Same reasoning for accepting the dumbing down of the education system though.
Is it better to pull everyone down to a low common denominator or force people to learn something?
I'm not saying computers have to be complex but we shouldn't cater for people who are willfully ignorant in the face of technology, many of whom will sit in front of a mouse and complain that they keep forgetting if they should click the left or right mouse button. And yet those same people will get into a car and drive themselves and their family down a highway at 70mph relying on more or less the same principles.
Complexity and power shouldn't be compromised for the purposes of simplicity. Apple did that with OS 9 and it sucked big time. Jobs of all people should know this after leaving and basing Next OS on UNIX.
Masking that power is not quite as bad as not having it but it's still pretty bad. They may change this somewhat in their next iteration of the iphone OS so I can't be overly critical of that.
Man, I bet you're a blast at parties when someone asks you about their confusing devices. You can hector them for being stupid and not living up to their moral obligation to master the shitty, poorly designed technology in their lives. It turns out that people feel alienated and overwhelmed by their drifting piles of gear, bristling with "features" that they'll never use, not because that gear was made by explicitly inhuman engineering and marketing teams, but because most people are lazy and wrong. And to cater to such people would damage the moral fiber of society.
[BEGINRANT]
Computer operating systems suck balls. Unfortunately, ball sucking or no they are also extraordinarily powerful manifestations of enabling technology, such that they have taken over the world.
Who designed that world? Our best, most fully alive, imaginative, morally engaged, life loving, expansive, emotionally articulate, loving stewards of what it means to be human? Oh hell no, it was designed by blinkered, emotionally stunted, semi-autistic people who happened to have been born with a talent for a certain kind of heavily codified, abstract reasoning, which neither requires or encourages anything like what we would generally regards as any kind of virtue at all.
And then they set about convincing everyone that the ghastly products of their labors are in fact things of great beauty, and to the extent that the citizenry failed to live up to its potential that was surely a failing of that citizenry, since technological felicity is the surest measure of worth.
At least the priesthoods of pre-technological cultures dealt in arcania that related to meaning and purpose. The best musings of the techoisie rarely rise above glib, information-theory derived observations about the "friction" of information and "emergent" cross-disciplinary "structures." In other words, mapping computer science onto every aspect of culture and deciding that it all looks like a big program, after all. How lovely for our deeply limited masters.
[/ENDRANT]
So I hope Apple gets some traction with their "don't think about it, just use it" notions. They appear to be the only company making computers that even cares about this stuff, and with any luck, they can begin the process of driving the IT crowd from their central position in so many walks of life. And, of course, they and their users will have to endure the hoots and ridicule of the "real" computer users, who are convinced that things like file management are actual skills of some sort that actually mean something. Who for my money are pathetic, broken, accidentally powerful pains in the ass.
Seriously, hardly anybody even knows was multitasking is, let alone cares about multitasking as a must-have except geeks.
Example: playing a game and need to check out an online guide. Player jumps to Safari, goes back to the game and finds the progress up to the last checkpoint lost or at least has to navigate through the loading menus every time. I agree with you they may not know why it happens but they'll be annoyed by it.
Someone downloads Spotify and starts it streaming over the 3G connection they pay for and maybe decides to start making an iwork document while they listen to their playlist. Not going to happen.
If anything, multitasking is for non-geeks more than anyone because they're the only ones who will get frustrated by the lack of it, not knowing what causes the limitations.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Dr Millmoss
You are right if you believe that the iPad fails on being fully geek compliant. Good. This is fine with me.
Check here for how a recent super-widescreen movie looks on a 4:3 aspect ratio (it includes the controls):
You can't really crop it in scenes like the following so you're wasting about 50% screen space.
Half of all movies are 16:9 or less and 1/7th (contained in this half) are the above format. Half are 4:3 but those are old movies and it's much easier to crop 4:3.
Quote:
Originally Posted by addabox
It turns out that people feel alienated and overwhelmed by their drifting piles of gear, bristling with "features" that they'll never use
I don't hear that complaint about the iphone. The features mean they don't have to carry around an ipod + GPS + phone + laptop.
Quote:
Originally Posted by addabox
Computer operating systems suck balls.
