Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

iPad 3 Confirmed To Have 2048x1536 Screen Resolution

Posted by timothy on from the small-package dept.

bonch writes "After months of reporting on photos of iPad 3 screen parts, MacRumors finally obtained one for themselves and examined it under a microscope, confirming that the new screens will have twice the linear resolution of the iPad 2, with a whopping 2048x1536 pixel density. Hints of the new display's resolution were found in iBooks 2, which contains hi-DPI versions of its artwork. The iPad 3 is rumored to be launching in early March."

99 of 537 comments (clear)

  1. 4:3 comes back! by Bobtree · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I'm looking forward to desktop displays getting increased resolution and 4:3 aspect ratios back some day. It's mildly ridiculous that we'll have the mobile device market to thank for it.

    1. Re:4:3 comes back! by qxcv · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Why is 4:3 such a useful aspect ratio? Just curious because I tend to prefer wide-screen monitors that I can flip on their sides or use in landscape orientation depending on what you're doing, and it seems to me that the monitor market is going that way. I'd have thought that square-ish monitors tend to be less comfortable given that humans have a greater horizontal than vertical field of vision (I feel a bit boxed in when using 4:3 CRTs, but that may just be the low resolution).

      --
      "The most dangerous enemy of a better solution is an existing codebase that is just good enough." -- Eric S. Raymond
    2. Re:4:3 comes back! by Shadow+of+Eternity · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Eleven years ago you could buy a 24" monitor that could do this resolution, and 21" monitors that did 1600x1200 were commonplace. Inch for inch a 4:3 monitor will have more usable space than an equivalent widescreen display, they got popular because companies figured out they were cheaper to make and gave more panels for a given investment. Marketing convinced people that instead of getting an inferior display with less usable space they were getting the Next Big Thing.

      I've been waiting for resolutions and refresh rates to catch up to what they were a decade ago ever since we made the switch to widescreen flatpanels.

      --
      A bullet may have your name on it but splash damage is addressed "To whom it may concern."
    3. Re:4:3 comes back! by symbolset · · Score: 2

      You can get a 4:3 Android tablet. I have one. I also have the Transformer with widescreen and prefer it. Buy what you want. Android is "fragmented" that way so you can choose.

      --
      Help stamp out iliturcy.
    4. Re:4:3 comes back! by Lumpy · · Score: 2, Interesting

      It's why I have not upgraded my 5 year old macbook pro. You cant get a 1920X1200 laptop screen anymore. WTF is that.

      --
      Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
    5. Re:4:3 comes back! by Bobtree · · Score: 4, Insightful

      > Why is 4:3 such a useful aspect ratio?

      I don't know, but I agree with the question's implied premise (4:3's high utility).

      It's a good question and I wish I knew the answer to it. I couldn't find any historical reference as to why 4:3 was originally chosen for televisions (the details behind the NTSC format are brilliant, but that's a separate topic). I don't feel anything like "boxed in" when computing on a 21" 1600x1200 CRT, and I don't want to give up vertical resolution for a widescreen of the same size. Lets speculate.

      The closer the ratio is to square, the more usable area you have for the size of the device. If wider screens were better, why wouldn't we keep making them wider, why not 3:1 or 4:1 or 5:1 ratios? Maybe 3:4 is just a sweet spot for compromise between high area and our forward facing binocular vision. It's a mistake to even call them wider than conventional displays, as aspect ratio is independent of physical size. Have laptops really gotten wider, or have they gotten shorter? I think wider ratios are actually mis-marketed short-screens, with their prevalence reflecting cost (smaller area) in pushing HDTV sales, and not quality.

      I know newspapers print in short columns for readability, as its easier to keep your place with short lines than with very wide ones, and computer screens were dominated by text long before graphics. Books too are mainly tall rather than wide ratios. Wider aspects are preferred for landscapes and juxtapositions of people in films, but whatever we gain in video game FOV we're losing in visible detail under our feet (and performance is lost to render peripheral objects you barely see, at increasingly skewed projection angles, versus more sky and ground in a taller ratio, which are virtually free performance-wise).

      The bottom line is always useability. Do you really want to squeeze every vertical pixel out of an interface (browsers for instance), to deal with displays that are just too short? I sure don't, and I don't care to move a physical setup around when resizing display elements is sufficient. It may even just be tribalism or convention, but I know I like it. Long live 4:3!

    6. Re:4:3 comes back! by macshit · · Score: 4, Interesting

      > Why is 4:3 such a useful aspect ratio?

      I don't know, but I agree with the question's implied premise (4:3's high utility).

      It's a good question and I wish I knew the answer to it. I couldn't find any historical reference as to why 4:3 was originally chosen for televisions (the details behind the NTSC format are brilliant, but that's a separate topic).

      I suspect it was less because it was "optimal", and more because it was an acceptable compromise between a desirable aspect ratio and technical limitations. Remember, back then, when they were using primitive CRTs, the closer to a perfect circle, the easier it was to manufacture, and most efficient rectangular shape was a square. But humans with their two eyes generally want something wider than it is tall (note movie aspect ratios, which were less constrained by technology). A 4:3 aspect ratio provides something which is close enough to a square to efficiently use the technology of the time, but wide enough to provide a somewhat comfortable shape for viewing.

      With non-CRT tech, and modern manufacturing technique, there's a lot more freedom to choose a shape which is good for viewing, so it makes sense there's a lot of experimentation with aspect ratios these days.

      Personally I love the "medium-wide" aspect ratios like 16:10 for my main hacking monitor; 4:3 feels constraining. Note that I tend to have multiple windows open (multiple editor windows, an editor and some terminal windows, etc) at the same time, and side-by-side windows are vastly preferable to vertically adjacent windows when the windows are tall (typically true of editor windows). A wide aspect ratio fits this usage pretty well. People whose main mode is the MS-style "one-app-window-always-maximized" may have different preferences.

      In the case of the ipad, of course, the main style does seem to be "one app visible", and they strongly want a shape which is viable when used either vertically or horizontally. Given those factors, 4:3 does seem a reasonable choice.

