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A Professional Perspective On Apple's Retina Display
Reader BWJones, who is a retinal scientist, sends in this detailed analysis of the iPhone 4's "retinal display," which includes photomicrographs of the display pixels of earlier generations of iPhone as well as the iPad. Well worth a read. "... as you can see from these images of the displays I captured under a microscope, the pixels are not square. Rather they are rectangular, and while the short axis is 78 microns, the long axis on the iPhone 4 pixel is somewhere in the neighborhood of 102 microns. ... While [an earlier analysis by] Dr. Soneira was partially correct with respect to the retina, Apple's Retina Display adequately represents the resolution at which images fall upon our retina. ... [I] find Apple's claims stand up to what the human eye can perceive."
Apparently we should never ask a scientist, "How do you like *them* Apples?"
People love to whine about all the Apple stories. I would defy any of them to submit their own stories about all the other computer companies that are breaking new ground with this type of research. Do you think Dell for example has a team of physics PHDs figuring out these technologies and pushing their vendors to tool up for them? No, THOSE are the guys just packaging off-the-shelf reference designs. Or waiting for the exclusivity on Apple's deal with [insert obscure pacific rim manufacturer here] to expire so they can make a similar looking phone a few years later.
And since you can't actually HOLD the fucking phone to make calls, looking at it is all you're going to do with it.
I'm really happy to see screen resolution getting attention. My Vaio U101 had a pretty decent ppi, but it's long in the tooth and that that class of system -- always a niche -- has basically been displaced from the market by netbooks. And I'm sick of netbooks with low-res screens. Hopefully this will catch on as an important feature.
(I'm double-sick of people saying: "But if there's a higher-resolution screen, everything gets tiny and hard to see. So low-res is better for small screens." Ahhhh! You're doing it wrong!)
People love to whine about all the Apple stories. I would defy any of them to submit their own stories about all the other computer companies that are breaking new ground with this type of research. Do you think Dell for example has a team of physics PHDs figuring out these technologies and pushing their vendors to tool up for them? No, THOSE are the guys just packaging off-the-shelf reference designs. Or waiting for the exclusivity on Apple's deal with [insert obscure pacific rim manufacturer here] to expire so they can make a similar looking phone a few years later.
Do you think Apple has a team of physics Ph Ds figuring this out? (Hint: no.)
Apple deserves credit for identifying this technology and bringing it to market. That's a worthwhile and necessary pursuit, no matter what the Slashdot detractors say. But Apple is not doing groundbreaking research into materials science or manufacturing here; it's merely bringing them to market in an attractive way.
... which is why "laser quality" is 300 dpi. We knew fax looks like shit because it's 200 dpi. It's why chemical photo prints are almost 300 dpi. Why print artwork is done at 300 dpi. The "300 dpi pleases the retina" thing is like 25 or more years old. 300 is the most important point on the resolution scale.
But of course if Steve Jobs says it, then the Nerd Police have to say it's wrong. If it didn't happen in a video game or a Windows patch then they don't fucking know. As if Apple doesn't know about graphics and publishing!
You don't get it. How do you hold your stick is very important when you're casting spells! Remember: this is a magical device!
This innovation sure beats that whole punch card technology.
Why would dell? they don't make electronics. They build computers byu assembling other peoples electronics.
I have submitted stories about real ground breaking technologies from:
Intel
Giga-Byte
Nasa
Chevy
IBM
MS.
and many, many others. I stop submitting 2 years ago because I had not had a submission accepted since 99.
Now, I don't mind the apple stories. It's not like this is a limited space newspaper.
BTW that tech isn't as ground breaking as you seem to think. It's like there isn't much there in regard to new tech, so people are glomming onto and straws they can grasp to justify waiting hour to buy a product that they could walk in and buy in 2 weeks. Hell it might even be fixed by then.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
So I played with one briefly yesterday. I thought, "oh, this is nice, it's about the same speed as my 3gs...this screen doesn't LOOK a whole lot better." Then I realized I really needed to clean my glasses. With my glasses off, and the screen 6 inches from my nose, it looks AWESOME. From any distance away, through my myopic eyes, dirty glasses, and the pollutants in the air, it's much better than it needs to be.
