's and `work' based on the fact that IE6 frequently ignores mime types - ranted like a true web developer] - designing for RI is just a pipe dream.

Ultimately as people have said before, whilst text and anything else that is vector based will look great `scaled' (re-rendered), there are far too many bitmaps still around. Given that you also *need* to have bitmaps in many situations - you'll never turn that 12Mbit landscape picture in your camera into vector art - having an RI screen will mean needing higher res jpegs/tiffs and so on too. This can lead to bandwidth bloat and cost you money if you are charged that way for something which you may not care about... (This is an extreme example, but it is worth taking a moment to remember that the world will never be a vector-only area, and larger bitmaps means more space and so on...)

Carbon APIs are also something of a problem - in that they allow (I should say `encourage' here) low-level access to frame buffers using olde-school api's [anyone still remember when QuickDraw and CopyBits were the rage?] leading to large amounts of a window's contents being just one big bitmap, or explicitly pixel aligned as far as the OS is concerned. This is not to say you can't do the same or similar in the Cocoa or Java for that matter too; just that there are higher level more modern APIs to do far more with less code; and developers like that sort of thing.

Regarding power use for RI, yes, slightly more power would be required than doing straight pixel copying, however given that these days your desktop experience is basically already a viewport on `fully rendered' 3D scene from a fixed camera angle that it is all much of a muchness. One of the smarts that will take a bit more effort (hence power) is as someone pointed out earlier - making sure lots of rectangles that make up images (especially boundaries of buttons on toolbars - think Photoshop etc) do keep as close to possible to exact real pixel boundaries. Another pain is having to load said larger bitmaps and having to scale them down to the right size for the current display. Those are not insurmountable problems however; especially compared to putting the system live in the first place.


My own 2p is that if Apple really do want to push RI, they will have to use a bit more stick. Once they have all their own apps ready, they can put the system live and `shame' non-compliant apps by looking bad to being fixed. Very similar to how Classic with lack of double-buffered windows worked in the original OS-X releases. Anyone remember putting them behind the dock and letting the dock resize over them? White-out's `R' us.

Otherwise why will developers spend the time and effort on making it work? To wear a badge of `I work with a non-released API?' Some doubtless will, but it's unlikely to gain mainstream... RI would be consigned to be little more than an idle curiosity.

The interesting bit will be (even if they do get a large majority of common apps on board) whether enough of the internet will do likewise such that the average consumer in the shop doesn't go "Oh, the web looks lame on Mac's". That's a tough one, and something Apple has little control over.
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post #50 of 79
5/11/09 at 2:29pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by melgross View Post

Computers are plenty powerful enough for that today. Most of the time the computer is sitting around not doing anything. Once it does the render, it doesn't have to do anything more with it until you change whatever you're doing.

I don't know why you would think that there would be bad detail rendering. It would be the same as when enlarging icons now. Perfectly fine. Only pixel mode objects would have that problem, and the idea is to stop using such graphics objects.

I don't think the question is about capability as much as performance. As a laptop user you don't want your computer to have to work to hard for simple tasks, wastes battery. RI would rock for sure, but if it causes my cpu or gpu to ramp up quite a bit more I'd rather keep the extra battery life.
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post #51 of 79
5/11/09 at 2:42pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by MisatosAngel View Post

RI is a noble goal to pursue, however Apple has most of the internet and almost all commercial applications (including many of its own) standing against it. Even in this day and age, the number of websites that still do things like using 1px transparent gifs for spacing is... saddening.

Then there are the slew of bespoke corporate intranet pages that are so far from real html [most don't even have DTD's and `work' based on the fact that IE6 frequently ignores mime types - ranted like a true web developer] - designing for RI is just a pipe dream.

Ultimately as people have said before, whilst text and anything else that is vector based will look great `scaled' (re-rendered), there are far too many bitmaps still around. Given that you also *need* to have bitmaps in many situations - you'll never turn that 12Mbit landscape picture in your camera into vector art - having an RI screen will mean needing higher res jpegs/tiffs and so on too. This can lead to bandwidth bloat and cost you money if you are charged that way for something which you may not care about... (This is an extreme example, but it is worth taking a moment to remember that the world will never be a vector-only area, and larger bitmaps means more space and so on...)

