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I was about to buy an iPad when I just saw it... text clarity is poor.
- Thread starter MVApple
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Looks fine to me, althought some fonts may look distorted as it also depends on the way the rendering has been designed on the site itself. Most of the pages look amazing and I use the portrait mode (locked).
The majority of the OP's posts seem to be about finding "faults" with the iPad and deterring people from buying it.
5 dollars says he created that "first post" user here as a sock puppet.
Interesting. There is a common theme.
I do have trouble reading the text in portrait mode, without zooming, but I usually zoom in so the ad/navigation columns are off screen anyway. After I get the annoying ads pushed offscreen, it's zoomed in enough that everything looks great.
I don't know if the ipone does this too, since I don't have one, but the iPad sort of helps you scroll up and down when you're doing this so that when you swipe 95 degrees up instead of 90, it still scrolls the page straight down.
I would never use the iPad for reading, as I dont buy books. Never been in a book store in my life to buy a book to read - not my thing. I use the iPad primarily for internet / email.
I find it very scary that people like you exist. Not meant to be an insult by the way.
That's why they invented pinch-to-zoom or double tap.
I love reading books on my iPad, especially in darker places with no lights. Reading in the day time is fairly rough though.
I love reading books on my iPad, especially in darker places with no lights. Reading in the day time is fairly rough though.
Doesnt hurt to be different, I just never buy books or read books. On the otherhand I'll read the latest tech magazines, but the web is free and more updated
I do have fanboy goggles on and I know what you're talking about. I made a post about the exact same thing several weeks ago. I bought an iPad but couldn't get past the blocky rendering of the text - especially at small sizes. I also felt like I could almost see the grid of pixels as I was reading web pages in low light. I felt like the next generation iPad would resolve this with a better screen so I returned my iPad to the Apple store and ate the restocking fee. I'll get back on the iPad bandwagon on the next generation likely.
The OP isn't crazy. The iPad's text rendering is incredibly blocky/aliased. If you don't see, it great for you, but the new iPhone will make you understand the difference. The iPad simply isn't high enough resolution. Games and videos look great. Text....not so great.
I agree completely. My dissatisfaction was solely with text - particularly text on web pages and not necessarily iBooks. But seeing as I was using the iPad for 90% reading, and 90% of that was reading web pages, I decided to wait for generation 2.
I don't disagree completely: text on the iPad doesn't look great. It doesn't have the resolution density to do good antialiasing. That said, it certainly hasn't stopped me from using and loving my iPad, and I do a lot of reading on it, both in Safari and iBooks. The other characteristics of the screen are excellent. I think for the first generation they were all about keeping the price down, and that meant going with a lower resolution (more pixels would also require more RAM, which is already tight on the iPad). Looking for something in the 1600x1200 range for the next iPad, that should provide a noticeable increase in rendered text quality, not as good as the new iPhone, but still pretty nice for a ~10" screen (over 200 ppi).
From what I'm gathering it's a software decision and not a problem with the actual screen. I've used netbooks with the same screen size and resolution that can display clear text and those screens aren't as nice as the iPads. Hopefully there's a safari update to address this but IMO the one place that Apple still trails Microsoft in is text legibility.
I really don't know why this comes as a surprise to anyone.
Some have been saying from the moment the specs were announced (even though many put their fingers in their ears and sung "la la la I can't hear you")
1024x768 is pretty low res these days.
You fire up an old PC, set the screen to 1024x768 and go web browsing, you can do it but it's all a bit cramped.
Just go up one notch on an old system to 1280x1024 and all of a sudden you feel you can breath again, and of course, today we are used to higher than that.
Irrespective of what anyone might like to think, for a computer screen 1024x768 pixels these days it pretty low res to fit everything in.
For games, yeah, it's fine, but not when you are trying to render all the text on a web page.
It's not a lot under res (so to speak) just a bit.
If the iPad was widescreen 16:9 with the same pixel density, it would make a screen res of around 1365x768.
That's a bit of an odd res I know, but just that alone, having those extra 300 ish pixels across the screen would instantly allow fonts to be smoother and no distortion in trying to compress them to fit.
Either way we're stuck with things till we see what Mk2 iPad will do.
Some have been saying from the moment the specs were announced (even though many put their fingers in their ears and sung "la la la I can't hear you")
1024x768 is pretty low res these days.
You fire up an old PC, set the screen to 1024x768 and go web browsing, you can do it but it's all a bit cramped.
Just go up one notch on an old system to 1280x1024 and all of a sudden you feel you can breath again, and of course, today we are used to higher than that.
Irrespective of what anyone might like to think, for a computer screen 1024x768 pixels these days it pretty low res to fit everything in.