      --
      We live, as we dream -- alone....
    7. Re:4:3 comes back! by shutdown+-p+now · · Score: 2

      I love my Transformer, but I have to admit that 3:4 makes more sense for tablets. Reason being, this is the kind of device that is used a lot in portrait mode - because it's easier to hold in one hand that way, and also because scrolling is more tedious than with a scroll wheel and so you want to scroll less. But portrait requires the screen to also be sufficiently wide to fit most contents conveniently. All in all, comparing iPad vs Transformer in portrait, I definitely find the former easier to read. I think Google semi-gets it, too, since Honeycomb tablets are clearly designed to be used with landscape being the default orientation (judging by camera and hardware button locations).

    8. Re:4:3 comes back! by shobadobs · · Score: 3, Informative

      The 17" MacBook Pro has a 1920x1200 screen. Is yours a 15" model?

      The only 1920x1200 in a 15.x" screen that I know of that's available on new laptops is on the Panasonic Toughbook CF-52.

    9. Re:4:3 comes back! by tlhIngan · · Score: 5, Informative

      Eleven years ago you could buy a 24" monitor that could do this resolution, and 21" monitors that did 1600x1200 were commonplace. Inch for inch a 4:3 monitor will have more usable space than an equivalent widescreen display, they got popular because companies figured out they were cheaper to make and gave more panels for a given investment.

      I hated CRT monitors - they always got blurry when you ran them at super-high resolutions. Of course, I never bought the $2000 high end ones... (and having to run at 85Hz meant the monitor really only did 800x600).

      The real reason cheap screens are 720p or 1080p is because the processing electronics is trivially cheap. It's basically the same as a regular HDTV. And that gives you a VGA and DVI/HDMI input "for free". To do 1920x1200 requires a different video processing chip for the monitor, which costs a lot more money because of the limited market (one reason why a 24" 1080p is available for under $200, while a 24" 1920x1200 is $500+).

      Apple can do this because they're making these things by the millions, so they can buy in such huge quantities that high res stuff is cheap for them.

    10. Re:4:3 comes back! by symbolset · · Score: 2

      Way back in 1984 the first professional word processing station with a CRT I used was a CPT with 16:9 aspect ratio. It was the perfect aspect ratio for WYSYWIG documents on legal paper, so of course it could do regular letter paper too. The thing printed on daisy wheel, and you had to tell it which wheel each document was on. I recall the display being crisper and more accurate than the 24" Samsungs I use today, but that was a long time ago and my vision has faded and my recall sharpened beyond credibility since. The response was so instant it almost anticipated the key, the keyboard so excellent I've found none better before or since, and I've tried thousands. The only reason I have almost as good a keyboard today is that I ordered it from the successor to Unicomp who made the original PC keyboard with buckling springs. In the 28 years since there have been a few marginal improvements in spell-checking and grammar checking - and of course you can embed graphics and videos now, not that many of us ever do. Mail merge and forms hasn't gotten any better in 28 years. Footnotes haven't fared as well.

      I configure servers with 12-80 cores each operating thousands of times as fast as that processor with terabytes (billions of kilobytes) of RAM now, in clusters of dozens to hundreds because just one of those isn't fast enough, with access to billions of times as much storage as the discs we used then.

      And in all this time and technological progress the user experience has gotten worse. It's less responsive to input. At least back then I could make the document be what I wanted it to be.

      Even as a programming professional it's difficult to even imagine how they managed to accomplish that with a single processor in the <8 MHz range and individual kilobytes of RAM. They must have been trying a hell of a lot harder than the modern folk are to make the most of what they were given.

      Back then I didn't care because the dedicated word processor was a dead end, I would type for money and access but a typist wasn't what I wanted to be, and the exciting thing was the S100-bus Unix SVR-III systems with the 25" X-Windows "terminals" that could dynamically display graphically apps driven by multiple remote machines. I did get to play with them too. Now, after a quarter century, we're coming back to that again and calling the "terminals" "clients" and the servers "clouds".

      Bah!

      --
      Help stamp out iliturcy.
  2. Re:Nice. by Tablizer · · Score: 4, Insightful

    My eyesight is too crappy to take advantage of that. I don't think I would personally pay extra for that resolution.

    --
    Table-ized A.I.
  3. Confirmed by who? by mkraft · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Apple sure as hell didn't confirm anything. So basically we have someone who looked at a screen, that may or may not be for the iPad 3, under a microscope and "counted the pixels".

    Again Slashdot titles are redefining words in the English language.

    1. Re:Confirmed by who? by artor3 · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Counting the pixels is a pretty good way to figure out how many there are. How else would you do it? The only matter in question is whether or not the screen they were looking at is actually going to be in the iPad 3. That seems likely to be the case, unless this is just some prototype screen that isn't going to go into any device.

  4. Finally some screen advancements? by Jmanamj · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Before the flames rise and Slashdot begins to slash the dots, I'd like to thank Apple for helping break the "HD = 1950x1080" fixation the market has. Hopefully monitor tech will get some advances soon.

    1. Re:Finally some screen advancements? by Eponymous+Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      I think operating systems have some work to do as well. Higher DPI often just means smaller widgets. Hopefully this makes its way to laptops soon.

    2. Re:Finally some screen advancements? by martin-boundary · · Score: 4, Funny

      I'd like to thank Apple for helping break the "HD = 1950x1080" fixation

      You big meanie! For every extra pixel over 2106000, a young Chinese worker cries himself to sleep every night.

    3. Re:Finally some screen advancements? by jo_ham · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Look at the screen on an iPhone 3GS and an iPhone 4/4S and you'll see why - at that very high ppi, it's virtually impossible to distinguish the individual pixels by eye and you end up with a screen that can display text as if it's printed on paper.

      It really does look outstanding. It really shines when reading text especially.

    4. Re:Finally some screen advancements? by Jmanamj · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Well the main purely practical use I see on a tablet PC is crisp clear text for reading. One might also use a tablet like this with technical documents, diagrams, maps. It's also aesthetically pleasing to have everything displayed with seamless clarity.