Carbon APIs are also something of a problem - in that they allow (I should say `encourage' here) low-level access to frame buffers using olde-school api's [anyone still remember when QuickDraw and CopyBits were the rage?] leading to large amounts of a window's contents being just one big bitmap, or explicitly pixel aligned as far as the OS is concerned. This is not to say you can't do the same or similar in the Cocoa or Java for that matter too; just that there are higher level more modern APIs to do far more with less code; and developers like that sort of thing.

Regarding power use for RI, yes, slightly more power would be required than doing straight pixel copying, however given that these days your desktop experience is basically already a viewport on `fully rendered' 3D scene from a fixed camera angle that it is all much of a muchness. One of the smarts that will take a bit more effort (hence power) is as someone pointed out earlier - making sure lots of rectangles that make up images (especially boundaries of buttons on toolbars - think Photoshop etc) do keep as close to possible to exact real pixel boundaries. Another pain is having to load said larger bitmaps and having to scale them down to the right size for the current display. Those are not insurmountable problems however; especially compared to putting the system live in the first place.


My own 2p is that if Apple really do want to push RI, they will have to use a bit more stick. Once they have all their own apps ready, they can put the system live and `shame' non-compliant apps by looking bad to being fixed. Very similar to how Classic with lack of double-buffered windows worked in the original OS-X releases. Anyone remember putting them behind the dock and letting the dock resize over them? White-out's `R' us.

Otherwise why will developers spend the time and effort on making it work? To wear a badge of `I work with a non-released API?' Some doubtless will, but it's unlikely to gain mainstream... RI would be consigned to be little more than an idle curiosity.

The interesting bit will be (even if they do get a large majority of common apps on board) whether enough of the internet will do likewise such that the average consumer in the shop doesn't go "Oh, the web looks lame on Mac's". That's a tough one, and something Apple has little control over.

I agree with the idea of being able to get developers on board properly.

I'm not nearly as concerned about bitmaps. Companies will get the vector graphics they need for most graphics done.

The only real problem as you mentioned is the larger photos. But I don't see that as a problem either.

Remember the purpose of RI. It's to give the same feel on a slightly larger, but much higher rez screen as on that slightly smaller much lower rez screen. As the screens aren't generally going to be that much bigger, unless one is going to 30", which is for a different kind of person with a different purpose, we won't see much difference in large bitmaps.

Most of the time, magnification will be less than 200%. When we had CRTs, and moving from one rez to another was easy, we would often lower the rez of our screen if we needed to. When we did that, bitmaps came up larger. That's the same thing that will happen with RI and bitmaps. But, we might see, with our much more powerful computers, some antialiasing being done, which will lesson the raggedness of the photo.

I think there's too much concern with this.
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post #52 of 79
5/11/09 at 2:47pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by hezekiahb View Post

I don't think the question is about capability as much as performance. As a laptop user you don't want your computer to have to work to hard for simple tasks, wastes battery. RI would rock for sure, but if it causes my cpu or gpu to ramp up quite a bit more I'd rather keep the extra battery life.

Performance isn't a problem here. We're not talking about converting a movie on the fly. But if you have a DVD player in your laptop, and watch a DVD at full screen size, and it works well, that's much more computing power being used constantly than you will ever need for RI.

Once it's rendered, it's finished. One frame, and then done!

This is no more difficult than going in Word and enlarging the paper size to 125%. This is all we're talking about, except for the whole screen. I don't know why some seem to think that it will affect performance. Everything on your screen is rendered already. This is merely rendering it differently. It's really no biggie.
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post #53 of 79
5/11/09 at 5:33pm
The best example of RI is printing. If you print the same page at 300 dpi, 600 dpi and 1200 dpi you get the same content but different quality. The support for this was first implemented by Adobe. Adobe's PostScript is what made them a big company and where they started from. Photoshop and InDesign were much later.