The iPad runs mostly the same operating system. The flaw you're talking about is the UI again. I agree that the UI is best being optimized for touch, there's just no need to artificially limit what the back-end system does to the extent Apple do when it does no harm to the consumer.
Quote:
Originally Posted by addabox
they and their users will have to endure the hoots and ridicule of the "real" computer users, who are convinced that things like file management are actual skills of some sort that actually mean something.
But when they inevitably start asking questions like 'so how do I send my 30MB Pages file to my friend from my iPad when I only have the 3G network (takes 20 minutes)?', who has really benefitted? The people who were already aware of how storage works (most people) and would use a USB thumb drive will be asking questions like this too.
Technology hasn't developed solely from a disconnect between anti-social nerds and everyone else. It comes about as efficient solutions to problems. When you start specializing technology to certain classes of user, it creates other problems like having to buy too many devices to cover basic tasks.
It all comes down to compromise and I'm willing to accept it within reason. When Apple make compromises that have no real benefit such as leaving out an SD card reader and throwing one on an adaptor, I think it's ok to pick up on it. If nobody ever complained about what they did, they'd just sell us empty boxes for $1,000 if they thought they could get away with it.
I will say that in comparison to a Kindle, iPad looks great even though it's twice the price. But nobody is buying the Kindle (2.5 million units since launch) so it's not a great benchmark. I just think that with some simple tweaks they could have crossed the line between slave and master device and changed the whole game - I'd personally make the compromise and leave x86 apps behind if it met this requirement. Surely given the fact most people have Windows PCs, giving them a device that lets them keep them switched off permanently would be better than one that forces them to use it more.
720p screen - for movies, it has to be close to this, 16:10 is ok.
Movie History School.
Film used to be 4:3 ration. 4:3 is crude approximation of the golden mean and the same shape as a sheet of paper.
But in a movie theatre, such squarish images are unsatisfactory, because human vision is wider than it is tall. So modern movie formats moved to a wider frame shape.
2.35:1, 16:9 and so on are all hover around the 2:1 aspect ratio. Which approximates the shape of human vision at its full extent (ie. when it totally fills our field-of view)
Televisions too are moving towards a similar aspect ratios - mainly to accommodate movies that are formatted as wide. (Note that televisions rarely fill our field of view. Unless you sit 4 feet away.)
So according to Marvin a tablet computer should have a similar shaped screen
No!
No absolutely not. Because film-watching is not the primary use of a tablet. It's one of many uses. So the idea this one function should determine display shape is bizarre.
Unlike a television the tablet is used both in vertical and horizontal orientation. A 2:1 screen used in a vertical orientation produces a very un-natural shape. A tall narrow screen, utterly unsuited to web viewing, book viewing. It would just look odd.
The 4:3 aspect ratio makes sense because it mirrors the pad of paper you get at Staples. It is the same shape we have been been used to using for paper for a 4 or 5 centuries.
So a 4:3 shaped screen is ideal for a tablet, when we remember that the underlying metaphor is a piece of paper. It's called the iPad not the iMovieWatcher.
Unlike a television the tablet is used both in vertical and horizontal orientation. A 2:1 screen used in a vertical orientation produces a very un-natural shape. A tall narrow screen, utterly unsuited to web viewing, book viewing. It would just look odd.
The 4:3 aspect ratio makes sense because it mirrors the pad of paper you get at Staples. It is the same shape we have been been used to using for paper for a 4 or 5 centuries.
So a 4:3 shaped screen is ideal for a tablet, when we remember that the underlying metaphor is a piece of paper. It's called the iPad not the iMovieWatcher.
Consider that the screen right now is 1024 x 768 and I'm suggesting 1280 x 720 (16:9), you don't really lose any width in the smallest dimension. An A4 page is 210mm × 297mm (1.41:1).
This means a fullscreen A4 page requires 768 x 1.41 = 1082 pixels to fit on a 4:3 screen. Being only 1024, it either crops it by 5% or scales it down with borders.
It also means that on a 16x9 screen, it requires 720 x 1.41 = 1015 pixels. Well look at that, you even have 265 pixels left over for your toolbars.
edit: I would say from a quick mockup that a 16:9 screen is a bit freaky but seeing the 16:10 screen you can see that the 4:3 one just looks plain fat
1280 x 800 = full A4 page + 152 pixels free for toolbars.