      But what I'm praising is the effort to make better screens in general. A move to high resolution screens on tablets means the infrastructure gets a boost for better screens in laptops and desktops and various other displays. Have you used a 16" laptop with 1080p? Even that is great, but also rare. I got my sister one for graduation, and there weren't many to choose from. I want to see the DPI of this tablet on a 22" monitor for my desktop, and I'd like a decent selection of laptops with high DPI screens.

    5. Re:Finally some screen advancements? by MobileTatsu-NJG · · Score: 3

      Why is such a high resolution needed on a 10 inch screen?

      If you're really curious, here's an experiment you can try:

      -Borrow a buddy's iPhone 3G.
      -Read an article on Slasdhot.
      -Borrow another buddy's iPhone 4.
      -Read same article on Slashdot.
      -Go back to the 3G and try again, notice the pain yo ufeel.

      --

      "I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)

    6. Re:Finally some screen advancements? by symbolset · · Score: 3, Informative

      It has to do with the properties of your eye. At the normal viewing range an average human should not be able to discern pixels. With perfect color also you should not be able to tell the difference between a real thing (through glass) and its displayed photo except for the final and most difficult dimension of vision to overcome: parallax binocular depth.

      But I digress. The apex of useful resolution is achieved when you can't see pixels any more. Any improvement after that is wasted effort. Eyes are pretty good on most folks, but this resolution on this display should just about do it.

      --
      Help stamp out iliturcy.
    7. Re:Finally some screen advancements? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

      Windows has supported changing the DPI (so widgets use more pixels) since Windows 3.1. Talk to the application developers.

    8. Re:Finally some screen advancements? by RobbieThe1st · · Score: 2

      Yes. And it actually makes subpixel-rendering look sharp instead of blurry and blocky as on a typical 100dpi screen.
      In fact, on 200+ dpi screens, subpixel-rendering looks better than the hinted "sharp" aliased fonts XP has... on 100dpi or less, those still look the best, though.

    9. Re:Finally some screen advancements? by Jeremi · · Score: 4, Funny

      You big meanie! For every extra pixel over 2106000, a young Chinese worker cries himself to sleep every night.

      Nonsense. Chinese workers aren't allowed to sleep at night, that's when they work their third 10-hour shift.

      --


      I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
    10. Re:Finally some screen advancements? by shutdown+-p+now · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Why is such a high resolution needed on a 10 inch screen?

      Because it's exactly 2x of the resolution on iPad 2, and iOS APIs do not have any good provisions for flexible, dynamic UI that can scale with resolution. This means that, when it comes to running apps made for past devices, Apple has to linearly upscale them, bitmaps and all. And bitmaps look very bad if you don't upscale them by a nice integer factor, like 2x.

      It's the same exact story as iPhone 4. I bet Apple would have used 480x800, same as everyone else, if they could. But they couldn't, so they had to special-order screens to match their requirements, and came up with "retina" gimmick to explain it away. Same thing here - something like 1920x1200 would be plenty much for a 10" tablet, but it just doesn't work for them, so they have to push it higher - and you can bet they'll spin up some marketing story to justify it.

    11. Re:Finally some screen advancements? by Lord_Jeremy · · Score: 5, Informative

      Are you kidding me? I'm voiding a couple mods I made but I just had to respond to this... utterly false statement. Have you ever done any iOS development at all? How about any Mac OS X development? Have you ever seen the Xcode developer tools? How about the Interface Builder component of Xcode? I've got a hunch that you haven't so I'm going to describe what it's like.

      Interface builder is a WYSIWIG UI layout tool that generates XML files defining an application's interface to be loaded at runtime. Just about every app written for iOS has at least one of these interface files. The programmer uses Interface Building by dragging and dropping UI elements onto a sample device screen. You can resize and remask any element, as well as define new object templates with different appearance and behaviors. UIView objects, the base type of any interface element in the API, can be tweaked in an uncountable number of ways, as well as nested in other UIViews. The UI elements are linked to an Objective-C class that they are considered members of through a graphical relationship view.

      Merely playing around with Interface Building for ten minutes will show you just how well iOS handles graphical scaling. Every piece of the UI kit is vector graphics and runtime rendering. Your uninformed conjecture has no basis in fact. Slashdot really needs a -1 wrong mod.

    12. Re:Finally some screen advancements? by AmiMoJo · · Score: 2

      The vector stuff scales, but a lot of iOS apps use bitmaps for their UIs. Any app that contains images almost certainly stores them as bitmaps at a specific resolution. In fact that is the origin of this claim - iBook started supporting higher resolution bitmaps for just such a display. Even apps that mostly use vector UI elements often use bitmaps for extra decoration like icons in lists and so forth. Of course there are also lots of apps that are entirely based on bitmaps too, such as games and novelty apps. Even 3D games use 2D bitmaps for the score/lives/controls overlay.

      On Android the bitmaps are either smaller on screen or scaled up to match your resolution, which can sometimes mean they look a bit naff when the pixel or aspect ratio is not some whole number. It is a failure of app developers really, but Apple chose to make their lives easier by fixing the resolution, and to be fair it worked quite well. It just means they are stuck with resolutions that are an exact multiple of the original iPhone one forever now, or at least until they get high enough that fractional scaling looks good.

      And if you think iOS apps can all scale perfectly then why is there no way to simple "zoom" any app window at will? It's because the non-vector elements would look terrible.

      --
      const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
      SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
  5. hmm by buddyglass · · Score: 2, Interesting

    If they could get away with it, seems like 1920x1080 would be ideal. That's a lot longer/skinner (or shorter/wider) than 2048x1536, but still an incremental improvement over the iPad2 resolution.

    1. Re:hmm by BasilBrush · · Score: 5, Informative

      Apple will only multiply the resolution by two. Anything less compromises the quality of artwork on existing apps.

    2. Re:hmm by rolfwind · · Score: 2

      I wish Apple went to some type of vectoring system instead of these primitive bitmap shit.

  6. Re:Nice. by cshark · · Score: 5, Funny

    Well yes, but I have better than perfect vision, and could really appreciate it. Besides, I've been wanting to get one download pointless noise making apps for months now. How did we ever live without pointless noise making apps? It's beyond me. Even now, my lack of pointless noise making apps is tearing at my soul. My android tablet has a few pointless noise making apps, but those are all free, and it's just not the same unless I'm wasting money on them.

