Dammit! I really didn?t want to be right on this one. He covered every point I previously brought up. Against my better judgement I hope his sources are wrong.
Dammit! I really didn’t want to be right on this one. He covered every point I previously brought up. Against my better judgement I hope his sources are wrong.
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.
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.
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.
Quote:
I asked around, and according to my sources, it is too good to be true: the iPad 2 does not have a retina display. I believe the iPad 2’s display will remain at 1024 × 768.
Quote:
I think that’s unlikely for reasons pertaining to UI scaling math (the same reason that the iPhone display resolution didn’t increase incrementally) — but it’s worth noting that my sources only claim “no retina display”, not that the resolution is unchanged. The “double or nothing” line is my opinion, not information from any source.
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.)
Thoughts?
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?
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?
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.
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. ).
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).
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. ).
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.
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.
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.
You must be new here; Daniel rarely does any fact checking.
I read Daniel for few years now... and I can say that I agree with him 90%
Quote:
Originally Posted by melgross
Yes. I have several St's. It did have a better screen, esp. In greyscale. Atari had a lot of firsts. The first monitor to refresh higher than 60Hz. It worked at 70. While a number of wags said that; "You know Atari, they have to be different", the monitor was rock stable. No flickering at all in a time when every monitor, including The Mac's did.
...
I also still have my three St's, plus a bunch of stuff for them, though I did give the greyscale monitor away. I still have the color version.
It was sad that the Tramile's screwed the company up after initial great success.
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.
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!
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).
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.
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'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.
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.
You have obviously never dabbled in high-end audio.
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.
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.
Comments
Gruber has spoken. No "retina" display for the iPad. According to his source(s).
Great while it lasted. Of course he or his source could be wrong or disinformed. He's taking bets.
http://daringfireball.net/
Dammit! I really didn?t want to be right on this one. He covered every point I previously brought up. Against my better judgement I hope his sources are wrong.
Dammit! I really didn’t want to be right on this one. He covered every point I previously brought up. Against my better judgement I hope his sources are wrong.
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 asked around, and according to my sources, it is too good to be true: the iPad 2 does not have a retina display. I believe the iPad 2’s display will remain at 1024 × 768.
I think that’s unlikely for reasons pertaining to UI scaling math (the same reason that the iPhone display resolution didn’t increase incrementally) — but it’s worth noting that my sources only claim “no retina display”, not that the resolution is unchanged. The “double or nothing” line is my opinion, not information from any source.
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.)
Thoughts?
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?
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?
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.
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).
This may have been addressed already, but I don't feel like reading through 5+pages worth of comments to find out.
If only...
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.
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.
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.
You must be new here; Daniel rarely does any fact checking.
I read Daniel for few years now... and I can say that I agree with him 90%
Yes. I have several St's. It did have a better screen, esp. In greyscale. Atari had a lot of firsts. The first monitor to refresh higher than 60Hz. It worked at 70. While a number of wags said that; "You know Atari, they have to be different", the monitor was rock stable. No flickering at all in a time when every monitor, including The Mac's did.
...
I also still have my three St's, plus a bunch of stuff for them, though I did give the greyscale monitor away. I still have the color version.
It was sad that the Tramile's screwed the company up after initial great success.
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
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
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!
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).
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.
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'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.
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.
You have obviously never dabbled in high-end audio.
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.
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.
You have obviously never dabbled in high-end audio.
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.