"Draco dormiens nunquam titillandus."
This is just buying into the hype. Apple came out with a new phone that happens to have the highest pixel density yet (325 ppi). The next closest is the Motorola Droid at 265 ppi. About 20% higher than the competition... Not really a groundbreaking move by Apple, just them taking another step toward higher density displays. It's what any company would have done. Where was the news story when the Droid came out, besting Apples then best display on the 3GS (of 163ppi) by 40%?
Disclaimer: I don't have an Iphone, or a Droid, but I do have a brain and I tend to use it when I smell hype.
Palm trees and 8
It said "2 meters".
What is this "meter" you speak of .. I only know of the metre. Unless you were using some new fangled musical notation that I don't know of.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meter
The metre (or meter), symbol m, is the base unit of length in the International System of Units (SI).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_and_British_English_spelling_differences#-re.2C_-er
In British usage, some words of French, Latin, or Greek origin end with a consonant followed by -re, with the -re unstressed and pronounced /r/. Most of these words have the ending -er in the United States. The difference is most common for words ending -bre or -tre: British spellings centre, goitre, kilometre, litre, lustre, mitre, nitre, reconnoitre, saltpetre, spectre, theatre, and titre all have -er in American spelling, as do calibre, fibre, sabre, and sombre.
Happy to clear that up for you.
I like Apple, but let me be the first to say they they do need a team of physics PHDs to work on antenna design...
I still cannot find the droids I am looking for...
Hummm, I thought IPS was developed by Hitachi? And I assumed that Apple just brought this to market (and probably did some final work on it). So yes, I have exactly the attitude to Apple that you think I do.
Relative to other companies their size Apple has a massive marketing budget and a puny R&D budget. Recently we've been hearing about how Apple has grown bigger then MS, but their R&D budget was 10% of Microsoft's in 2009. Investors have became angry with other companies for spending so much on R&D and they point to the example of Apple that makes better much money by spending their money on marketing.
In the case of this display, Apple's problem was that they couldn't get Samsung's Super AMOLED display. If they had, I"m sure you would be telling us about Apple incredibly ground-breaking R&D on reducing the power consumption of a display. Apparently though, now that the iPhone 4 is using IPS, we've decided that 'retinal' resolution is the key and giving thanks to Apple for inventing that.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
With both a hi-res camera and display, you show more of your face than perhaps you want. Every line, pimple and stray hair shows up, when I playing with FaceTime yesterday.
A minor aggravation is if you hold the phone normally you get a view of one's nostrils and chin. You have tilt your neck and/or lift the phone to get a good face view.
I think theres agood opportunity for a face-beautification app here. Maybe you could slightly de-focus the face like cameramen did for women in 1930s/1940s movies, to make them look better.
78 um and 102 um. They used the Greek letter Mu, which Slashdot helpfully strips out.
Alexander Peter Kristopeit bought his basement from his mommy for one dollar.
Well, you know, the whole thing started with people using maths to try and prove it wasn't good.
The LG CYON LU1400 is where it's at.
A dumbphone (granted, with a TV tuner) with 3 PPI more than the iPhone 4, in 2008. (800x480, 2.8")
http://www.displayblog.com/2008/12/25/lg-cyon-lu1400-28-dmb-tv-phone/
"Where was the news story when the Droid came out, besting Apples then best display on the 3GS (of 163ppi) by 40%
Didn't Droid come out 7 months ago? The only way it would have been a story is if it hadn't been able to top the resolution that the iPhone has had since what... 2007?
Note that Apple didn't market their device as having higher resolution than a competing device. They are marketing it as being so high that it no longer matters.
That's all and pretty and works pretty well... until you rotate the phone 90 degrees.