    --

    This signature has Super Cow Powers

  7. Re:Nice. by Eponymous+Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    I suppose you also have rejected laser printers in favor of good ol' dot matrix. Am I right?

  8. Re:whoa by MobileTatsu-NJG · · Score: 4, Informative

    Nobody with a smartphone using a 200+dpi display would agree with you.

    --

    "I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)

  9. Re:DPI comparison? by MobileTatsu-NJG · · Score: 2, Informative

    I'm not sure how you did your math, but I think 234 is the number you're looking for.

    --

    "I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)

  10. Re:whoa by readandburn · · Score: 2

    2048x1536? My 21" monitor isn't even that high resolution and I can barely see the pixels. You're trying to tell me a 10" ipad is going to have higher resolution than my 21" monitor? Seems like a waste, especially on an iPad.

    "640x480 is more resolution than anyone will ever need." - amoeba1911

  11. Re:Nice. by EdIII · · Score: 4, Informative

    It looks really nice, but I just can't bring myself to drink the Koolaid and walk into the walled garden. I like a little more freedom in my devices.

    Now if you could jail brake it and install Android 4.0 I might consider it for the specs. I have to hand to Apple, they do look damn good.

  12. Re:Nice. by cshark · · Score: 2

    I don't know about special glasses, but I took this class on hypnosis once...

    --

    This signature has Super Cow Powers

  13. Unfortunately by Frogbert · · Score: 3, Funny

    Unfortunately users at my company will still find a way to run them at 800x600

    1. Re:Unfortunately by JDG1980 · · Score: 5, Informative

      Unfortunately users at my company will still find a way to run them at 800x600

      You laugh, but this is actually a serious reason why we don't have high-DPI displays on the mainstream desktop.

      Not everyone has perfect 20/20 vision, or the same tolerance for small print. Many users already have problems reading text on existing displays when set to the default of 96 DPI. Unfortunately, the art of DPI scaling on mainstream OSes is still stuck in the dark ages. There are a LOT of poorly-written applications that assume 96 DPI and display badly broken output if anything else is set. Windows 7 is better than XP in its DPI scaling, but even so, it's far from perfect. Windows doesn't even support vector icons! The best you can do is to create a high-quality raster icon at 256x256 and hope it looks OK when downscaled.

      This is why so many users run a LCD monitor at less than the recommended resolution. The slight blurriness is better for them than crystal-clear text too small to read, or various graphical nastiness from broken DPI scaling. Just today, in fact, I dealt with such a situation at work. One of our librarians said that some icons in the library management software were appearing all-black. I'd seen this issue before and knew it was due to the software not supporting 120 DPI, which this librarian had set for easier reading. I tried a few different things to see if I could get it to work – I set the "Disable display scaling" option in Compatibility properties, and also tried XP-style DPI scaling as well as the native Windows 7-style scaling. None of this worked. Ultimately, the only fix was to switch back to 96 DPI and run the monitor at a non-native resolution.

      As long as this situation continues, monitor makers see no advantage in higher resolutions than 1080p, since so many users will just sacrifice that resolution for readability anyway.

    2. Re:Unfortunately by shutdown+-p+now · · Score: 3, Informative

      I'd seen this issue before and knew it was due to the software not supporting 120 DPI, which this librarian had set for easier reading. I tried a few different things to see if I could get it to work – I set the "Disable display scaling" option in Compatibility properties, and also tried XP-style DPI scaling as well as the native Windows 7-style scaling.

      What you should do is, find the developer of that app, and punch them in the face. Let me explain why.

      Windows could do "DPI scaling" for ages - I think it was there in Win95 already? definitely before XP, anyway. But, the way it did it, it was really just a global setting that all apps could read. Some Windows APIs respected it also - e.g. CreateDialog and friends, where you had to specify sizes of widgets in "dialog units", and said units would change according to DPI. VB6 also measured everything in "twips" rather than pixels, also DPI-aware. But many other APIs, even stock Win32 ones, dealt in physical pixels; and so did most apps in practice. At best you'd get correct scaling for stock Windows dialogs and Office...

      That was the way it all worked up until Vista. In Vista, the status quo was found to be too broken to maintain, and they've decided to break things a bit so that the defaults would be more palatable. So they've introduced a concept of DPI-aware app - meaning that its author would have to make an explicit API call to tell the OS that, yes, he knows what DPI is, and, yes, he can do proper vector scaling where possible.

      Obviously, none of the existing apps did that API call, in which case the OS assumed that they do not know how to properly render themselves at DPI other than default, and performed bitmap scaling on their top-level windows after they were rendered. The result is far from perfect, of course, since what you get are huge ugly upscaled pixels. But at least it was consistently ugly, and it actually made things bigger - which is kinda important for people with bad sight. The assumption was that, for unmaintained legacy apps, it's "good enough", and for maintained ones the authors would get complaints from their users, finally figure out the whole DPI thing, fix their apps, and opt out of bitmap scaling via the aforementioned API call.

      Also, when you enable "XP-style DPI scaling", you're basically just disabling bitmap scaling and preventing the OS from lying to the app to pretend that DPI is always at 96 - so even if app did not declare itself as DPI-aware, it would still see the real value and try to handle it the best it can. It's mainly there for old apps that were never updated for Vista, but which were written correctly to begin with.

      For the most part, the scheme works - as you note yourself, Win7 is much better than XP in that regard. Unfortunately, there's still no shortage of idiots who call SetProcessDPIAware (or set the equivalent in their app manifest) without actually them being aware of what it means, and what their obligations are when they do it. From your description, it sounds like you've run into one of those cases.

      Now, since all this stuff that I've explained above is clearly spelled out in MSDN, and since DPI-aware is not the default setting even for new apps - you have to actually know how to enable it, which implies that you've read at least the summary of what the setting does on MSDN. So clearly, for any developers who did so and still managed to go away without understanding what they do, the only recourse is a face punch - since any attempt to gently educate was lost on them already.