For games, yeah, it's fine, but not when you are trying to render all the text on a web page.
It's not a lot under res (so to speak) just a bit.
If the iPad was widescreen 16:9 with the same pixel density, it would make a screen res of around 1365x768.
That's a bit of an odd res I know, but just that alone, having those extra 300 ish pixels across the screen would instantly allow fonts to be smoother and no distortion in trying to compress them to fit.
Either way we're stuck with things till we see what Mk2 iPad will do.
Ever heard of multitouch zoom?
Text still looks great and perfectly clear when zoomed in on iPad.
Yeah. The OP obviously doesn't actually own any device that performs anti-aliasing properly.
Text still looks great and perfectly clear when zoomed in on iPad.
The majority of the OP's posts seem to be about finding "faults" with the iPad and deterring people from buying it.
5 dollars says he created that "first post" user here as a sock puppet.
Yeah. The OP obviously doesn't actually own any device that performs anti-aliasing properly.
Yeah well of course test looks great when you zoom in as then it's more pixels to work with!
It's when you are default size we're struggling due to not enough pixels to smoothly form the shape of the characters on screen (small web page characters)
I think I need to do some testing/observations on my PC monitor and iPad (using just 1024 pixels on my monitor) to see what's going on here and where the issue lies, if it's something to go with Safari's web smoothing or not.
Usability for the majority of web sites starts to go down after more than 1000 pixels wide, because the lines of text get too long. Many site layouts are even hard coded to about 1000 wide; with a wider browser window, you just get more background on both sides. More vertical pixels are almost always useful, though.
But again, the problem with iPad is that it renders for 980 and then shrinks to 768, in portrait orientation.
And sure, more pixels in the same 10" 4:3 aspect ratio would have been nice, but that would have made iPad more expensive. It will get there, though.
I've been using my iPad since the first day it came out and I'm always in portrait mode. I have never noticed anything wrong with the text rendering. Probably will now lol thanks!
Yes - but not a resolution prob
As an Apple fanboy, I can absolutely confirm that there is a problem with text rendering on the iPad. For example, I have an alu unibody Macbook 13 -- whose pixel density is about 30% lower -- that is much clearer and easier on the eyes for reading text.
I suspect this is just a software problem with the rendering strategy, and can be worked out. It's acceptable as a reader, but nowhere near what it could, or should be.
I read about 800-1000 pages a week for my work, and I just can't get through it all on the iPad -- too exhausting. I put most of it on a Sony 505 reader for an efficient and painless reading experience.
As an Apple fanboy, I can absolutely confirm that there is a problem with text rendering on the iPad. For example, I have an alu unibody Macbook 13 -- whose pixel density is about 30% lower -- that is much clearer and easier on the eyes for reading text.
I suspect this is just a software problem with the rendering strategy, and can be worked out. It's acceptable as a reader, but nowhere near what it could, or should be.
I read about 800-1000 pages a week for my work, and I just can't get through it all on the iPad -- too exhausting. I put most of it on a Sony 505 reader for an efficient and painless reading experience.
I think that the screen is good for text atm but agree that its going to be something that apple will upgrade with the next iPad
I agree, it's something mentioned by these guys http://informationarchitects.jp/designing-for-ipad-reality-check/
iPads resolution is higher than a regular LCD but still lower than an iPhone which gives the pixel type an unusual in between feel. Paradoxically this can make type feel more pixelated than on a regular computer screen that is usually farther away from the eye and less contrast-intense. [At first I thought it's the sub-pixel anti-aliasing that becomes more apparentthere is a blue and orange glow around black-on-white type contrastyet iPhone and iPad don't have sub pixel anti-aliasing. So contrary to my initial assumption, the lack of sub-pixel anti-aliasing might be another reason why text doesnt look as smooth as expected.]
I can't confirm that it doesn't have subpixel anti-alising, but it appears so. If so adding it seems like a good way to improve font rendering.
iPads resolution is higher than a regular LCD but still lower than an iPhone which gives the pixel type an unusual in between feel. Paradoxically this can make type feel more pixelated than on a regular computer screen that is usually farther away from the eye and less contrast-intense. [At first I thought it's the sub-pixel anti-aliasing that becomes more apparentthere is a blue and orange glow around black-on-white type contrastyet iPhone and iPad don't have sub pixel anti-aliasing. So contrary to my initial assumption, the lack of sub-pixel anti-aliasing might be another reason why text doesnt look as smooth as expected.]
I can't confirm that it doesn't have subpixel anti-alising, but it appears so. If so adding it seems like a good way to improve font rendering.