Back then, when the laser printers were 300 dpi the main issue which needed to be addressed were fonts. At the time, non-PostScript printers were using bitmap fonts. Rendering fonts on 300 dpi printer had the following problems to be addressed:

- The stems of a letter which were supposed to be equal could be different. For example, when printing the letter H you could get 3 pixels for the left stem and 4 pixels for the right stem. This was visible and unpleasant.

- the letters could go above or below the baseline by 1 pixel. This was visible and unpleasant.

- at certain sizes, some letters could break. For example, the letter o could end up not being closed.

- The fonts needed to be rendered on-screen at much lower resolution and still look good.

These problems were resolved.

The problems with RI now are related to the UI elements quality and alignment. The problem of pixel number and processor load is non-existent. The pathetic iPhone CPU (compared to the notebook and desktop CPUs) can handle very high resolution display acceptably. Why worry about the much more powerful (in an order of magnitude) dual/quad core CPUs and GPUs?

The amount of work for developers is also overestimated on this board. To begin with, Mac OS drawing engine is resolution independent from 10.0. Remember, NEXT was using Display PostScript, and Quartz uses PDF.

To get an idea what are the problems to be fixed, install Developer Tools (on your Mac OS CD). Then find an app called Quartz Debug and browse the menus to locate the right one (I am on XP right now). It has the word scaling in it. Change the scaling and (re-)start some apps. You will notice that 99% or more of the problems are with Finder, menu bar icons and standard UI elements. It's all in Apple's basket. Most apps need to do close to nothing to work absolutely fine.

Take a look at this document:
Resolution Independence Guidelines. Note the revision history. It was first written in 2006 for god's sake! So Apple does not need to do ANYTHING to "bring developers on board". Apple is telling them to get ready for RI for three years now!

If the Marble UI rumor is correct, the folks at Apple should be complete and utter idiots to make the new UI not RI ready. All evidence is that they are not idiots. Carbon is dead as well. Finder is supposed to be re-written. What's left? There might be show-stopper issues of course, but I hope not. If the Marble UI is not coming with SL but planed for 10.7, it does not make sense to fix the old UI if a new one is in the works.
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post #54 of 79
5/11/09 at 5:58pm
Hey, everyone, read the article (or the seed notes) again. It only says that no further API changes are planned for Grand Central Dispatch. NOT the entire 10.6 operating system. So you can chill.
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post #55 of 79
5/11/09 at 6:15pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by plugtunin View Post

Hey, everyone, read the article (or the seed notes) again. It only says that no further API changes are planned for Grand Central Dispatch. NOT the entire 10.6 operating system. So you can chill.

Reading comprehension are two separate skills, indicated well by the several comments not grasping RI.
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post #56 of 79
5/11/09 at 6:19pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by mdriftmeyer View Post

Reading comprehension are two separate skills, indicated well by the several comments not grasping RI.

I know all about RI, I did a book report on that US state in the 2nd grade. I don't even know what a reading compression is.

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post #57 of 79
5/11/09 at 7:01pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by shadow View Post

Take a look at this document:
Resolution Independence Guidelines. Note the revision history. It was first written in 2006 for god's sake! So Apple does not need to do ANYTHING to "bring developers on board". Apple is telling them to get ready for RI for three years now!

While a lot of what you're saying is correct, the part about getting developers on board is not. Just because Apple is warning them to get ready for this doesn't mean that they have been getting ready. Most developers have been working on getting their apps ready for Cocoa. This has been nothing more than a distraction for them.

You might remember how long it took for most developers to actually have Cocoa apps. Even Apple isn't all there yet.

Apple, like MS, gets push-back from developers. Apple isn't in this alone.

Right now, there is no evidence that RI is in the main fork of the development cycle. If it were, don't you think at least one leak about it would have come out by now?
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post #58 of 79
5/11/09 at 8:21pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by melgross View Post

While a lot of what you're saying is correct, the part about getting developers on board is not. Just because Apple is warning them to get ready for this doesn't mean that they have been getting ready. Most developers have been working on getting their apps ready for Cocoa. This has been nothing more than a distraction for them.