  14. Not surprising at all .. by perpenso · · Score: 2

    This is not surprising at all. Most iOS developers expected no change in screen resolution until 2x was possible. The repositioning of screen widgets and the scaling of bitmap images works better with whole number multiples. If 2x is the multiple then the iPad 3 could automatically recycle the 2x bitmap images found in iPhone 4 aware apps.

  15. Re:DPI comparison? by MobileTatsu-NJG · · Score: 4, Informative

    The DPI measurement is only a measure of width, not a measure of area. You don't quadruple the count when measuring that.

    Take a look, you won't find anybody calling the iPad3 500+ dpi. It has a LOWER DPI than the iPhone 4.

    --

    "I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)

  16. Re:DPI comparison? by mapinguari · · Score: 2

    I'm not sure how you did your math, but I think 264 is the number you're looking for.

  17. Re:Give it a month by scottbomb · · Score: 2, Insightful

    And Apple will sue them for it.

  18. Can this be hacked for digital cinema? by wisebabo · · Score: 4, Interesting

    So the most commonly used format for digital cinema is 2048x1080 (4K is not widely used, yet). Notice that it is just a little bit wider than 1080p (128 pixels). So either cinematographers have had to scale down the outputs from their digital cameras/post production workstations to use "standard" HD displays (and suffer scaling artifacts), throw away the pixels on the side, or use very expensive professional equipment.

    Could the iPad 3 display be used instead? If the iPad 3 has thunderbolt (now THAT would be interesting), could it be used as a (very) portable display?

    I am such an Apple Fanboi you wouldn't believe but if Samsung came out with a tablet that, at the flip of a switch, coud be used as a portable, digital cinema ready display, I would buy it so fast it would make Steve Jobs spin. (hope that wasn't too morbid or disrespectful).

  19. Re:Nice. by Darinbob · · Score: 5, Insightful

    If only you could get a desktop monitor at that resolution and price.

  20. Re:whoa by nomel · · Score: 3, Interesting

    You've obviously never played angry birds or plants vs zombies.

    I think the pretty and usefulness will be in the proper aliased text presentation. The desktop monitor I'm looking at has only a few useful font sizes for the capital letter "I", ether one pixel wide, two pixels wide, or three pixels wide...anything between is blurry. I would absolutely love to see a true type font that didn't look blurry and didn't require some barely tolerable sub-pixel tricks.

  21. Re:DPI comparison? by perpenso · · Score: 4, Informative

    You're going to need to show your work on that one... It looks like you tried to just double the 132, and accidentally came to 234 instead of 264. You're wrong regardless, since the resolution is doubling in both the X and the Y dimensions, meaning that the total pixels per inch should be quadrupled. 4 x 132 = 528.

    Pixels per inch is a one dimension unit. 2 x 132 = 264 is correct. 264 ppi along X and 264 ppi along Y.

  22. Re:Give it a month by NoobixCube · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Do yourself a favour, and play with a Transformer or Transformer Prime at your local electronics store, compare the price tags, and then tell me others are struggling to compete on price for something "tolerable". True, Motorola haven't put out a good device that's lasted more than six months since the original Razr, Toshiba really cheaped out on screen quality, and Samsung aren't doing enough to really be different in appearance or utility (not in that they're copying but that there's no reason to get a Galaxy Tab compared to any other tablet), but Asus are easily wiping the floor with Apple in the tablet market right now.

    --
    Admit it. You post strawman arguments as AC so you get modded Insightful for refuting them, rather than Troll
  23. Ummmm by Sycraft-fu · · Score: 5, Insightful

    There have long been higher res displays. However there's some serious limits to their usefulness, which is why they aren't widespread.

    One big one is that until recently OSes didn't have good resolution independence, and still to this day many apps don't. Windows Vista got top notch resolution scaling but if apps don't support it they can break badly, or just fail to scale.

    Another is video memory. More pixels = more VRAM particularly when you talk 3D. Now this is not a big deal, we have lots, but wasn't long ago that 256MB was considered "high end" and 64MB was common for cheaper stuff.

    Along those lines there is GPU power. If you are just fiddling with 2D stuff this isn't a big deal but if you are pushing 3D, more pixels means more strain. Double the rez in each direction you need 4 times the ROPs to get the same framerate at a given detail level.

    Then there's interface bandwidth. Gets to be a bit of a trick to push lots of data through inexpensive connectors. Dual link DVI was the only way to go, and that capped out at not all that high of a rez. DP 1.2 and HDMI 1.4 solve this, but are quite new.

    Of course then to all that there is the cost. Pixels mean transistors and more transistors mean more cost. You can't just increase pixel density and expect pricing to be the same.

    So it is a situation that only now are all the pieces falling in to place. Only once you have an OS (and apps) that support it, a readily available interface that can push the data, a GPU that can produce the data and has the memory to hold it and costs are low enough to make it economically feasible does it make sense to start pushing it on a larger scale.

    However for all that, if you want higher rez displays you can have them. There are 2.5k 27" and 30" displays that aren't too bad price wise. You can have 4k displays too, but they are extremely expensive.

    1. Re:Ummmm by Vegemeister · · Score: 2

      GPU power becomes less of a problem at extremely high resolutions. Upscaling actaully looks decent if if the output resolution is an integer ratio of the input resolution, or several times greater. Back in the CRT days it was standard practice to adjust your video resolution to the highest value that gave acceptable 3D performance.

  24. Re:Give it a month by jo_ham · · Score: 3, Interesting

    "Wiping the floor" is a bit of a bold statement - while the Transformer (which is very nice) is $100 cheaper than an iPad, it's hardly wiping the floor - it's not even making a dent, and will now be playing catchup to the new one.

    Asus certainly had the right idea - everyone else with their more expensive-than-iPad tablets were never going to get anywhere, but even with a $100 price difference, they're not setting the world on fire.

  25. Futurama reference by Patron · · Score: 5, Funny

    - "Hey, John. Stop playing around with your tablet and get out in the real world."
    - "But moooom, this is the iPad 3!, it has BETTER resolution than the real world!"

  26. Re:Nice. by Kell+Bengal · · Score: 5, Funny

    I tried to jail brake my phone once, but it slowed it right down.