Oh, and totally sucks for developers to work with non-square pixels. Reminds me of 8-bit Atari, Graphics 11. 80×192 in landscape aspect ratio, pixels half a millimeter tall, half a centimeter wide.
45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
Leading scientists have proven that Sears Silvertone electrical appliances contain scant amounts of silver. Some contain no silver at all!!!
Of course Sears didn't have a former coke dealer go on stage and claim silver content.
Still, this used to be Slashdot. Why do we put up with all this macfag gibber?
These are simple factual claims.
You don't need to depend on the science equivalent of an Imam or a Bishop for your answer.
You can test the claims yourself.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
I cannot RTFA being it is dead, but my question about all of this "retina-level" stuff is: are they factoring that the eye uses dithering and jittering to increase the spatial resolution?
Last I'd heard, the current theory is that by using micro-saccades, the eye can increase the spatial resolution over what your would naively predict based upon the angular spacing of the cones.
www.eFax.com are spammers
I'm not quite sure why the distance people hold printed reading material should equal the distance at which people use their iPhones. For example, it's clear that I (and others around me) hold a 'phone closer than a newspaper, probably because:
(1) I'm interacting with it;
(2) Light's reflecting off it in a different way;
(3) Everything's squeezed up together, so we want the screen to take up more of our field of vision.
Some say it's impossible to see a target that small, but I used to bullseye womp rats in my T-16 back home. They're not much bigger than two meters.
Bill
It's my Sig and you can't have it. Mine! All Mine!
There are few contenders between Droid's 25 and iPhone's 325: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_displays_by_pixel_density
There are entries about and over 300 dpi.
:wq
Why does this make the Retina Display simply hype, as opposed to something pretty impressive? I don't recall Motorola making any mention of their display's ppi. Apple has made a mention of it and made it clear what this brings to the table for the user - a display that produces images that look like print. What exactly should they have done? Not made it? Not mentioned it? So, yeah, Apple is a lot smarter then Motorola, and the Droid had previously bested the iPhone = 3GS's display ppi. Congrats on that.
--- What?
Because it's not "like looking at print on paper"... if you hold the thing a x inches your retina will not be able to distinguish the pixels. The same went for the Droid (albeit at a slightly farther distance) and the same has applied for any LCD at any point in history. It's not as good as print, for one because modern printers use 600 dpi; 300dpi is 80's technology. For two because even when you print at a given DPI, there is chemical dithering that takes place to make the edges indistinguishable. A LCD cannot do that, even if it too ran at 600dpi.
But no, all of a sudden Apple declares "this is the most pixel density you will ever need" and people are falling over themselves proclaiming how awesome he is for coming up with the concept. It may be the highest density display, it may look fantastic, but get a grip already. There will be another phone in another year that does it all better.
On my droid I can run SecondLife, Pandora, another radio station from anywhere, surf the web, and watch videos - all at the same time. All of these programs can take input or provide information at the same time. Nice try Apple.
I think you've hit on something important here and a reason why the iPhone does so well despite its obvious limitations: Average people don't care whether or not their phone can do all that at the same time because they would never use it like that. On the other hand, battery life is a concern shared by just about everyone. In other words, just about everybody nowadays is very aware of what the iPhone is and what it can and can't do, yet they still swamp Apple's servers on pre-release day. Given the popularity of their prior models alone, I take this to mean that multitasking on a phone isn't as important to most people as it apparently is to you.
This author takes full ownership and responsibility for the unpopular opinions outlined above.
First story about how it's not really retinal resolution was dumb. Then a rebuttal to it wasn't toally dumb, but that was enough. Now this. What next, a detailed analysis of what the word retinal means, or what the meaning of the word is is? Yeah, I know, skip the article if I'm not interested, but I figured I'm not the only one who finds this retinal-grazing a little extreme.
The article uses a benchmark of 1 arc minute at 1 foot which is 88 micrometers, but the pixels are taller than that (102 micrometers) even if they are only 78 micrometers wide.