You might remember how long it took for most developers to actually have Cocoa apps. Even Apple isn't all there yet.

Apple, like MS, gets push-back from developers. Apple isn't in this alone.

Right now, there is no evidence that RI is in the main fork of the development cycle. If it were, don't you think at least one leak about it would have come out by now?

I guess you are right regarding the developer laziness but I still believe RI is tied to the new interface. If it comes with 10.6, it will be RI ready. Otherwise Apple is not going to patch the aging Aqua. And when Apple is ready they will not wait a minute for the developers. They were warned! The most it will do is to put a check box in the Get Info panel 'Run in native resolution' or something. May be not even this. It will be possible to change the scaling for an individual app from the terminal (this is possible now).

There were threads on the subject few years ago. I am not a developer but I am too lazy to search as well I remember there was a report stating that at WWDC 2006 or 2007 Apple said to developers: "Get ready with RI for 2008".

If they have smaller screen form-factor in the works they will want to use RI as well. Also, RI will finaly get them an option to use higher-res LCD panels. I don't believe they abandoned the idea.

The fact that they are suddenly mum on the issue could lead to two opposite directions:

- They are late with it for SL and left it out.
- It is coming in SL with Marble. Apple can not trumpet it yet, because the obvious question from developers "where is it?" can not be answered until Marble is shown. Also, if Marble rumors are correct, SL will turn out to be the most significant update (in terms of user-related features) since 10.0. Quite the opposite of what was claimed a year ago. And Apple will want to make as much big surprises as they can get.
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post #59 of 79
5/11/09 at 8:40pm
As above, the RI Guidelines make it clear that it is rather simple for Carbon developers to update their apps. There are different ways they can access the current pixel/point ratio, methods for scaling using Quartz and an automatic magnified mode which just enlarges it blurry. Replacing text boxes, list boxes and images/custom controls would all that is necessary beyond that, for true RI in Carbon. I agree with someone else when they said for Apple to just do it, let the devs catch up when their app looks bad. This'll probably only noticeably affect legacy, Adobe and Microsoft apps for consumers, there are usually more up-to-date, better alternatives anyway. Adobe & Microsoft always need a sharp stick to do anything beneficial to their apps, apart from pile on new features and yell "Finished!".
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post #60 of 79
5/11/09 at 10:29pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by adisor19 View Post

Ya, so far no trace whatsoever of resolution independence.
More and more i get the feeling that resolution independence can NOT be implemented on Carbon based applications.. so untill Apple dumps Carbon, i doubt we will see RI

I hope i'm wrong and that Apple can pull a rabbit out of its hat for a nice WWDC surprise but i highly doubt it..

Adi

It has nothing to do with Carbon. And it has nothing to do with CPU. It has everything to do with indifference.

Apple doesn't care about RI, which you can verify by looking at Apple's own applications on Leopard (not much is different on Snow Leopard). Most of them look terrible when RI is turned on, which you can turn on RI with developer tools (same on Leopard and Snow Leopard). The APIs are there for both Carbon and Cocoa, but it takes significant amount of effort to adopt them. Not to mention the graphics effort required to create new graphics for every single UI element.

The other factor is application support. Apple values the user experience a lot, and they need to make sure the major 3rd party applications and their own applications like iLife are ready before allowing RI. Right now most of their own applications look terrible when you turn on RI because they make heavy use of custom controls which take a lot of work to make RI aware.
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post #61 of 79
5/12/09 at 12:02am
Quote:
Originally Posted by shadow View Post

If there are Carbon problems it explains everything. Finder is a Carbon app, remember? If Apple fixes all UI elements and Finder, most apps will not need any changes to run properly with RI. There are rumors that Finder will be re-written and that SL will use a new Marble interface. Prefect combination to introduce RI, isn't it? All apps which use standard UI will run perfectly, and the apps with custom interface may require tweaking anyway.