    --
    Scientists point out problems, engineers fix them
    altslashdot.org: The future of slashdot.
  27. Are you SERIOUS?! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    "Asus are easily wiping the floor with Apple in the tablet market right now."

    The iPad is so popular that it's outselling desktop PCs. Apple is #1 in the tablet market, with the only competitor even remotely in sight being the Kindle Fire due to price. Do people like you actually believe that Asus is beating Apple in the tablet market? For god's sake, the Transformer doesn't even run Android 4.0.

    You're an Android shill. Plain and simple.

  28. Re:After the service I got on the ipad1 to ios5 by AresTheImpaler · · Score: 4, Insightful
    I use my ipad 1 everyday. I updated it to iOS 5 the day it was out. Your personal experience does not mean everyone has the same experience.

    I'm not sure why your post was modded insightful either. If all ipad 1 were having problems and this was all over the net, then I could see how something like "apple cripples their old products, so screw them" would be a good argument against the evil company. A personal experience + a nonexistent widespread problem is not.

  29. Re:Nice. by History's+Coming+To · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Well if you're not prepared to buy a microscope so you can appreciate it then it's your loss, sucker!

    --
    Please consider this account deleted, I just can't be bothered with the spam anymore.
  30. Why would you not just get a monitor? by Sycraft-fu · · Score: 4, Informative

    There are a number of 27" and 30" displays that are 2.5k. The NEC PA271W and PA301W, the HP ZR2740w and ZR30w, the Dell U2711 and U3011, the DoubleSight DS- 277W and DS- 307W and so on.

    They are 2560x1440 for the 27s, 2560x1600 for the 30s.

    It isn't hard to find for regular old computers. However I imagine anyone shooting in the digital cinema 2k format is probably not concerned about having to get pro gear because they already have it. You have to step up to some pretty expensive cameras before you start talking that. Everything even remotely prosumer is 1920x1080 max since that is what you are targeting for home, of course. If you have to get expensive cameras, an expensive display isn't likely to be a show stopper.

    However as I said, plenty of computer displays that do 2k (and more) no problem.

  31. Re:PrtSc by AresTheImpaler · · Score: 4, Informative
    But Apple fans should find a way to say that having that DPI is better.

    I believe there are a few android devices that have their DPI very close to the iphone 4/4s. I'm pretty sure there's at least one that is higher. Anyway, there is a reason why having a higher DPI is better. It makes everything A LOT clearer. Text becomes much easier to read. This picture compares the iPhone 3GS and an iPhone 4. If you can't see the difference or why one is better, then you should check your eyesight.

  32. Re:Nice. by CheerfulMacFanboy · · Score: 4, Funny

    My android tablet has a few pointless noise making apps, but those are all free, and it's just not the same unless I'm wasting money on them.

    What an obvious Apple shill you are - https://market.android.com/search?q=fart&c=apps says there are at least a 1000 fart apps on the Android Market alone, and on the first page there are already 3 paid apps.

    --
    Fandroids hate facts.
  33. desktop resolution by e**(i+pi)-1 · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I still wait for a reasonably prized desktop monitor with resolution beyond 1920x1080 (2560 x 1440 rwould be nice) et's hope that this changes now when tablets will have 50 percent more pixels than standard desktop monitors.

  34. Wonderful by koan · · Score: 2

    Such a beautiful high resolution screen, covered with greasy finger prints and glare.

    --
    "If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
  35. so the last one by nimbius · · Score: 2, Interesting

    came out march 2011, and the one before that in 2010 about the same time give or take a month.

    As a slashdotter whos never used a "tablet computer" I sincerely want to ask mac users, why do you keep buying these? if you select the average ipad its
    six-hundred dollars and has a one-time battery that cannot be replaced (or not that apple is willing to inform on their website.)
    you will have sunk by this march about $1800 into an appliance that is guaranteed manufactured-obsolete in one year.
    You dont do this with cars, televisions, stereos, homes, desktops, laptops, clothes (presumably they last longer than a year)
    or any other major consumer purchase, so why do it with tablet computers?

    --
    Good people go to bed earlier.
    1. Re:so the last one by WiiVault · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Hmm perhaps its because (most) people don't upgrade to a new model everytime it comes out. Do you know that cars usually come out every year too? What about GPUs and CPUs? Heck those come out all the time! By your logic everybody must upgrade those annually as well to avoid being "obsolete". Not to mention iPads like most devices are usually supported well past their discontinuation date. I must hope you've been drinking this weekend say something so bizarre.

  36. Re:Nice. by Eponymous+Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I believe it's the same people who insist on keeping their source code under 80 characters wide.

  37. Re:Nice. by Lyrata · · Score: 2

    Are you a sailor, by chance?

    --
    50,000 characters used to live here.
  38. Widescreen is horrible for real work, too short by SuperKendall · · Score: 2

    I have a Macbook Pro 17" with a 1900x1200 display.

    Due to being a cheap bastard, I also have a pretty cheap external standard 1080p widescreen monitor...

    Although I can use it, I really do not like the widescreen monitor for any real work. Yes you can fit more side by side but the screen is just too short and you end up scrolling a lot, regardless of what the work is - coding, photography, writing books, reading books, it's just too short. Think about it, that's only 1024 pixels - hardly higher than an iPad (well an old iPad)!

    A widescreen monitor also cannot, as an aside fit a whole iPad simulator in it at a 1:1 scale do the aforementioned fact it's basically the same size as the screen..

    I am mulling over the 4:3 monitors choices I can find and will replace it eventually...

    --
    "There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
  39. Re:Give it a month by microbee · · Score: 4, Funny

    Is Asus wiping the floor because it's collecting dusts?

  40. They do support that also by SuperKendall · · Score: 2, Informative

    No reason not to use a vector-based PDF for graphics in iOS if you wish.

    But sometimes you know, it's just nice to get every pixel exactly right - especially when you are talking about the very smallest sizes of something complex.

    --
    "There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
  41. Re:Nice. by Hadlock · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I test out betas of people's android software on my phone all the time. I didn't have to sign up for a silly developer account. I just went in to the settings and checked the box that said "run unsigned code" and it just worked. Good times.