Yeah, I remember the iphone launch when they were going on about Web 2.0 and it was pretty underwhelming to some, me included and they turned it into something great. It's possible that for now, iphone apps are to the iPad what Web 2.0 was to the original iphone but the hardware limitations are still there.
We don't know the RAM yet nor if it's a dual 1GHz Cortex A9 i.e 2GHz. If it turns out to be dual 1GHz with 1-2GB RAM then the hardware has potential to do a lot more in future. If it's 1GHz with 512MB RAM, then it's no better than the Nexus One and Apple could easily go the one app at a time route with just iphone apps.
Absolutely. We still don't know anything for sure and the best thing we can do is to speculate about the device. Apple knows how to surprise. At the iPad launch they're parting with many principles, which we thought were written in the Bible of their business and technical strategies. Yet, both Mac and iPhone --- to an extent --- hardware stood hands down several generations of the software in the past. We hope they won't drop at least that one...
Quote:
Originally Posted by Marvin
It's up to developers to make the iPad worth having but iphone OS is going to have to lighten up on some of the restrictions.
Very true. Nail is hit right on the head. It's clearly visible, iPad remains underinvested so far. Apple expects applications and 3rd party hardware vendors to bring whatever is missing.
I'm with Carniphage on the screen ratio. There's nothing magical about 16:9, not even in film, which has hardly settled on one aspect ratio. In fact the display size chosen for the iPad is a standard, XGA -- which is relevant because it does video out for for things like presentations. If the display is 16:9 then it's got to letterbox vertically to output to the projector aspect ratio. The lesson is, no matter what you do, someone will find fault with it. So what else is new?
I also wonder about the future of the 16:9 standard. Watching what laughably passes for HDTV, I see a mishmash of content letterboxed (vertically and horizontally), stretched, and distorted images -- and even all three in various nauseating combinations. Neither broadcasters nor viewers seem to notice or care. So should Apple design all of their products around this so-called standard? That's certainly not a given.
I'm with Carniphage on the screen ratio. There's nothing magical about 16:9, not even in film, which has hardly settled on one aspect ratio. In fact the display size chosen for the iPad is a standard, XGA -- which is relevant because it does video out for for things like presentations. If the display is 16:9 then it's got to letterbox vertically to output to the projector aspect ratio. The lesson is, no matter what you do, someone will find fault with it. So what else is new?
I also wonder about the future of the 16:9 standard. Watching what laughably passes for HDTV, I see a mishmash of content letterboxed (vertically and horizontally), stretched, and distorted images -- and even all three in various nauseating combinations. Neither broadcasters nor viewers seem to notice or care. So should Apple design all of their products around this so-called standard? That's certainly not a given.
The broadcast/cable HD thing is well and truly a mess. My favorite is the "SD material on an HD channel on a 4:3 screen" thing, wherein the HD signal is first letterboxed, then the SD material is horizontally barred, so that you end up with a miniature image with a big black frame around it.
I do a certain amount of home electronics consulting, and explaining to people what's going on with their expensive new HD rigs and when and how or if to zoom the image is a real party, I can tell you. Most people just do the modern living resignation thing, and end up watching whatever the station choses to throw up on the screen, hideous or no.
The broadcast/cable HD thing is well and truly a mess. My favorite is the "SD material on an HD channel on a 4:3 screen" thing, wherein the HD signal is first letterboxed, then the SD material is horizontally barred, so that you end up with a miniature image with a big black frame around it.
I do a certain amount of home electronics consulting, and explaining to people what's going on with their expensive new HD rigs and when and how or if to zoom the image is a real party, I can tell you. Most people just do the modern living resignation thing, and end up watching whatever the station choses to throw up on the screen, hideous or no.
Oh, yes. Don't get me started. Too late!
The whole HD transition is a disgusting mess. My "favorite" botched broadcast method was (and maybe still is) from TBS. They were squeezing 16:9 HD content vertically and letterboxing it, taking something that would have looked good if they'd simply let it alone. Instead they went out their way to deliberately make it look retched. Who makes these decisions?
If the display is 16:9 then it's got to letterbox vertically to output to the projector aspect ratio.