Again Carbon has nothing to do with it. And if you were at WWDC two years ago you'll know Apple called out their own applications as not being RI compliant because of time limitations. That includes a whole host of Cocoa applications, including Mail, Address Book and even Calculator. In fact they only targeted one application (1) for 100% RI compliance but due to bugs in the underlying CoreUI framework, that application still looks like crap when you turn on RI in Leopard.
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post #62 of 79
5/12/09 at 1:06am
Quote:
Originally Posted by shadow View Post

I guess you are right regarding the developer laziness but I still believe RI is tied to the new interface. If it comes with 10.6, it will be RI ready. Otherwise Apple is not going to patch the aging Aqua. And when Apple is ready they will not wait a minute for the developers. They were warned! The most it will do is to put a check box in the Get Info panel 'Run in native resolution' or something. May be not even this. It will be possible to change the scaling for an individual app from the terminal (this is possible now).

There were threads on the subject few years ago. I am not a developer but I am too lazy to search as well I remember there was a report stating that at WWDC 2006 or 2007 Apple said to developers: "Get ready with RI for 2008".

If they have smaller screen form-factor in the works they will want to use RI as well. Also, RI will finaly get them an option to use higher-res LCD panels. I don't believe they abandoned the idea.

The fact that they are suddenly mum on the issue could lead to two opposite directions:

- They are late with it for SL and left it out.
- It is coming in SL with Marble. Apple can not trumpet it yet, because the obvious question from developers "where is it?" can not be answered until Marble is shown. Also, if Marble rumors are correct, SL will turn out to be the most significant update (in terms of user-related features) since 10.0. Quite the opposite of what was claimed a year ago. And Apple will want to make as much big surprises as they can get.

What is it with you guys about hi rez panels for RI? You don't need higher rez panels. Almost everyone who will be using RI will be wanting to make items on the screen appear LARGER, not smaller. higher rez does nothing for that. Only if someone were going to go the opposite way, which doesn't even make sense, would it be needed. You're always running at the higher resolution with LCDs. That's why RI is wanted. When you increase the size of an object, having a higher rez does nothing at all for it. You already have more pixels representing the object than before.

If you take a typeface, and a letter is 6 pixels high, and use RI to increase the size of the GUI, then that letter might now be 8 or even 10 pixels high. You're already getting far more detail in that letter than before. It's only when objects are very small that you want, and need higher rez screens so that that small letter will have more pixels representing it.
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post #63 of 79
5/12/09 at 1:08am
Quote:
Originally Posted by skittlebrau79 View Post

It has nothing to do with Carbon. And it has nothing to do with CPU. It has everything to do with indifference.

Apple doesn't care about RI, which you can verify by looking at Apple's own applications on Leopard (not much is different on Snow Leopard). Most of them look terrible when RI is turned on, which you can turn on RI with developer tools (same on Leopard and Snow Leopard). The APIs are there for both Carbon and Cocoa, but it takes significant amount of effort to adopt them. Not to mention the graphics effort required to create new graphics for every single UI element.

The other factor is application support. Apple values the user experience a lot, and they need to make sure the major 3rd party applications and their own applications like iLife are ready before allowing RI. Right now most of their own applications look terrible when you turn on RI because they make heavy use of custom controls which take a lot of work to make RI aware.