    --
    moox. for a new generation.
  42. Answers by SuperKendall · · Score: 2

    if you select the average ipad its
    six-hundred dollars and has a one-time battery that cannot be replaced (or not that apple is willing to inform on their website.)

    The basic models are $500. They are perfectly usable, it's only if you used them heavily you would really need more than the base storage (especially now that you could simply load some apps on demand and delete them when finished, and play most music off iCloud).

    The battery can be replaced by Apple, I think a $99 fee. However the first iPad I bought has not needed a battery change yet.

    Also the first iPad is perfectly usable, there is no "mandatory upgrade" when Apple releases a new iPad. The same is true of an iPad 2, those who bought them could continue using them happily for many years.

    Part of what I think drives some of the upgrade is that people want to give away the older model to other family members so they will also have an iPad. Then, there are families who decide they would rather have an iPad each so they can better customize what is on the device.

    But basically the biggest flaw is your assumption that most people upgrade year to year. They do not, Apple is mostly seeing new sales... and they are going to sell a LOT this year.

    --
    "There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
  43. Re:Nice. by LordLimecat · · Score: 5, Funny

    Man I miss trinitron tablets, they were so cool.

  44. Citation by whisper_jeff · · Score: 3, Informative

    Confirmed? Really? AWESOME!! Uh, just because I want to see, could someone post a link to Apple's announcement confirming it?

    Yeah.

    Confirmed. I think you're using that word without knowing what it means...

  45. Re:Nice. by sgunhouse · · Score: 2

    I once saw (in the local office superstore) a palmtop with a 2048x768 resolution. Yeah, the screen might have been about 3 in.x 8 in. if you were lucky, that works out to 256 dpi or more. At the time I thought it was one of the dumbest things I'd ever seen.

    Okay, it could be nice to not be able to see the dots in high resolution photos. On the other hand, I wouldn't want to have to pay for downloading all those high resolution photos on most data plans. And if you're just upscaling low resolution, what's the point?

    I have a Casio CG-10 graphing calculator which has a 320x240 resolution display, and several other graphing calculators with the standard 160x120 display (varies slightly, but all pretty close to that). Graphs on the CG-10 are much nicer since it is harder to see them as a bunch of dots ... so I'm not going to say the same idea on a tablet is stupid. I'm just not sure who can afford a data plan suitable for that resolution (if such a plan exists).

  46. Re:Nice. by PopeRatzo · · Score: 5, Funny

    [android.com] says there are at least a 1000 fart apps on the Android Market alone, and on the first page there are already 3 paid apps.

    Ah, so you admit that Android was the first with fart apps and Apple copied them!

    It's the Xerox PARC story all over again, except wetter.

    --
    You are welcome on my lawn.
  47. Re:Nice. by EdIII · · Score: 2

    Spell check and sarcastic Spelling Nazis :)

    Good times.

  48. Re:Nice. by EdIII · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Freedom to do what exactly?

    Have actual ownership of my device that I paid for? Sounds crazy I know....

    Have actually written anything for linux let alone Android? When I say "write", I'm not talking about downloading the source from some project SVN repo and doing a compile but rather writing something yourself.

    All the time. It's my day job. Have not released anything as an open source project, but I am modest and most of my work is "work for hire" so I don't have that option. I have also modified quite a few open source projects to tweak it, or fix a bug that I did not feel like waiting for the developers to get around to taking care of.

    I have not yet written anything for the Android platform specifically. Quite frankly I don't have as much time as I would like for personal projects.

    You can also write something yourself with a mac and and a developer account. The advantage with iOS is that you actually have a chance to earn back your money and possibly make a decent living without selling your soul to advertisers.

    With Apple I only have one choice. Apple. If I want their hardware I must accept their terms, drink the Koolaid, enter the walled garden, and become one the Shiny Happy People.

    Blackberry is not an alternative anymore. Sad, the Playbook was pretty decent hardware and looked great. That platform is dead.

    WebOS is on its death bed with constant rumors of it resurfacing in another company like a cancelled sitcom on another channel.

    Android at least has more than one manufacturer. All it takes is one to offer a device that is, more or less, trivial to root. Android will allow me to not be part of a walled garden and I can do what ever I want. That includes be stupid and get malware installed, but at least I get to have actual ownership and responsibility over my device.

    I don't pull punches about Apple. Their corporate culture and ideology is abhorrent. However, I will give respect where respect is due. They make some damn fine hardware that looks good. I really do want an iPad 3. Just not the walled garden.

    Although I could jail break (I spelled it right this time Kell!) Apple hardware, I would still need to pay for it. The looks and the specs on the iPad 3 make it damn tempting to do so.

  49. Great Sense by funnyandspicy · · Score: 2

    ‘iOS 5’ Makes The iPad Truly Magical by Magician Simon Pierro. http://goo.gl/82SO4

  50. Re:Nice. by BasilBrush · · Score: 3, Funny

    I test out betas of people's android software on my phone all the time.

    That's true. Android is from Google, and Google's software is always beta.

  51. Re:Nice. by deniable · · Score: 4, Funny

    Meh, battery life was crap.

  52. Re:Nice. by BasilBrush · · Score: 2

    That doesn't follow. Apple is such a big customer, with such deep pockets, they often tie up the first year's production of the latest spec components.

  53. Re:Nice. by NotQuiteReal · · Score: 5, Funny

    Kids, these days.

    Back in my time, we had to fart ourselves! And we liked it!

    Wake up and smell the beans, no wonder your butts are getting so big, you aren't exercising them properly! Get off my lawn!

    --
    This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
  54. Re:Nice. by EdIII · · Score: 5, Insightful

    You called me out. Well Played.

    Principles are just *so* highly over rated. Giving in and just buying the device is the easier path and I should just take that.

  55. 8MP color for those with deep pockets by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

    My wife is a radiology resident, and the monitors they use have unreal resolution. They cost a fortune, and I'm sure they aren't as concerned about lag times and other performance measures for things like gaming or home entertainment.

    Here's a supplier offering 8MP color and 10MP black and white monitors: http://www.eizo.com/global/products/radiforce/

  56. Re:Nice. by shutdown+-p+now · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Now if you could jail brake it and install Android 4.0 I might consider it for the specs. I have to hand to Apple, they do look damn good.