Projectors can have a 4:3 resolution while the internal is 16:9. Some projectors are HD too.
My mockup above shows 16:9 to be a bit odd vertically but I like 16:10. 4:3 is just too close to a big square for my liking.
It would have to be taller of course for there to be any benefit, otherwise it's pretty much the same movie image you're looking at as the 4:3 one.
I imagine the display choice had a lot to do with manufacturing and cost. I don't think I've seen IPS displays in such small sizes before.
The following video walkthrough shows most of the display features - one I hadn't seen was landscape book mode. I guess it had to be 4:3 for that to work:
There is quite a lot of letterboxing on the 16:9 video - 75% coverage vs 90% on 16:10 but it's watchable. I notice too that pixel-doubled iphone apps are letterboxed as they are a different aspect ratio again.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Dr Millmoss
I also wonder about the future of the 16:9 standard. Watching what laughably passes for HDTV, I see a mishmash of content letterboxed (vertically and horizontally), stretched, and distorted images -- and even all three in various nauseating combinations. Neither broadcasters nor viewers seem to notice or care. So should Apple design all of their products around this so-called standard? That's certainly not a given.
They already have with the iMacs and they switched all products before that to 16:10. The old PPCs were mainly 4:3 until near the end. 16:9 is not ideal for everything. Obviously on the iPad it's too thin for viewing websites vertically. I have a tilting 16:10 screen though and it's fine for vertical content including portrait images and it shows vastly more of a movie than my old 4:3 CRT.
I certainly don't see a migration back to 4:3 anytime soon. I think the HP Slate is either 16:10 or 16:9.
Hackintoshing an HP Slate would be an interesting project to see how much touch capability has been put into OS X x86. If the HP Slate is cheap enough, I'll give it a go. It'll probably have a hard drive too so lots of space, maybe SSD but they were aiming for a low price point. If it has a 9400M that would be great. Modern Warfare, Left 4 Dead and even GTA 4 trumps any iPad game I'd say. They just need to develop custom keyboard segment overlays that are visible in front of the game. Plus you just plug in a wireless mouse if you need to.
Comments
If you can fit it into your shorts you're too fat to fit the pool.
Or have a really small wiener.
Same reasoning for accepting the dumbing down of the education system though.
Is it better to pull everyone down to a low common denominator or force people to learn something?
I'm not saying computers have to be complex but we shouldn't cater for people who are willfully ignorant in the face of technology, many of whom will sit in front of a mouse and complain that they keep forgetting if they should click the left or right mouse button. And yet those same people will get into a car and drive themselves and their family down a highway at 70mph relying on more or less the same principles.
Complexity and power shouldn't be compromised for the purposes of simplicity. Apple did that with OS 9 and it sucked big time. Jobs of all people should know this after leaving and basing Next OS on UNIX.
Masking that power is not quite as bad as not having it but it's still pretty bad. They may change this somewhat in their next iteration of the iphone OS so I can't be overly critical of that.
Man, I bet you're a blast at parties when someone asks you about their confusing devices. You can hector them for being stupid and not living up to their moral obligation to master the shitty, poorly designed technology in their lives. It turns out that people feel alienated and overwhelmed by their drifting piles of gear, bristling with "features" that they'll never use, not because that gear was made by explicitly inhuman engineering and marketing teams, but because most people are lazy and wrong. And to cater to such people would damage the moral fiber of society.
[BEGINRANT]
Computer operating systems suck balls. Unfortunately, ball sucking or no they are also extraordinarily powerful manifestations of enabling technology, such that they have taken over the world.
Who designed that world? Our best, most fully alive, imaginative, morally engaged, life loving, expansive, emotionally articulate, loving stewards of what it means to be human? Oh hell no, it was designed by blinkered, emotionally stunted, semi-autistic people who happened to have been born with a talent for a certain kind of heavily codified, abstract reasoning, which neither requires or encourages anything like what we would generally regards as any kind of virtue at all.
And then they set about convincing everyone that the ghastly products of their labors are in fact things of great beauty, and to the extent that the citizenry failed to live up to its potential that was surely a failing of that citizenry, since technological felicity is the surest measure of worth.