This is exactly right.
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post #64 of 79
5/12/09 at 2:02am
Snow Leopard could be Apple's most important version of OS X. If we assume, for a moment, that the future of (domestic) computing is a landscape made up of iPhone-OS X style touch based device(s) and Android Netbooks, then Snow Leopard could well become the last 'proper' Apple desktop OS version. As such, it will be Apple's legacy, for ever compared to Windows 7 (or whatever comes after that). Therefore it is absolutely important that the usability, tone and performance of Snow Leopard are absolutely outstanding. I would like to see an OS that is responsive, light and has UI refinements that embody Apple's minimalist aesthetic. The UI needs refinement so that it feels more up to date, less cute, more stylish, clean and sharp, in a way that is hinted at in iTunes and taken a step farther in applications such as Tweetie. Microsoft have upped their game (it seems) with Windows 7 and Apple needs to deliver a knockout blow that leaves historians in no doubt which of the last great desktop OSes was, indeed, the best. Safari 4 does not bode well, being sluggish and delivering some decidedly un-Apple UI features in the browser chrome. Hopefully this is just an experiment that will be rectified with a nice dark minimalist Quicktime X-esque UI for the full release, and hopefully Snow Leopard will be equally refined. Price? $50 sounds fair, if it gives me the experience I'm looking for. It would be amusing to release Snow Leopard just after Windows 7 as well, forcing Redmond to reveal the true extent of its (non) innovation before Apple give them the answers, as it has in the past. Don't rush it Apple - get it right. Get it PERFECT.
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post #65 of 79
5/12/09 at 2:49am
for those who fear issues with resolution independence: erm, guys, Quartz 2D is postscript based...
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post #66 of 79
5/12/09 at 4:27am
How are things getting smaller? Do people realize that higher resolution allows you to sit closer to the screen? In fact HDTV was invented in Japan because people had to sit closer to their tvs due to house sizes there. For that fact they increased resolution. So to sum it up. How far you sit from your monitor depends on pixel size NOT screen size. If you can't read something cause you put your monitor at native resolution, maybe you should try sitting closer. I have a 100" 1280x720 screen and I sit 8 feet away. I also have a 1280x800 13.3" screen and I sit 2.5' away. At work I have 20" Cinema Display at 1680 x 1050 I sit 3' away. I have never had an issue with anything being too small to read. We aren't working with CRT monitors here boys and girls. You can get a little closer and not be radiated to death.
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post #67 of 79
5/12/09 at 5:11am
Quote:
Originally Posted by melgross View Post

What is it with you guys about hi rez panels for RI? You don't need higher rez panels. Almost everyone who will be using RI will be wanting to make items on the screen appear LARGER, not smaller. higher rez does nothing for that. Only if someone were going to go the opposite way, which doesn't even make sense, would it be needed. You're always running at the higher resolution with LCDs. That's why RI is wanted. When you increase the size of an object, having a higher rez does nothing at all for it. You already have more pixels representing the object than before.

If you take a typeface, and a letter is 6 pixels high, and use RI to increase the size of the GUI, then that letter might now be 8 or even 10 pixels high. You're already getting far more detail in that letter than before. It's only when objects are very small that you want, and need higher rez screens so that that small letter will have more pixels representing it.

Quote:
Originally Posted by m2002brian View Post

How are things getting smaller? Do people realize that higher resolution allows you to sit closer to the screen? In fact HDTV was invented in Japan because people had to sit closer to their tvs due to house sizes there. For that fact they increased resolution. So to sum it up. How far you sit from your monitor depends on pixel size NOT screen size. If you can't read something cause you put your monitor at native resolution, maybe you should try sitting closer. I have a 100" 1280x720 screen and I sit 8 feet away. I also have a 1280x800 13.3" screen and I sit 2.5' away. At work I have 20" Cinema Display at 1680 x 1050 I sit 3' away. I have never had an issue with anything being too small to read. We aren't working with CRT monitors here boys and girls. You can get a little closer and not be radiated to death.

Will you please come back when Apple does release notebooks with hi-res panels.
Oh, wait, they have an iPhone and iPod touch! Does it makes a difference?

If you have a printer capable of printing at 300 dpi, please print some text at 10pt at 300 dpi and at 600/1200 dpi. If you are not visually impaired you should see the difference. If you are looking at pages printed at 300 dpi at twise the distance than those printed at 600/1200 dpi then you are not visually impaired but otherwise need medical assistance
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post #68 of 79
5/12/09 at 6:53am
Quote:
Originally Posted by melgross View Post

This looks to be killing the possibility for us seeing rez independence in 10.6. That would require other API's, and if we're not seeing it in the new developer builds, then, I assume it's out. Too bad.