    If what you want is a high-res screen, wait a few months - ICS tablets are coming in 1920x1080. Granted, not as high as this baby, but high enough for all practical purposes - Apple really only needs that crazy DPI because they want to be able to 2x-upscale existing iPad apps (just as it was with iPhone 4).

    Specifically, I'd wait out for the next Transformer from Asus - by most accounts, it'll be much like Prime, which is already thinner and lighter than iPad 2 while looking mostly similar, except with fixed Wi-Fi reception and 1080p screen.

  57. Re:Nice. by shutdown+-p+now · · Score: 2

    I had a keyboard dock for mine!

  58. Re:Nice. by cshark · · Score: 4, Funny

    Yes, but Apple's iOs farting apps have superior usability.

    --

    This signature has Super Cow Powers

  59. Re:Nice. by dubbreak · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I'd settle for less. Give me something over 1200 lines resolution and I'd be so happy. That or bring back 4:3 or 5:4 only bigger and with better resolution. I need some vertical height on my monitors. 16:9 monitors in portrait are like staring at anorexics. I need some meat on my metaphorical monitor bones!

    --
    "If you are going through hell, keep going." - Winston Churchill
  60. Re:Nice. by shutdown+-p+now · · Score: 2

    Their screens are pretty uniquely tailored to their design, though. IIRC, they're the only ones making 3:4 tablets now that HP is out of the game - all Android ones are 16:10.

  61. Re:Searing by shutdown+-p+now · · Score: 2

    I don't always want to stare in a bright display. Using more fingerprint-resistant coating on the screen would be more helpful.

    And yes, they do exist - I find that my Galaxy Nexus takes a lot of time to stain to the same extent as any other touchscreen device I've ever owned (including an iPad). No idea what they've put there that makes it so, but it's clearly working. I wish more manufacturers would pick it up.

  62. How do I? by KingSkippus · · Score: 3, Insightful

    You are, of course, free to whatever you want to your iDevice after you've bought it.

    I want to sync it to my Linux workstation. How do I do that?

  63. Re:Nice. by Vegemeister · · Score: 5, Interesting

    It'll address that resolution, sure, but it won't display it. I own one such Trinitron. The aperture grille pitch is about 1 pixel wide at 1600x1200. To meet the Nyquist sampling condition, the electron beams must be defocused to at least half that. The resolution of a 1600x1200 LCD is effectively greater than that of a 1600x1200 CRT. Furthermore, the LCD can use subpixel rendering.

    Test it yourself: generate images consisting of alternating lines at 1 pixel spacing, and display them at 1:1 scaling on your CRT.

  64. Re:Preference != Principle by geekoid · · Score: 4, Insightful

    If you root you iDevice, you void the warranty .
    Why buy something I have to root, and void my warranty instead of something that does what I want it to?

    You sound like some who is trying to make excuse for locking themselves in a cage.

    The poster was simply answering a question. He din't come out and say that. It was a response. Civilized peopel have 'conversations' to exchange ideas and concept.

    I have no idea why you bring the tasty, tasty Big Mac into this conversation.

    --
    The Kruger Dunning explains most post on /. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect
  65. Re:Nice. by VortexCortex · · Score: 2

    No, but the noise from the dot-matrix keeps the kids off my lawn.

    Folly awaits thee if thou truly doth be a practitioner of which thou spake! Thou doth jest, but thine path twines most inefficiently toward a goal quite directly reached.

    Thee must take up thine station upon yon lawn. If only for but one eve thou shalt sit gruesomely, displayed for the displeasure of all, comfortably in thine grassy throne, and pleading most with utmost fervour and kindness to all unruly juvenile knaves that shalt pass thee to please come and frolic in thine nearness upon thine knoll.

    Henceforth, nary a single soul hath tread upon green and tender shoots under my dominion. Nay! Walkest them furthest from my abode, even unto the neighbouring fields!

    If thou shant ponder upon advisories lain herein, then be gone ye sucklers of teet from mine courtyard!

  66. Re:Nice. by JohnnyMindcrime · · Score: 2

    You mean it looks bad on that display that's already smeary to hell with all your fingerprints on it?

    I don't get you youngsters at times - if you are in a place where you are having to use a portable device to watch a movie, then it's because you're alleviating the boredom of being sat in a plane, train, automobile and grateful for anything that works to alleviate that boredom. As long as it's reasonably watchable on a tiny screen, who the fuck CARES whether it's 1080P or whatever?

    It's a bit different sat at home in the comfort of an armchair enjoying a movie in full surround sound on a 92" mega-screen...

    --
    Windows 10 is great - I used it to download Linux.
  67. Re:Nice. by asdf7890 · · Score: 3, Interesting

    80 characters isn't a bad choice for how most people read. Studies have shown that the ideal (as much as there is one ideal of course, it varies between typefaces, styles and sizes) is around 60 characters. Allowing for a few indents 72 or 80 characters are good guidelines.

    But it is only a guildeline. Code is not natural language and the rules are more flexible. You are not just trying to make the code easier to read line by line but you are trying to illustrate its flow in a way that you don't need to with natural language, and sometimes long lines actually help this rather than hinder it.

    Using the right tool for the job extends to using the right layout for the code at hand.

  68. Re:Nice. by fyngyrz · · Score: 2

    Spell check and sarcastic Spelling Nazis :)

    Oh, no, your spelling was fine. "brake" is indeed an adventure in correct spelling. It was simply the wrong word.

    --
    I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
  69. Re:Nice. by TheRaven64 · · Score: 2

    66 non-whitespace characters is about optimal. Unfortunately, the people who insist on 80-colums as a hard limit tend to be the same people who insist on 8-character tabs for indent, so you end up with a lot fewer than 66 characters per 80-column line.

    --
    I am TheRaven on Soylent News
  70. Re:Nice. by macs4all · · Score: 2

    I test out betas of people's android software on my phone all the time.

    That's true. Android is from Google, and Google's software is always beta.

    In fact, the typical lifecycle of Google software is to go from Beta to Canceled...