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For Normals, Jobs' "Retina Display" Claim May Be Fair After All
The Bad Astronomer writes "AT WWDC, Steve Jobs claimed that the iPhone 4's display has about the same resolution as the human eye — held at one foot away, the iPhone 4's pixels are too small to see. After reading an earlier Slashdot post about an expert disputing Jobs' claim, I decided to run the numbers myself. I found that Jobs is correct for people with normal vision, and the expert was using numbers for theoretically perfect vision. So to most people, the iPhone 4 display will look unpixellated."
i'm holding my droid at 1 foot distance and I can't distinguish any single pixel. I have to get it to about 3-4 inches to do so convincingly.
Granted, anti-aliased fonts help a ton.
One must not forget about Anti aliasing or the fact that each pixel contains 3 RGB sub pixels. This increases the effect PPI significantly.
What bugs me is when a company uses a name for something that doesn't make sense.
When I hear "retina display" I think what you are talking about is a system that projects an image into my retina.
Most Slashdotters will never be anywhere close to one foot from a vagina anyway, so it's not like we'll have anything to compare it to when surfing our porn on it.
... every one turns off their WiFi
Specs might speak to the slashdot crowd, but I think Apple owes a lot of its success to a realizing that most consumers buy benefits, not features. The endless list of would-be iPod/iPhone killers that touted better features but failed to have an impact in the market are evidence of this.
The only people who are going to look at the screen and think "hey, they said I wouldn't be able to see the pixels but I can!" are people who look at printed magazines and think "wow, when are they going to get rid of all these dots?" The screen has print level resolution and, as a graphic designer, that simply blows my mind. As has been mentioned in that other thread, graphic designers do digital work in 300 dpi for print work and 72 dpi for online work. If this screen technology becomes the new norm, we'll be doing all work at 300 dpi, which is damn, damn, damn impressive to look at. At that point, the technology bottleneck will be the pipes (a 72 dpi image is quite a bit smaller than a 300 dpi image, after all...). I do hope this tech spreads to lots of other devices and computer displays.
But, yes, anyone who claims that Apple was lying about it being a "retinal" display is simply attempting to pick a needless fight. Ignore them and move on.
"the resolution/DPI is so dense that your eyes won't be able to distinguish individual pixels"(TM). OR...
"Retina Display"(TM).
I think Android's popularity might have more to do with it being available on more devices, including much cheaper devices. Even then, the single model iPhone is still outselling it (counting different capacity iPhones as one model of course). You overestimate the average consumer's ability to care about things such as being able to run software from anywhere.
I think you're taking it too far with this statement.
I'd say it's more of case of letting people know that Android phones do apps too. Joe or Jane Average could care less that the apps aren't "curated" in the "walled garden." They just want to know if the phone does apps, and how easy is it to get them.
I want to shoot the messenger!
it's alright, the math assumes that nobody is nearsighted. Since nearsightedness is very common, the article's comments don't hold true at all.
Some people can see magnitudes smaller arcmin than .6 up close, in fact like .2 or so. Anyone with 20/10 vision (which is common with correction such as eyeglasses or contacts) is going to still see plenty of pixelation.
It's still a substantial improvement in pixels, but the article is incorrect.
You mean that real life doesn't have pixels everywhere I look?
Have you ever seen how pixelated the beach is?
It's not _projecting onto ones retina_ any more than another LCD screen is.
But you see, they all do that. All visible objects do that. That's how our eyes work. Light reflected or emitted from objects uses the lens in your eye to project an image onto your retina. It is technically correct, and no, it's not anything special, other than being a high resolution display.
Could it be, that this is just a trade name? (and that perhaps some people have a little too much time on their hands?)
When I search for a document on my Mac, I don't expect an actual Spotlight to shine on the document.
When I restore a file from a backup using Time Machine, I don't imagine that there's actual time travel taking place.
If I use the feature that shows all of my overlapping windows resized so they fit on the screen and I can choose which one to work on, I don't expect the crew from 20/20 or 60 Minutes or Dateline NBC to show up and do an actual Exposé.
Holy crap, I just found out there's no control tower or runway involved in using Airport networking! What a complete and total fraud!
MobileMe doesn't actually cause me to move around either!
And, worst of all, the damned Magic Mouse doesn't have any magical powers! I just tried to cast a Patronus Charm with it, just like in those Harry Potter movies, and the damn thing didn't work at all. It doesn't even fly around unless you throw it. I want my money back!
Putting moderation advice in your
The only reason my friends have cited for eschewing iPhone and going Android when it came out is "It's not AT&T". They think of Android phones as iPhones that work on other networks.
I think Android's popularity might have more to do with it being available on a network other than AT&T.
The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources. - Albert Einstein
I think this speaks poorly of the general public
The general public doesn't give a damn about DPI numbers, nor should they. They care about something that gives them value for their dollars, and marketing is all about conveying the value.
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
It is called marketing.
Tell you what. Show me where their is a turbine on an Intel I7 and how it speeds up the CPU when you use Intel's Turbo Boost technology and I will all bent out of shape over Apple's Retina display.
It is market speak and it is everywhere. It usually only bugs you if you don't like the product, the company, or know how stuff really works.
Frankly I just tune it all out and don't let it bother me anymore.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
you don't like iTunes that's fine... but what rock have you been hiding under that you don't know Apple removed the DRM the second they were allowed to?