What other APIs are needed?

(And as noted, the seed note does not say anything about APIs being frozen - only for GC)
JLL

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post #69 of 79
5/12/09 at 10:45am
Quote:
Originally Posted by shadow View Post

Will you please come back when Apple does release notebooks with hi-res panels.
Oh, wait, they have an iPhone and iPod touch! Does it makes a difference?

If you have a printer capable of printing at 300 dpi, please print some text at 10pt at 300 dpi and at 600/1200 dpi. If you are not visually impaired you should see the difference. If you are looking at pages printed at 300 dpi at twise the distance than those printed at 600/1200 dpi then you are not visually impaired but otherwise need medical assistance

actually it would make sense to view a 300 dpi from further away. Much like having a lower resolution screen, or a painting for that matter. Unless you like to stand right in front of artwork and count brush strokes.
So really a higher dpi would be for closer viewing, maybe you just like wasting that cheap cheap ink.
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post #70 of 79
5/12/09 at 12:31pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by m2002brian View Post

How are things getting smaller? Do people realize that higher resolution allows you to sit closer to the screen? In fact HDTV was invented in Japan because people had to sit closer to their tvs due to house sizes there. For that fact they increased resolution. So to sum it up. How far you sit from your monitor depends on pixel size NOT screen size. If you can't read something cause you put your monitor at native resolution, maybe you should try sitting closer. I have a 100" 1280x720 screen and I sit 8 feet away. I also have a 1280x800 13.3" screen and I sit 2.5' away. At work I have 20" Cinema Display at 1680 x 1050 I sit 3' away. I have never had an issue with anything being too small to read. We aren't working with CRT monitors here boys and girls. You can get a little closer and not be radiated to death.

Higher resolution doesn't allow you to sit closer to the screen, it REQUIRES you to sit closer to the screen.

But many of us don't have perfect eyesight. Even sitting at a proper position, the screen isn't being seen correctly. So it's either sit even closer, which isn't comfortable at all, and may even require someone to move their head back and forth, which isn't considered to be a good thing from an ergonomic perspective, or use RI to enlarge everything on the screen.
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post #71 of 79
5/12/09 at 12:37pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by melgross View Post

Higher resolution doesn't allow you to sit closer to the screen, it REQUIRES you to sit closer to the screen.

But many of us don't have perfect eyesight. Even sitting at a proper position, the screen isn't being seen correctly. So it's either sit even closer, which isn't comfortable at all, and may even require someone to move their head back and forth, which isn't considered to be a good thing from an ergonomic perspective, or use RI to enlarge everything on the screen.

I would have loved an intermediary system more inline with WIndows that allows for more options in altering the size of screen elements. I hate to say it, but Windows does allow for better scaling.

I am doubtful because I think it will require a lot of developer notice, but I still hope that Apple will announce RI next month.
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post #72 of 79
5/12/09 at 12:40pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by shadow View Post

Will you please come back when Apple does release notebooks with hi-res panels.
Oh, wait, they have an iPhone and iPod touch! Does it makes a difference?

If you have a printer capable of printing at 300 dpi, please print some text at 10pt at 300 dpi and at 600/1200 dpi. If you are not visually impaired you should see the difference. If you are looking at pages printed at 300 dpi at twise the distance than those printed at 600/1200 dpi then you are not visually impaired but otherwise need medical assistance

Right now, Apple has a 17" with 1920 x 1200 display, which I think is too high.

We can easily hold our phones close to our face when we look at the screen, but we don't hold our laptops that close. If someone does, they have some problem that needs correction.

So I can easily hold my iPhone a foot away, or even a bit closer if I have to read the 2 point type thats sometimes used.

But I doubt that someone will be using their 17" at that distance for more than a few seconds at a time.

The iPhone is 160 ppi. That's pretty high. but for that small, closely held phone, 200 ppi would be just barely more useful. For a laptop, 160 ppi is awfully high density.

