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iPad 3 Confirmed To Have 2048x1536 Screen Resolution
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."
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.
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.
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.
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
I suppose you also have rejected laser printers in favor of good ol' dot matrix. Am I right?
Apple will only multiply the resolution by two. Anything less compromises the quality of artwork on existing apps.
If only you could get a desktop monitor at that resolution and price.
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.
- "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!"
I tried to jail brake my phone once, but it slowed it right down.
Scientists point out problems, engineers fix them
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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.
Man I miss trinitron tablets, they were so cool.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.