At least the priesthoods of pre-technological cultures dealt in arcania that related to meaning and purpose. The best musings of the techoisie rarely rise above glib, information-theory derived observations about the "friction" of information and "emergent" cross-disciplinary "structures." In other words, mapping computer science onto every aspect of culture and deciding that it all looks like a big program, after all. How lovely for our deeply limited masters.
[/ENDRANT]
So I hope Apple gets some traction with their "don't think about it, just use it" notions. They appear to be the only company making computers that even cares about this stuff, and with any luck, they can begin the process of driving the IT crowd from their central position in so many walks of life. And, of course, they and their users will have to endure the hoots and ridicule of the "real" computer users, who are convinced that things like file management are actual skills of some sort that actually mean something. Who for my money are pathetic, broken, accidentally powerful pains in the ass.
Seriously, hardly anybody even knows was multitasking is, let alone cares about multitasking as a must-have except geeks.
Example: playing a game and need to check out an online guide. Player jumps to Safari, goes back to the game and finds the progress up to the last checkpoint lost or at least has to navigate through the loading menus every time. I agree with you they may not know why it happens but they'll be annoyed by it.
Someone downloads Spotify and starts it streaming over the 3G connection they pay for and maybe decides to start making an iwork document while they listen to their playlist. Not going to happen.
If anything, multitasking is for non-geeks more than anyone because they're the only ones who will get frustrated by the lack of it, not knowing what causes the limitations.
You are right if you believe that the iPad fails on being fully geek compliant. Good. This is fine with me.
Check here for how a recent super-widescreen movie looks on a 4:3 aspect ratio (it includes the controls):
http://www.imdb.com/video/imdb/vi3738173977/
You can't really crop it in scenes like the following so you're wasting about 50% screen space.
Half of all movies are 16:9 or less and 1/7th (contained in this half) are the above format. Half are 4:3 but those are old movies and it's much easier to crop 4:3.
It turns out that people feel alienated and overwhelmed by their drifting piles of gear, bristling with "features" that they'll never use
I don't hear that complaint about the iphone. The features mean they don't have to carry around an ipod + GPS + phone + laptop.
Computer operating systems suck balls.
The iPad runs mostly the same operating system. The flaw you're talking about is the UI again. I agree that the UI is best being optimized for touch, there's just no need to artificially limit what the back-end system does to the extent Apple do when it does no harm to the consumer.
they and their users will have to endure the hoots and ridicule of the "real" computer users, who are convinced that things like file management are actual skills of some sort that actually mean something.
But when they inevitably start asking questions like 'so how do I send my 30MB Pages file to my friend from my iPad when I only have the 3G network (takes 20 minutes)?', who has really benefitted? The people who were already aware of how storage works (most people) and would use a USB thumb drive will be asking questions like this too.
Technology hasn't developed solely from a disconnect between anti-social nerds and everyone else. It comes about as efficient solutions to problems. When you start specializing technology to certain classes of user, it creates other problems like having to buy too many devices to cover basic tasks.
It all comes down to compromise and I'm willing to accept it within reason. When Apple make compromises that have no real benefit such as leaving out an SD card reader and throwing one on an adaptor, I think it's ok to pick up on it. If nobody ever complained about what they did, they'd just sell us empty boxes for $1,000 if they thought they could get away with it.
I will say that in comparison to a Kindle, iPad looks great even though it's twice the price. But nobody is buying the Kindle (2.5 million units since launch) so it's not a great benchmark. I just think that with some simple tweaks they could have crossed the line between slave and master device and changed the whole game - I'd personally make the compromise and leave x86 apps behind if it met this requirement. Surely given the fact most people have Windows PCs, giving them a device that lets them keep them switched off permanently would be better than one that forces them to use it more.
720p screen - for movies, it has to be close to this, 16:10 is ok.
Movie History School.
Film used to be 4:3 ration. 4:3 is crude approximation of the golden mean and the same shape as a sheet of paper.
But in a movie theatre, such squarish images are unsatisfactory, because human vision is wider than it is tall. So modern movie formats moved to a wider frame shape.