This was my business for more years than I care to look back on, and I can tell you that what you see in a magazine or book has no relation to what you see on the screen of a monitor, no matter what kind or size.
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post #73 of 79
5/12/09 at 12:43pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by JLL View Post

What other APIs are needed?

(And as noted, the seed note does not say anything about APIs being frozen - only for GC)

I don't know the APIs Apple wrote for this, only that they said that they had, and that has been verified. We do know that they aren't in 10.5, but rather have to be added via the developer tools on the DVD. We also know that if they are, everything looks awful.
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post #74 of 79
5/12/09 at 12:49pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by m2002brian View Post

actually it would make sense to view a 300 dpi from further away. Much like having a lower resolution screen, or a painting for that matter. Unless you like to stand right in front of artwork and count brush strokes.
So really a higher dpi would be for closer viewing, maybe you just like wasting that cheap cheap ink.

Are you telling me that you view Letter-sized documents from different distance depending on the dpi used when printed!? BS.

The viewing distance depends on the diagonal size of the document/screen in the first place. The size of the type plays a secondary role. The resolution does not affect the viewing distance in a meaningful way. There is also a minimal distance. You don't put the iPhone on your nose because of the small screen or the high resolution display.
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post #75 of 79
5/12/09 at 1:02pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by shadow View Post

Are you telling me that you view Letter-sized documents from different distance depending on the dpi used when printed!? BS.

As it's been discussed, that is RI. The image will be the same size regardless of the dpi of the printer. This is what we'd like OS X to finally have.

Quote:
The resolution does not affect the viewing distance in a meaningful way. [...] You don't put the iPhone on your nose because of the small screen or the high resolution display.

The interface was designed for that display size so we would not have to. The reason for all these iPhone optimized sites that popped was because the screen size was not ideal for viewing a website, despite it being the best phone in which to view websites. Desktop OSes are designed differently. If you were to run Mac OS X on the iPhone you'd have a touch time with it, which is the reason for the development of iPhone OS X.
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post #76 of 79
5/13/09 at 7:40am
Quote:
Originally Posted by melgross View Post

I don't know the APIs Apple wrote for this, only that they said that they had, and that has been verified. We do know that they aren't in 10.5, but rather have to be added via the developer tools on the DVD. We also know that if they are, everything looks awful.

The developer tools only install an app where you can set the scaling factor, but that's not an API, and the app is not necessary to change the scaling factory.

So there are not any missing APIs - only a SysPref.
JLL

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post #77 of 79
5/13/09 at 10:54am
Quote:
Originally Posted by JLL View Post

The developer tools only install an app where you can set the scaling factor, but that's not an API, and the app is not necessary to change the scaling factory.

So there are not any missing APIs - only a SysPref.

Then I suppose you know more than Apple.
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post #78 of 79
5/13/09 at 12:22pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by melgross View Post

Then I suppose you know more than Apple.

You're not understanding. The scaling is done in Quartz. The Quartz Debug application just gives developers the ability to tell Quartz which scaling factor to use. App writers don't need to use an API, just test their UIs with various scaling factors.
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post #79 of 79
5/14/09 at 12:28am
Quote:
Originally Posted by melgross View Post

Then I suppose you know more than Apple.

Where's the statement from Apple saying that APIs are missing to offer RI?

You can change the scaling factor in Leopard (and Tiger btw.) by using the following command:

Code:

defaults write NSGlobalDomain AppleDisplayScaleFactor x.x



x.x = the scaling factor. 1.0 is the default.

That does not require the developer tools to be installed. The RI "APIs" are in the system today.

I still can't see where you got the "APIs are missing to support RI" from.

What's missing are updated versions of various graphic elements in various apps - and a system preference to enable the scaling.

At WWDC 2007 developers were told to get the elements ready by the end of 2008 - some probably forgot that and will complain when Apple at WWDC 2009 introduces RI in 10.6 (hopefully).
JLL

95% percent of the boat is owned by Microsoft, but the 5% Apple controls happens to be the rudder!
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