Shouldn't Retina display come to ipad first...

[Meever]

Has anyone looked at an iPad display and said "Man this display is amazing! Colors pop, contrast is great and it's so bright.... only if the pixel density was higher."

I don't exactly have eagle eyes but they're reasonably sharp and honestly, I'm content with about 100ppi. Yeah, I'm sure 300ppi is great and all but until we hit like 400 or 500 ppi or something a human eye will always be able to distinguish pixels to some extent.... and honestly, it kind of feels like a moot point. I know they're pixels, it's a frigeen LCD screen for god's sake! What else could it be besides pixels? XD

 

[Piggie]

Come on everyone we all know the only logical resolution for any multimedia? tablet is going to end up as..................

1920x1080

That's so set in stone now (and for the foreseeable future) it's the natural thing to happen

 

[Piggie]

Has anyone looked at an iPad display and said "Man this display is amazing! Colors pop, contrast is great and it's so bright.... only if the pixel density was higher."

I don't exactly have eagle eyes but they're reasonably sharp and honestly, I'm content with about 100ppi. Yeah, I'm sure 300ppi is great and all but until we hit like 400 or 500 ppi or something a human eye will always be able to distinguish pixels to some extent.... and honestly, it kind of feels like a moot point. I know they're pixels, it's a frigeen LCD screen for god's sake! What else could it be besides pixels? XD

Yes, I think that a lot actually.
Just today in fact using the pulse newsreader, when you click for to view web as opposed to text, you see the full web page, but it only takes up half the iPad's screen, and there just are not enough pixels to do it. You can only just make out the words, due to the lack of resolution.

Not saying we need Retina, but we need more, 1024x768 is pretty low rez for 2010.

I just don't know how Apple can do this without screwing all the new apps up that are coming out now and during the year.

 

[JulianL]

I'm sure 300ppi is great and all but until we hit like 400 or 500 ppi or something a human eye will always be able to distinguish pixels to some extent

I'm afraid that the science is (debatably) not with you on that one; it's been gone into in some detail in the last week. It depends on how you define "human eye". If you take 20/20 vision as a reasonable typical human eye then Jobs' claim that the 326 pixels per inch on the iPhone 4 are unresolvable by that human eye at a 12 inch viewing distance is correct. In fact apparently 20/20 vision can only resolve 286 ppi at 12 inches

A decent link is http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2010/06/10/resolving-the-iphone-resolution/

- Julian

 

[MisterMe]

I'm afraid that the science is (debatably) not with you on that one; it's been gone into in some detail in the last week. It depends on how you define "human eye". If you take 20/20 vision as a reasonable typical human eye then Jobs' claim that the 326 pixels per inch on the iPhone 4 are unresolvable by that human eye at a 12 inch viewing distance is correct. In fact apparently 20/20 vision can only resolve 286 ppi at 12 inches

A decent link is http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2010/06/10/resolving-the-iphone-resolution/

- Julian

This is another link. It goes into depth about the two different types of photoreceptors, the rods and cones.

Long story short--resolution depends on two completely different issues. We tend to concentrate on angular separation of image sources. This is due to the diffraction of the image produced by our instruments--apertures, lens, mirrors, etc. However, the retinal photoreceptors also play a substantial role. Our scotopic vision provided by the rod photoreceptors is an order of magnitude more sensitive than our photopic vision provided by our cone photoreceptors. This has a number of consequences. One consequence is that our color vision disappears in low light. Another consequence is that a 300 dpi B&W image has a clearly visible dot structure whereas a 300 dpi color image is difficult to distinguish from a chemical photograph when viewed by the unaided eye.

 

[pondie84]

Has anyone looked at an iPad display and said "Man this display is amazing! Colors pop, contrast is great and it's so bright.... only if the pixel density was higher."

Of course there are. But there's also people who sit in dark rooms with a black screen with the brightness turned all the way up so they can moan about light bleed; people who stick their ears close to their speakers and listen hard for a speaker hiss; people who complain about the sound quality of songs from iTunes etc. etc.

Apple can't hope to please everyone.

 

[Spudracer]

This whining is hilarious. Sixty days ago the iPad screen was "beautiful" and "stunning". Now that a new "retina display" has been cooked up by Apple marketing wonks, the iPad display suddenly is deficient.

First off, my iPad display seemed pretty damned good when I got it on launch day and I still find it excellent for watching video, reading books, browsing the web, and showing off photos on a 9.7 inch screen. Higher resolution isn't really necessary.

Second, as some have already mentioned the tiny iPhone screen can benefit more from sharper text. And at the smaller size, the pixel count doesn't reach ridiculous levels that current hardware would have difficulty driving.

Third, as others have mentioned, a 9.7 inch "retina display" would likely be much harder to manufacture resuting in lower yields and higher costs.

Apple is doing the only smart thing by implementing a new technology where it will have the best effect, lowest cost impact, and highest volume thereby providing a base to lower manufacturing cost and ramp up production capability. I'm sure we'll see higher resolution displays on the iPad's grandchildren when it makes economic sense to do so. Until then, I'm a happy camper with my sixty day old device.