2.35:1, 16:9 and so on are all hover around the 2:1 aspect ratio. Which approximates the shape of human vision at its full extent (ie. when it totally fills our field-of view)
Televisions too are moving towards a similar aspect ratios - mainly to accommodate movies that are formatted as wide. (Note that televisions rarely fill our field of view. Unless you sit 4 feet away.)
So according to Marvin a tablet computer should have a similar shaped screen
No!
No absolutely not. Because film-watching is not the primary use of a tablet. It's one of many uses. So the idea this one function should determine display shape is bizarre.
Unlike a television the tablet is used both in vertical and horizontal orientation. A 2:1 screen used in a vertical orientation produces a very un-natural shape. A tall narrow screen, utterly unsuited to web viewing, book viewing. It would just look odd.
The 4:3 aspect ratio makes sense because it mirrors the pad of paper you get at Staples. It is the same shape we have been been used to using for paper for a 4 or 5 centuries.
So a 4:3 shaped screen is ideal for a tablet, when we remember that the underlying metaphor is a piece of paper. It's called the iPad not the iMovieWatcher.
C.
Unlike a television the tablet is used both in vertical and horizontal orientation. A 2:1 screen used in a vertical orientation produces a very un-natural shape. A tall narrow screen, utterly unsuited to web viewing, book viewing. It would just look odd.
The 4:3 aspect ratio makes sense because it mirrors the pad of paper you get at Staples. It is the same shape we have been been used to using for paper for a 4 or 5 centuries.
So a 4:3 shaped screen is ideal for a tablet, when we remember that the underlying metaphor is a piece of paper. It's called the iPad not the iMovieWatcher.
Consider that the screen right now is 1024 x 768 and I'm suggesting 1280 x 720 (16:9), you don't really lose any width in the smallest dimension. An A4 page is 210mm × 297mm (1.41:1).
This means a fullscreen A4 page requires 768 x 1.41 = 1082 pixels to fit on a 4:3 screen. Being only 1024, it either crops it by 5% or scales it down with borders.
It also means that on a 16x9 screen, it requires 720 x 1.41 = 1015 pixels. Well look at that, you even have 265 pixels left over for your toolbars.
edit: I would say from a quick mockup that a 16:9 screen is a bit freaky but seeing the 16:10 screen you can see that the 4:3 one just looks plain fat
1280 x 800 = full A4 page + 152 pixels free for toolbars.
Yeah, I remember the iphone launch when they were going on about Web 2.0 and it was pretty underwhelming to some, me included and they turned it into something great. It's possible that for now, iphone apps are to the iPad what Web 2.0 was to the original iphone but the hardware limitations are still there.
We don't know the RAM yet nor if it's a dual 1GHz Cortex A9 i.e 2GHz. If it turns out to be dual 1GHz with 1-2GB RAM then the hardware has potential to do a lot more in future. If it's 1GHz with 512MB RAM, then it's no better than the Nexus One and Apple could easily go the one app at a time route with just iphone apps.
Absolutely. We still don't know anything for sure and the best thing we can do is to speculate about the device. Apple knows how to surprise. At the iPad launch they're parting with many principles, which we thought were written in the Bible of their business and technical strategies. Yet, both Mac and iPhone --- to an extent --- hardware stood hands down several generations of the software in the past. We hope they won't drop at least that one...
It's up to developers to make the iPad worth having but iphone OS is going to have to lighten up on some of the restrictions.
Very true. Nail is hit right on the head. It's clearly visible, iPad remains underinvested so far. Apple expects applications and 3rd party hardware vendors to bring whatever is missing.
I also wonder about the future of the 16:9 standard. Watching what laughably passes for HDTV, I see a mishmash of content letterboxed (vertically and horizontally), stretched, and distorted images -- and even all three in various nauseating combinations. Neither broadcasters nor viewers seem to notice or care. So should Apple design all of their products around this so-called standard? That's certainly not a given.
I'm with Carniphage on the screen ratio. There's nothing magical about 16:9, not even in film, which has hardly settled on one aspect ratio. In fact the display size chosen for the iPad is a standard, XGA -- which is relevant because it does video out for for things like presentations. If the display is 16:9 then it's got to letterbox vertically to output to the projector aspect ratio. The lesson is, no matter what you do, someone will find fault with it. So what else is new?