Note, the 1 arc minute number he uses is still bogus because that number actually represents the resolution at which doctors think your vision "good enough" to not need further correction. It also is only measuring the reliable recognition of letters. The width at which lines completely blur into each other or at which aliasing artifacts are not noticeable is much smaller. Cf. vernier acuity which is only 0.13 arc minutes.
(Fun fact: In Knuth's original work on digital type setting he says he stopped somewhere around 300-600 DPI not because that was "good enough" but because of the limits of the printing process. Beyond that resolution the ink/toner starts to "stick into clumps". Steve Job's might have been more accurate to say that the screen has (almost) printer quality resolution.)
It's impressive, but it isn't super impressive. The Toshiba Portege G900 already had a screen at 313ppi, and Sony Erickson X1 is 312ppi.
What makes it newsworthy, is Jobs said (I paraphrase) "It's as good as the human eye can perceive." That's why he named it the "retina display".
A scientist with a Ph.D. came along and called bullshit, saying that the human retina can perceive pixels much higher.
The Ph.D. in this article respectfully disagreed, and said the previous scientist:
A.) Used the wrong figure for retinal resolution when he made his calculations (0.5 arcminutes instead of the 0.78 arcminutes established by a recent, authoritative study) and
B.) Failed to factor in losses in the optics of the human eye regarding how much light will actually hit the retina.
With A fixed and B factored in, the scientist concludes that the practical limit of the human retina (what it can distinguished given the amount of light that hits it) is 286ppi when held at 1 foot away from the eye (the ideal distance for viewing detail). The iPhone is well above this, at 326ppi, which means Jobs was right, and the name is apt.
It's worth noting that there are quite a few phones that beat the 286ppi limitation, but the iPhone has the highest.
Basically it looks like we don't need any higher resolution than what the iPhone and others have achieved, anything more would be pointless.
That, to me, is very impressive.
Security is mostly a superstition... Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. - Helen Keller
the iPhone is better than print. I can hit the center button and no one can tell I was looking at porn while at work/on the bus/etc. You do that with a copy of Juggs, Hustler or Nasty Asians
Non impediti ratione cogitationus.
...I'm glad that's resolved.
Actually, it seems a bit odd, given the facts presented, that the conclusion indicates the claim holds up. If the conclusion were "it pretty much holds up, far more than you could expect for marketing", I'd be on board... but I think a true purist would withhold the claim of "retinal" resolution for another generation or two, for a couple reasons:
1) Perhaps nitpicky, but this measurement assumes a viewing distance of 12" on the basis that the ability to resolve detail may be best at 12". However, at 6" the arc spacing of the pixels would be twice as large; whereas my ability to resolve detail at 6" may not be optimal, but probably isn't only half what it would be at 12". Now you can justify that away, I suppose, by arguing that nobody would try to use a touchscreen at a viewing distance of 6", but...
2) The threshold spacing TFA calculated is greater than the spacing of pixels along the short axis, but not along the long axis.
Or so the apple haters would have you believe...
2009 apple advertising was 1.37% of revenue or $500 million
Microsoft the same year: 2.4% of revenue or 1.4 billion
Dell: 1.3% and 811 million.
RIM: 2.4% and 337 million
Sounds to me like they are less of a "Marketing" company and more of a hardware company putting out better selling products...
It is also about the implementation of the technology. Technology in and of itself is useless. Creating new, even useful technology is certainly praiseworthy. Taking technology and deploying it in a useful manner is also praiseworthy.
Feature lists are for short-sighted nerds. Apple is successful because they try to keep the feature list shorter and not longer.
There would be no Android phone, as we know it now, without Apple, there may have been a phone, it would have looked just like the Blackberry and Windows Mobile crap that came before it. People who try to discount Apple's contribution to the smartphone industry or call it "marketing fluff", only show how utterly technology ignorant they truly are.
Apple completely transformed the smart-phone industry. There is a day when the look, feel, and function of smart phones all changed. That day was the day Apple announced the iPhone. You don't have to love Apple, or even be a fan. Writing off their success as marketing just makes you look ignorant.