 

[capn7]

To make more $$$$

 

[Julien]

Come on everyone we all know the only logical resolution for any multimedia? tablet is going to end up as..................

1920x1080

That's so set in stone now (and for the foreseeable future) it's the natural thing to happen

That would require a changing of the aspect ratio.

 

[billyjoegibsonx]

Maybe its no possible atm.

But my first thought when the iphone was announced to have this feature was that they'd use retina display/gyro as features for the new ipad so that when it comes out people will wanna buy new shiny ipads to get these features after experiencing them on the iphone.

 

[JulianL]

This whole discussion really isn't at all complicated. The answer is very, very (very) straightforward.

1) They didn't launch iPad with a Retina display because either some bits of technology were simply not available on this planet (e.g. CPU and GPU hardware powerful enough to push around that many pixels while staying within the power envelope required by available battery capacity for the iPad form factor) and/or some technology might have been available (e.g. the display itself) but would have been prohibitively expensive and which would have given the iPad a multi-thousand dollar price tag.

2) Technology advances every year and both the above limitations will disappear at which point Apple will definitely put a higher resolution display in a future iPad. The issue is whether that is the 3rd, 4th or 5th generation device. Assuming a generation each year then I'd be amazed if all the technological pieces are in place in time for the second generation and I'd actually be very, very surprised if they could do it for the third generation.

The interesting question that I'm sure is already occupying the minds of a lot of Apple development staff is, with the current 1024 x 768 starting point, how do they get to a "retina display" (assuming a working assumption that that is a display in excess of 300 ppi)?

The issue is that with the iPhone they could just quadruple the existing 3GS pixel count on the same screen size and that got them to > 300 ppi and also gave a 1-to-4 mapping of pixels for legacy apps so they would look just as good on the screen with no scaling artefacts whatsoever (in fact they'll look better because they'll get higher resolution rendering of anything done by iOS like text and controls).

With iPad if they double the existing resolution to keep perfect compatibility with legacy apps then, if they also keep the same screen size, they won't get to 300 ppi (I make it almost exactly 264 ppi). Will that be good enough or will they really shoot for 300 ppi? If they want to go for 300 ppi (or greater) then that implies a disruptive switch in screen resolution for legacy apps so do they do that later, when they have a bigger native iPad app base to worry about, or do they do it sooner (e.g. next year) by switching to something like 1280 x 960 resolution, take the hit with apps at that time, but then be well set up for a 2560 x 1920 pixel quadrupling when technology permits for a 330 ppi display?

I bet there are a few people within Apple that are bitterly disappointed that they weren't quite able to stretch the technology far enough, and/or drive the supplier prices low enough, to have been able to launch the first generation with a 1280 x 960 display. I wonder if that is one reason why the iPad was stuck in the rumour phase for so long and came out later than a lot of people were predicting. Maybe Apple were trying very hard to make the target 1280 x 960 screen resolution but decided that they couldn't wait any longer for the technology and pricing pieces to come together and had to launch before they missed a market window.

- Julian

 

[MacAgnostic]

The interesting question that I'm sure is already occupying the minds of a lot of Apple development staff is, with the current 1024 x 768 starting point, how do they get to a "retina display" (assuming a working assumption that that is a display in excess of 300 ppi)?

300 ppi assumes a viewing distance of 10-12 inches. I think for the iPad, one could assume the viewing distance is greater, like 18-20 inches. In that case, 220 ppi would be fine for "retina display"

With iPad if they double the existing resolution to keep perfect compatibility with legacy apps then, if they also keep the same screen size, they won't get to 300 ppi (I make it almost exactly 264 ppi). Will that be good enough or will they really shoot for 300 ppi?

As stated above, I believe it would be well beyond "goood enough".

Some possible resolutions for future iPads:

2048X1536 4:3 10.7-inch 264 ppi.
2X pixels in both dimensions, but a huge reach for today's tech.

1920x1280 2:3 10.5-inch 220 ppi
2X pixels of iPhone 4 in both dimensions, perfect for HDTV 1080 content, still a pretty big reach for today's tech.

Maybe Apple were trying very hard to make the target 1280 x 960 screen resolution...

I agree, but I'm not sure they will go there at this point:

1280X960 4:3 7.1-inch 224 ppi
This would be the rumored iPad mini. Possible scaling issues (perhaps minimal with a good filter at this res.), perfect for HDTV 720p content.

Another possible iPad mini:
1920x1280 2:3 7.1-inch 326 ppi
2X pixels of iPhone 4 in both dimensions, perfect for HDTV 1080 content, still a pretty big reach for today's tech.

After mulling all this over, I'm guessing 1920x1280 in both 7.1-inch and 10.7-inch sizes would be ideal.
I think the 4:3 1024x768 was a compromise, chosen because it was what they could get today (disguised by RDF).