I also wonder about the future of the 16:9 standard. Watching what laughably passes for HDTV, I see a mishmash of content letterboxed (vertically and horizontally), stretched, and distorted images -- and even all three in various nauseating combinations. Neither broadcasters nor viewers seem to notice or care. So should Apple design all of their products around this so-called standard? That's certainly not a given.
The broadcast/cable HD thing is well and truly a mess. My favorite is the "SD material on an HD channel on a 4:3 screen" thing, wherein the HD signal is first letterboxed, then the SD material is horizontally barred, so that you end up with a miniature image with a big black frame around it.
I do a certain amount of home electronics consulting, and explaining to people what's going on with their expensive new HD rigs and when and how or if to zoom the image is a real party, I can tell you. Most people just do the modern living resignation thing, and end up watching whatever the station choses to throw up on the screen, hideous or no.
The broadcast/cable HD thing is well and truly a mess. My favorite is the "SD material on an HD channel on a 4:3 screen" thing, wherein the HD signal is first letterboxed, then the SD material is horizontally barred, so that you end up with a miniature image with a big black frame around it.
I do a certain amount of home electronics consulting, and explaining to people what's going on with their expensive new HD rigs and when and how or if to zoom the image is a real party, I can tell you. Most people just do the modern living resignation thing, and end up watching whatever the station choses to throw up on the screen, hideous or no.
Oh, yes. Don't get me started. Too late!
The whole HD transition is a disgusting mess. My "favorite" botched broadcast method was (and maybe still is) from TBS. They were squeezing 16:9 HD content vertically and letterboxing it, taking something that would have looked good if they'd simply let it alone. Instead they went out their way to deliberately make it look retched. Who makes these decisions?
If the display is 16:9 then it's got to letterbox vertically to output to the projector aspect ratio.
Projectors can have a 4:3 resolution while the internal is 16:9. Some projectors are HD too.
My mockup above shows 16:9 to be a bit odd vertically but I like 16:10. 4:3 is just too close to a big square for my liking.
It would have to be taller of course for there to be any benefit, otherwise it's pretty much the same movie image you're looking at as the 4:3 one.
I imagine the display choice had a lot to do with manufacturing and cost. I don't think I've seen IPS displays in such small sizes before.
The following video walkthrough shows most of the display features - one I hadn't seen was landscape book mode. I guess it had to be 4:3 for that to work:
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2358507,00.asp
There is quite a lot of letterboxing on the 16:9 video - 75% coverage vs 90% on 16:10 but it's watchable. I notice too that pixel-doubled iphone apps are letterboxed as they are a different aspect ratio again.
I also wonder about the future of the 16:9 standard. Watching what laughably passes for HDTV, I see a mishmash of content letterboxed (vertically and horizontally), stretched, and distorted images -- and even all three in various nauseating combinations. Neither broadcasters nor viewers seem to notice or care. So should Apple design all of their products around this so-called standard? That's certainly not a given.
They already have with the iMacs and they switched all products before that to 16:10. The old PPCs were mainly 4:3 until near the end. 16:9 is not ideal for everything. Obviously on the iPad it's too thin for viewing websites vertically. I have a tilting 16:10 screen though and it's fine for vertical content including portrait images and it shows vastly more of a movie than my old 4:3 CRT.
I certainly don't see a migration back to 4:3 anytime soon. I think the HP Slate is either 16:10 or 16:9.
http://www.engadget.com/2010/01/26/h...eo-appearance/
I see this as being the main iPad rival. The iPad has the IPS display going for it of course. A basic initial comparison of a few slates is here:
http://gizmodo.com/5459308/slate-sho...ndroid-tablets
Hackintoshing an HP Slate would be an interesting project to see how much touch capability has been put into OS X x86. If the HP Slate is cheap enough, I'll give it a go. It'll probably have a hard drive too so lots of space, maybe SSD but they were aiming for a low price point. If it has a 9400M that would be great. Modern Warfare, Left 4 Dead and even GTA 4 trumps any iPad game I'd say. They just need to develop custom keyboard segment overlays that are visible in front of the game. Plus you just plug in a wireless mouse if you need to.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-yvSyyVm3Dk
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i_ZuriEHYtc
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G31W4cywkWA
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2g5Jqd9oWwo